That's the January 29, 1986 headline I imagined as I observed the ruckus over Barack Obama's innocuous, well-meaning and mildly uplifting address to U.S. schoolkids today. I refer, of course, to the Challenger space shuttle catastrophe, observed on television by millions of American children from their classrooms in part because schoolteacher Christa McCauliffe was part of the crew. As everyone knows, 73 seconds into the flight, the spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic ocean, its fiery trail of death and destruction also watched on TV by millions of now-confused, distraught, angry, fearful schoolchildren, as well as teachers, parents and ordinary citizens. That evening, in one of his finest and most eloquent moments, Ronald Reagan appeared on national television to console a grieving nation. His four-minute address included a special paragraph addressed to "the schoolchildren of America"--and its message wasn't all that different from Obama's today.
I cannot recall a single person, much less political leaders, radio personalities or other "opinion shapers" accusing Reagan of doing anything inappropriate with his office, much less of trying to brainwash or exploit kids. Yet if today's hyper-partisan-super-paranoid version of political "gotcha" had been the norm 23 years ago, I know we'd have seen headlines like the one I imagined above. What will it take to dial us back to the saner mindset of 1986?
