Dear Dad,
I am so sorry. I should have known better, and it was a foolish assumption to make. I hope you recognize, given that I am your daughter, how difficult this mea culpa is, but I am completely embarassed and flat out wrong. I am so sorry I thought for all these years that you had voted for Ronald Reagan. Take heart in the fact that this Christmas: you have blown my mind.
Read on.
You see, it's always been a very basic assumption of mine that you voted for Reagan. After all, you voted for Bush in '88, and felt bad about voting for Clinton in '92 because, and I quote: "He's really a very nice guy, but he just didn't get it on domestic policy." And you call yourself fiercely independent. Well, for people like me, Independents who voted for the first Bush are what we call Reagan Democrats. So I assumed you voted for Reagan. My bad. And now, I see that your vote in '88 was mere loyalty to the CIA and pride that a former Director would become president, probably the only one to ever do so.
So, I don't really know why, when at dinner I asked if you'd voted for Reagan, I was surprised when you answered:
"Of course not. Reagan was a conservative ideologue."
How could I have expected my Dad, who I always reference as a beacon of utter truth in most matters, to feel any differently about this? Because you are right Dad. Reagan WAS a conservative ideologue. We completely agree. And that's why it makes it all the more wrong for me to have thought you voted for him.
It must have something to do with your love of the argument, something, you will note, I share as well. You see, I always assumed your arguments with Grandpa in the 80s over politics were because, well, you liked to argue against any position Grandpa might take on anything, and perhaps because you hated the "Nixon is #1" bumper sticker on his car. And perhaps this is confirmed by the fact that at the Christmas party a year ago you argued the merits of the Iraqi invasion with me pretty vehemently, only for me to be informed shortly later by your friends that you had been arguing the exact same thing I was until the moment I showed up and took the liberal position. Your friends ratted you out, Dad. I know you know better than the strawman arguments you were using.
And how proud I am that you have hidden in with the old candleholders a "McCarthy for President" pin? I totally did not see that coming, Dad. Bravo. All else I had known about you in that period was that you had to go around war protests on your way to classes at Harvard, despite being against the war.
I was stupid, Dad. In seeing you as the sensible center, I forgot that you were married to Mom, and while Mom may have finally relented and gotten US citizenship despite the lack of a universal health care system, she still does have the penchance to justify her liberalism with, "Well, in Sweden I'd be a right winger!" Yes, but this is not Sweden. In Sweden, there is an active Communist party that often takes a good 30% of the vote in election. But now I can proudly say you voted for Carter twice, and for Mondale, and that, most of all, you did not vote for Ronald Reagan.
After all, how could you vote for someone who called for the elimination of DoE, until he realized that that's where the nukes come from? Silly, silly, me.
I have but one question: Why do you call yourself an independent? You are a Democrat, Dad. A Democrat. And why be so secretive about your votes? Why pretend like its possible you voted for Dole when you didn't? Because that is how vicious mistaken impressions like this get started.
But now that we are in the same page I will publicly acknowledge my fault, in the hopes that anyone I might've perpetuated this terrible falsehood to will know that I was, in fact, in error.
And thank you, Dad, for not voting for Ronald Reagan.