George W. and the search for Gipper Gold

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This being Off-Topic Tuesday, I thought I might return to the search for Gipper Gold, and thus must relate this anecdote:

In the mid-1990s while working as an adjunct professor at a large Southern university, I had an office next to the one belonging to a new, tenure-track faculty member, a brilliant guy in his early 30s who was a Chaucer scholar who also read and spoke Old English. At the end of one day, I happened to glance in his open office door on my way home to say goodnight. This led to a brief conversation that somehow wandered into Presidential history. 

That induced this fellow to ask me the following: “When you were young, didn’t Ronald Reagan give you the feeling of being really safe and secure, like he was your grandfather, and he was going to protect you from everything?”

At first, I thought this guy was kidding. He had to be kidding. Nobody could possibly say such a thing about RR. I might have been in elementary school at the start of the first Reagan administration, but I knew freaky-dangerous people when I saw them, on TV, in person, wherever.

So I started chuckling at this fellow’s question, which I took for sarcasm. However, I began to realize that he was sincere. The question was rhetorical; he was confessing to Grandpa Ron making him feel this way. I quickly stifled my laugh and stammered something like, “Ah, no, not really. I thought Reagan was going to get us all killed. But I was just a kid — maybe I didn’t understand everything.” 

I quickly made my exit. The Chaucer scholar and I had little to discuss after that. Then all the adjuncts got laid off just before Christmas. My life began a non-academic turn. 

I relate that here as a coefficient to Stanley Fish’s Opinionator piece in the NY Times today about the burgeoning nostalgia for George W. Bush. As far as I can tell, most people who miss W at this point are people who hate Obama and who are also still angry with McCain for losing. 

However, given this initial trend, brace yourself for all sorts of commemorative George W. trinkets in the next couple years. I’ve got a feeling this stuff is coming at us a lot faster than we think, if it already isn’t here.

I say this based on Fish’s prediction that W “will not go to the top of the list [of respected ex-Presidents], but neither will he be the figure of fun and derision he seemed destined to be only a year ago,” (I’m not agreeing with that, I’m just speculating that it could carry a measure of accuracy); and based also, more immediately, on the rush to get the George W. Bush Presidential Center opened by 2013 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.

Gift shop? You bet. 

After I witnessed a fleeting advertisement for a Ronald Reagan gold medallion on a Times‘ Olympic hockey story, back on Feb. 26, I went on a search to try to find this magical ingot. I have yet to find that specific item (as happens with on-line advertising, it disappeared when I clicked for the story jump), but I did find the museum store of the The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library on-line. Here, you can purchase the Ronald Reagan Medallion Belt Buckle for $75. The “Trust But Verify” Money Clip for $30 (that’s a bargain, son). And the Presidential Library Seal Tie Bar with Engraved Signature for $19.

Those southern Methodists must surely have orders already filled with factories in China, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey to start pumping out memorabilia for George W.: The Nickel-Plated History-Making Texan Award Replica with matching cuff links. The Presidential Portrait-Medallion Pewter Chastity Belt. The “Ownership Society” Presidential-Library Seal Personal Taser. The Official “Now Watch This Drive” Presidential Golf Umbrella, with Embossed-Seal Handle (6% of proceeds go to the Rebuild New Orleans Fund).

I know — you can barely wait to buy your own little piece of Presidential history, 2000-2008. The stuff is coming by the truckload.