Hopey Changey Returns
- Mike Dickey
- Aug 23, 2024
- 4 min read
"Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable."
So, another political convention retreats in the rear view. Such a study in contrasts, between the gloom and doom and petty narcissism of the summer's first offering, and the cheery feel of this week's gathering in Chicago. Folks have compared the vibe to 2008, when Obama's themes of hope and change carried him into the presidency.
But I'm old, so I find myself thinking further back, to the election of 1980, pitting Carter's speech about national malaise against the sunny, confident optimism of Reagan's campaign. The current crowd has figured out what Ron knew back then--people want to feel good about their country and their lives, want to project a bright future. We all take as a given that fear drives folks to the polls; we've seen repeatedly that a pitch that emphasizes the good works just as well.
Being who I am, my thoughts of the national zeitgeist in 1980 drifted into remembering cars. We may have been feeling like we were climbing out of a hole and into the light, what with the humiliation of the hostage crisis and gas prices going through the roof along with everything else it seemed, but we sure rolled out some sorry new car models back then.
To me the car that embodied that time of lots of sizzle but no steak was the homely Chrysler K.
Introduced by Lee Iacocca, then CEO of Chrysler and the guy who reskinned the lowly Ford Falcon as a sports car to create the wildly successful Mustang, the K Car got great gas mileage, pioneered front wheel drive in U.S. automobiles, and . . . was a really crappy car. I mean dreadful, underpowered and tinny. Every Air Force officer of my generation knew them well, because the top three officers on every Air Force base were issued a "blue steelie", a K Car with blue body and white top and a colonel's chicken on the front license plate we'd salute as the wing king drove by, looking ridiculous in his little clown car.
But that clown car saved Chrysler, because they inexplicably sold like hot cakes. Chrysler introduced the K in 1980, the same year Reagan crushed Carter in November. Maybe the K was a sign that we were not in our most rational frame of mind that year.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone on the race to mediocrity, GM unveiled a line of awfulness that featured the lumpy Chevrolet Citation.
Ever notice how many of these you still see on the road? Exactly. To this day it's remembered as one of the sorriest cars ever to come out of Detroit (actually North Tarrytown, New York, but you get the idea). But when I was in high school they were everywhere, being driven by our parents to Stater Brothers to buy groceries, wheezing through intersections with their grossly underpowered drive trains. And sometimes catching fire. They had a problem with that: the Citation is also remembered for being subject to lots of recalls. By 1985 the line was mercifully extinguished, to be replaced by the only slightly less awful Cavalier as Reagan was sworn in for his second term.
Not to be outdone, Ford decided 1980 would be a good time to take their flagship pimpmobile, the Thunderbird, and make it even pimpier.
Ye gods. No wonder T-Bird sales fell through the floor over the next couple years.
In the summer of 1980 I worked in the service department, behind a broom mostly, at Dave Markley Ford in Richardson, Texas. My best friend Todd's father was the service manager, and his company car was a two-tone brown and bronze 1980 Thunderbird. It was truly one of the ugliest vehicles I'd ever seen. We never asked to borrow it, figuring the boxy lines made it the exact opposite of a chick magnet.
Ford had already come out with the dreadful Fox Series in 1978, with the likes of the Fairmont and the Zephyr, but we'll leave those aside because they don't fit my narrative that our cars reflected a national insanity that made us think electing Ronald Reagan was a good idea. Suffice to say we saw lots and lots of Fairmonts in the service department that summer with serious mechanical issues.
That hopeful summer of bad cars ushered in a decade of "Morning In America" bullshit that masked the fact that our country was being hollowed out by venture capitalists, an era that began with the Republican Party actively lobbying Iran to hang onto the hostages through election day to screw the incumbent, then engaging in several years of secret arms sales to our sworn enemy to fund an epically brutal Central American insurgency, all in the name of freedom and democracy.
Maybe the dreadful cars were a symptom of a national break with reality, a great wave of wishful thinking about the arc of our national journey.
I'll be on the lookout for what rolls into the showrooms for the 2025 model year. Hoping it's quality stuff.
On an unrelated note, the NYT had a great interview this morning with the former president of Uruguay, a former left wing bandit who refused to live in their executive mansion, and spends a lot of time doing nothing and ruminating on how our consumer economy deprives us of lives worth living. It's worth a look if you have a few minutes.
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