Performances

In former U.S. President Reagan, there are three special phenomena.

The first special phenomenon: Reagan was an extremely punctual person. He would enter his office every morning with a prepared schedule for the day on his desk, and he would take that schedule with him, item by item, and perform his presidential tasks according to it. Staffers recall that he rarely had a problem with the schedule, much less complained about it or changed it. He wouldn't say, "Why am I seeing this guy?" Nor would he say, "Why am I seeing this guy?" nor would he say, "Can't this boring ceremony take so long?" Nor would he say, "How can we finish talking about such an important matter in an hour?"

His cabinet members, members of Congress who often dealt with the White House, recalled that President Reagan had a remarkable ability to get meetings and conferences to end when they were supposed to, never late and never early. No matter how heated the discussion is, no matter how urgent and critical the issue is, when the time comes, Reagan always has a way to make a difference, quickly, to solve the matter at once, and the meeting adjourned on time. If there is no news and no big event of the day, what should be said early is finished, President Reagan will play his talkative skills, begin to tell jokes, tell the strange stories he experienced in his youth, pulling the West, consuming the extra time, on time to adjourn the meeting.

Punctuality is of course a virtue, but like Reagan, living in the modern era of rapid change and accidents, holding such a busy position, but still able to punctuality, and punctuality to such an extent, it becomes a strange thing.

There is a second special phenomenon: seeing him so punctual, some people may think that Reagan's personality is very meticulous, with very small attention to detail. No, wrong, very wrong, at many times, on many occasions, he was incredibly thick-headed.

For example, in 1985, the staff intensively review the administrative process, hoping to improve the efficiency of the White House and Cabinet linkage, after several thoughtful debates, they decided to recommend to Reagan, so that the Treasury Secretary and the White House Chief of Staff switched positions. This was a very important personnel change. The core staff prepared a lot of reasons, anxiously to Reagan to suggest, did not expect Reagan was very easy to immediately nod yes, not even asked a word.

Reagan's "easy-going" cabinet personnel, there is an even more exaggerated performance. In one meeting, he called out politely to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the only black member of the Cabinet, "Mayor." He misidentified the minister as the mayor of Washington, D.C.

The third special phenomenon: is Reagan's memory.

In 1983, Reagan met with then-Israeli Prime Minister Shamir, and Reagan recalled that he had made newsreels about the Jewish Holocaust during World War II and that he had purposely kept a reel of film in case anyone had any doubts about the Jewish Holocaust. He also said that a young man recently thought about how could the German Nazis have slaughtered 6 million Jews in such a short time and thought the whole thing would be exaggerated Jewish propaganda. Reagan said he then showed the young man the old film he had kept, and the young man watched it in awe and had a whole new understanding of history afterward.

Such a recollection struck a chord with Shamir and provided the press with an excellent focus for its coverage. The problem, though, was that during World War II, Reagan had only made educational propaganda films, never for the film company he said he was working for, much less a newsreel. And after half a dozen journalistic traces, no one has found either the newsreel Reagan spoke about or the young man who developed a new understanding of history as a result of watching the newsreel.

The list of examples is endless. Reagan once "saw with his own eyes" how a black soldier heroically charged with a machine gun to defend his white comrades in the Pacific War. He used this memory to tell voters that segregation in American society had ended a long time ago. However, looking at the historical records, it is clear that the U.S. military did not have black and white companies fighting side by side until after the signing of the "anti-segregation" executive order in 1948. When a reporter asked Reagan about this data, Reagan did not answer positively, but simply re-emphasized: "I saw that scene with my own eyes, and it was a very moving scene."

President Reagan suffered from Alzheimer's disease in his later years, and in his last years, he even forgot who he was. Could it be that when he was president, Alzheimer's disease had lurked and affected his memory to the point that it made him misremember his wartime experiences and made him unable to recognize his cabinet ministers?

Not likely. Alzheimer's disease creates forgetfulness but not false memories, and Reagan saw no brain function abnormalities during his years in office. After all, if Alzheimer's disease did strike, how could he remember his schedule and time so well?

We can't look for the reason for what happened to Reagan later, we should go back to his past to dig for clues. Reagan was an actor before he entered politics, and in fact, I'm afraid he retained many of his acting habits after he entered politics, right? Could the presidency have been just another performance for him? Or a series of performances? To be an actor, to be a competent actor, what he should do is deliver the right lines and create the right effect in the right place and the right settings according to the script. Then, according to the shooting plan, each scene will be shot step by step. After the shooting, the actor's work, the actor's responsibility is complete.