At the funeral of former President Ronald Reagan, his son Ronald Prescott Reagan said of the attempted assassination of his father that "God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a
responsibility, not a
mandate. And there is a profound difference."
I believe that is the key reason Mr Reagan has agreed to speak at the Democratic convention. In my opinion, he's unhappy with the Bush administration's pandering to the fundamentalist Christian base at the great expense of the public welfare of the American people.
Today in an interview with Al Franken on Franken's Air America radio show, Jeremy Glick (the son of a Port Authority worker who died on 9/11) said he doesn't feel it's ethical to state "
what his father would have wanted or believed" as things stand today.
It only serves to make sense, for how could he know what his father would say today? He can only tell you what he
knows his father believed
before his death (and the elder Glick believed the Bush election was
not legitimate). The young Glick has opposed the war on Iraq and was skewered cruelly and unprofessionally by FOX's own Bill O'Reilly in a dismally one-sided interview on the
O'Reilly Factor. The awful experience will be covered in the new
Robert Greenwald documentary "Outfoxed".
Like Jeremy Glick, Ronald Prescott Reagan cannot speak for his father. In the younger Reagan's case, it is profoundly unfortunate that he cannot tell you what his father may have believed for at least the past ten years because President Reagan was debilitated by Alzheimer's disease. Ron P. Reagan has his own sound mind, however. In his heart, he has witnessed and experienced a sorrow only known to families of Alzheimer victims. He says his own mother, the beloved wife and soul-companion of our former president, agrees wholeheartedly with his decision to speak at the Convention. He believes stem-cell research is important to making the quality of all American lives better. Ron understood the role that God played in his father's life. I believe he's picking up the ball for his dad and taking the responsibility he believes his father would have taken based on the former president's deepest reverence of God.
Jude