The canonization of Ronald Wilson Reagan is not yet complete, but it has reached its next logical stage: People are collecting his relics.
News that a British online auction house has opened the bidding on a vial containing Reagan's blood is certainly creepy -- and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation argues it's an invasion of Reagan's privacy, since the blood was apparently lifted from George Washington University Hospital in 1981 without Reagan's permission -- but it's also rather fitting. Conservative hagiographers have been reinventing Reagan as a sort of secular saint for years now; his name is invoked continually as a role model by GOP political candidates, and his public image is peaking. A 2010 Gallup poll placed Reagan's approval rating at 74%, second only to John F. Kennedy among the nation's nine most recent presidents, and in another Gallup poll in February, 69% of those surveyed said Reagan would go down in history as an "outstanding" or "above average" president, the highest rating of the eight recent presidents listed (only 38% thought President Obama would have such an impressive legacy).
