There He Goes Again

Speaking of “Saturday Night Live,” Ron Reagan is giving a speech next week at the Democratic National Convention. Judging from the reaction, you would think the younger son of the late president was going to reprise that long- ago “SNL” skit in which he played himself, home alone in the White House, dancing in his skivvies a la Tom Cruise in “Risky Business.”

Democrats are ecstatic over being able to embarrass the Republicans. Republicans are trying to hide their embarrassment by calling Ron Reagan a traitor and claiming that the speech could even set back the cause he signed on to promote -- greater federal support for stem-cell research.

The speech is unlikely to set back that cause (unless the Republicans are really vindictive), but it also is unlikely to advance it, however heartfelt Reagan’s plea for research that might have helped ease his father’s long descent into Alzheimer’s disease. Most Democrats already support federal funding. Most Republicans, with some prominent exceptions, bow to religious conservatives who rank the use of embryonic stem cells with abortion.

So why not speak at the Republican convention? Reagan’s outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq made an invitation unlikely. Then there is his vehement objection to the claim that President Bush -- another president’s son who is widely seen as disowning his father’s legacy -- is the political heir to President Reagan.

“My father was a man,” the Reagan son, sounding a tad like California’s governor, told the Web magazine Salon. “That’s the difference between him and Bush.”

If Reagan was trying to embarrass his father back in 1986 (by all accounts, he didn’t), he is defending him now. Does that mean that in 20 years today’s president will recognize that President George H.W. Bush wasn’t wrong about everything after all?

Scholars differ on where President Reagan, who opposed abortion, would have come down on the issue of stem-cell research, which also has the potential to develop treatments for Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis and is avidly supported by his wife, Nancy (and this editorial page). But the former president’s biographer is sure the father would have regarded the son’s speech to the Democratic convention much the same as he viewed the “Saturday Night Live” skit -- with a shrug and a joke. Another difference between him and Bush.