Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

One other thing: for better or worse (mostly for worse, but that was SLICK's fault), Ronald Reagan brought show-biz to government. Of course they'd been going steady for decades, with Al Jolson campaigning for Harding, and movie stars visiting FDR; and perhaps it was inevitable anyway, as Washington and Hollywood share a psychotic megalomania and a boundless contempt for the peons; but Ronald Reagan married them. We forget though he wasn't the first showbiz type to win elective office; George Murphy entered the U. S. Senate two years before Reagan became governor, but he seems to have done it largely for fun, and he was ill for much of his one term. And as the strange career of Fred Grandy tells us, it is not very likely we will see more Ronald Reagans.