My position as a White House Trip Coordinator during President Reagan’s second term afforded me a unique opportunity to be in the vicinity of the President on many occasions where I could watch him interact with a vast cross section of people from around the country. Civic leaders and collegiate athletes in the Rose Garden, our service men and women on various military bases and kitchen workers outside hotel ballrooms. It didn’t matter the audience; the President was always unfailingly polite and respectful of everyone. He was a kind man with a generous, optimistic nature. He was loyal and true to his word.
Yes, I think Ronald Reagan's mother raised him right, but the way he treated people also came from an awareness that he set the ultimate example for the world as to how the leader of the free world should behave. It boiled down to the fact that President Reagan had respect for the office of the president, and he had respect for the people that put him there.
In comparison, the only person Donald Trump thinks highly of is Donald Trump. For Trump, the office of the president is merely a means to line his own pockets. Whereas Reagan admired George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (for building and preserving our democratic union of states), Trump admires Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán. Trump is mean spirited, and incapable of telling the truth. His only “ achievement” in public life has been to undermine and poison much of America’s faith in long respected pillars of our democracy. His behavior is dangerous and disgraceful and because of the horrible example he sets his despicable behavior has emboldened the darkest elements of our society and divided this country in the process.
I am not naïve enough to think that good manners are enough to warrant being elected president but feel very strongly that character counts. This is no time to vote with your pocketbook. The 2024 presidential election is a critical moment in our nation's history. No politician is perfect, but at a minimum we need someone who will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is why I will be voting for Kamala Harris for President.
Ashley Parker Snider was the Trip Coordinator, White House Advance under President Reagan and in the Office of Public Affairs, Department of Housing and Urban Development in the George H.W. Bush Administration.