In the nineteenth century, over half of the American electorate had never seen the candidate for whom they cast their vote, and those who did know what their candidate looked like had only seen either a pen and ink drawing or meager photograph. The press meant nothing more than newspapers and people’s images of the western hero originated in the writing of men like Cooper and serial dime novels. The West was a place of present discovery and therefore romance. A century later, the West, that is the area as myth and symbol not locale, was a thing of the past. America did not long to travel through space to the West, but rather through time.

By 1980, Americans still clung to heroes; we just looked for them in new and different places. Television, since Vietnam, Nixon’s elections, and Watergate, had become the primary medium through which the American public received information about and images of our leaders. The sound byte replaced the stump speech, and political campaigns were no long grass roots come what wills based on one man’s personality and character versus another. Instead, the campaign had become a machine, an industry, a company. Large collections or managers and consultants carefully sculpted and scripted every aspect of the huge campaign. And more than ever, America was interested in image.

Now, practically no one went to the polls and voted for an individual they had never seen. Widespread newspaper publication and television news and commercials relayed images of nominees into every living room in America. The outsider was still appealing, but the voters did not require an actual outsider, just an individual they could make up as one. Only in this era of complicated hero creation, could a former actor ascend so easily to the public favor. Courage in the face of a camera crew replaced courage in front of an enemy line.

Ronald Reagan, a former actor in numerous Hollywood films, many war movies and B cowboy westerns, was perfectly comfortable in front of the camera lens and accomplished at taking direction. He had been creating characters his entire life, but perhaps his greatest creation of his career took place in 1980. He knew that the American West was less about historical reality and more about mythic wish making. He translated the American people’s desires simply: they wanted more, they needed something, and someone, completely new, they needed a hero.

Cowboys notoriously are rugged individualists. Throughout the 1980 campaign, Reagan presented himself as the unsaying individual, uncompromising in his quest to make the American dream true for the everyman. Following a decade when Americans came to distrust their leaders more and more, the nation needed a cowboy to deal straight. With the ongoing hostage crisis in Iran increasingly becoming a debacle, America welcomed a gun-slinger.

Reagan did not even have to do the groundwork; Hollywood and the American imagination did it for him. By the time of his nomination, Reagan was a conservative, wealthy politician and governor. Still, thirty years later, the nation still subconsciously associated him with the silver screen, and in a way that only Americans can, we remembered not Ronald Reagan the actor, but rather Ronald Reagan the character.

How much of Reagan’s heroism was engineered will never fully be known. After months of negotiations, the hostages in Iran were released days after Reagan’s defeat of Carter. The timing irked the Democrats. Being bullied at one particular debate, Reagan confronted the moderator and stormed off the stage. Americans ate it up, but some wondered how much of it was preordained for step one. Looking back, none of this really matters. What is interesting is the change that took place in American myth making. After two centuries, we had become autograph hounds with an attention deficit. The question of authenticity with Reagan was irrelevant. The television age had made America so susceptible to symbolism that the candidate need only put on a cowboy hat, and the audience immediately took him for a cowboy.