Authenticity. It is an unknowable and indefinable concept. People can say that Ronald Reagan’s persona was not authentic, and yet, it was perfectly real. There had never been another Reagan before him and it is doubtful that the American nation will soon see another. If one creates the character, then is not authentically their own? I do not know the answer.

Ronald Reagan was no cowboy. His western hero image was, in truth, nothing more than the memory of Hollywood lobby cards and a felt hat he donned at campaign rallies. Many would say that Reagan’s outside crusader image lacked authenticity because it was nothing more than a smattering of symbols, that identity must be more than artifacts. Americans claim to reject phony political rhetoric. We want a leader we can identify with, but often, those who have captured our imaginations bear little resemblance to our real selves and share more in common with our legends and models. Ironically, in 1996, Americans could not identify with Bob Dole because, like the majority of us would, he looked uncomfortable on the small screen.

But that is precisely the point. The American electorate that responds so well to the individual, common man identity does not necessarily require real cowboys, merely the ideal of the cowboy. In America, a cowboy hat is no more simply a cowboy hat than a dollar bill is simply a scrap of paper. Reagan’s cowboy hat encompasses what Americans believed to be great about America. No one really wants to elect a real cowboy; we want to elect the hero of the dime novel

The importance of the frontier in the American psyche is well documented. The West, for whatever reason, represents the opposite of the status quo. The same man or woman that suffers a mid-life crisis on the East coast and moves to a city in the West strikingly similar to the one they left in every respect save longitude, buying a denim shirt and trading in their luxury car for a luxury four wheel drive, warms to the thought of a nineteenth century outsider coming to their rescue.

Politicians know this. The question is really not whether the politicians themselves are authentic, but whether the images they project are authentic American symbols. The West that these campaigns tried to associate their candidates with is not a place at all. The western hero does not govern a geographical space, but rather an area of the collective national consciousness. From the beginning, the public has been as interested in our leaders’ accomplishments and characters as it has about their platforms. Now, more than ever, the televisual world demands that our heroes look like heroes and they remind us of the kind of people we imagine ourselves to be.