Born and Misunderstood in the USA

Ronald Reagan had a childhood out of a heartland rock song. His family moved from rental to rental in a series of small Illinois towns — Tampico, Galesburg, Monmouth — before settling in Dixon, a Twainish town on the Rock River, when he was ten. You can hear a cloudless movie version of this life in a small-town ditty by John Mellencamp; a haunted, rain-lashed rendition on Bruce Springsteen’s .Nebraska As a child, Ronald was anxious and lonely and small. He squinted a lot and looked in…