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Reagan's Favorite SitcomHow Family Ties spawned a conservative hero.

By David HaglundPosted Friday, March 2, 2007, at 7:16 AM ET

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And yet Alex P. Keaton became a hero to conservatives anyway. Ronald Reagan said Family Ties was his favorite show and reportedly offered to appear in an episode. Even today, young Republicans cite Fox's character as an early role model. When California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman's 25-year-old opponent in the last election was asked why he joined the Republican Party, he explained: "It started with Michael J. Fox on Family Ties." And Tucker Carlson has built an entire career by channeling the character.

How did this happen? Partly, no doubt, it was the sheer absence, before Family Ties, of explicitly conservative young people on network television. And much of the credit must go to Fox himself, whose specialty as an actor was playing the smug, arrogant brat that you like in spite of yourself (see also Back to the Future, The Secret of My Success, The Hard Way, etc.). It seems unlikely that, say, Andrew McCarthy could have exuded such likable sincerity while explaining that "God wants me" to "make a lot of money … because if he didn't, he wouldn't have made me so smart," as Alex tells that off-screen psychologist after his friend has died. (Even Matthew Broderick, the producers' original choice for the role, might not have pulled this off.)

Still, it's tempting to conclude that Keaton's near-iconic status requires more explanation. Last summer in the New Republic, Rick Perlstein, the left-leaning author of a book on Barry Goldwater, argued that, even now, after years of Republican rule, the "culture of conservatives still insists that it is being hemmed in on every side." Having been "shaped in another era [the mid-1960s], one in which conservatives felt marginal and beleaguered," conservative culture—Perlstein had in mind everything from "Goldwater kitsch" to Fox News—still feeds on this antagonism, reflecting a sense that righteousness is always at odds with the decadent mainstream.

Alex P. Keaton fits this vision perfectly. Throughout the show's run, he was on his own: His parents were liberal, his sister was a ditz, and his one conservative ally, Uncle Ned, was a fugitive and then a drunk. Still, he persevered. If those 2006 midterms in which Fox memorably intervened were the harbinger of a major Democratic resurgence, then these long-delayed DVDs might be arriving at just the right time.

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David Haglund is the managing editor of PEN America, the literary magazine published by the PEN American Center.
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