Reagan's Centenial

Ronald Reagan's birthday is on Sunday. He would have been 100. His daughter, Patti Davis talks to Lloyd Grove over at the Daily Beast about it. She's a little confused about all the adulation:

"This centennial thing—and this Republican thing of people trying to put on Ronald Reagan masks—it's a little puzzling," she says. "Usually when you give a birthday party for someone, they're still here. And I think that my father would find it so confusing that people want to imitate him. Not because he didn't have confidence in who he was, but because he never imitated anybody. He was his own person."

When I tell her that Sarah Palin will be headlining one of the Reagan birthday celebrations, as keynote speaker of a lavish dinner at the former family ranch, Davis exclaims. "Are you kidding me?" She adds, "As far as Sarah Palin is concerned, I think he would be completely baffled at her fondness for shooting animals."