Don't panic, Longwood. There isn't really a ferocious woodland mammal in our midst, at least as far as I know, there isn't. What I'm talking about is a 1984 television commercial in support of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign that presented the following scenario.
"There is a bear in the woods. For some people, the bear is easy to see; others do not see it all. Some people say the bear is tame; others say it's vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who's right, isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear if there is a bear?"
The commercial was obviously a metaphor; the bear is the dangerous and threatening Soviet Union, and the commercial is saying that Ronald Reagan is prepared to handle it. Everyone knows how the Cold War went. The United States was able to outlast the bear. But there are so many ways to look at the bear scenario. What would you do if there was a bear in the woods?
I asked that question to about a dozen people after a political science class first introduced me to the commercial, and I got some interesting answers. It's easy to divide these people into two groups based on the answers. Either they kill the bear, or they don't.
"I'd run the other way," someone said, logically. "I feel like that's what most people would do."
"I'd play dead!" said one. "I'd cry," said another. One said, "I'd look at it, say hi, and walk away."
"I wouldn't kill the bear unless I was about to die," said one friend. She had heard that wild bears are being trained to stop attacking you if you shout "No, Bear!" at them.
If someone decides not to shoot the bear, they're allowing the potentially dangerous creature to inhabit a space near their home. Many Americans won't tolerate a bear in their neighborhood. (There was once a bear sighting in my hometown and every hunter in the county scoured the woods for it for weeks.) The bear could be tame, as the commercial says, but can one really take that risk? What if the bear decides to eat our small dogs or our children? What if they rummage through the garbage or steal our honey? It's really madness that a town can't afford.
In light of all of the bear related risks, it's not shocking that some people simply answered that they would shoot the bear, while others came up with creative ways to kill it.
One said, "I would get my dad to shoot it. I'm not going to shoot it!" It'd certainly be good to have a hit man do the dirty work.
Of course, you could protect your family without killing the bear. There are a lot of non-conventional ways to handle it. They make bear mace, which you could carry for protection. Or, perhaps, you could befriend the bear and together, this team of man and beast could intimidate all of the other puny forest creatures and rule them with an iron fist, or an iron paw. Every one of these still works as part of the foreign policy metaphor that the commercial establishes.
Politicians throughout the ages would have said many different things as well. And those answers would likely reflect their ideas on foreign policy.
Reagan, obviously, would have shot the bear, or would at least have carried a very big gun. The man once killed a rattlesnake by picking it up by the tail and cracking it like a whip. Shooting a bear wouldn't have been a problem for him.
Theodore Roosevelt was ruthless in foreign policy. Hunting was one of his favorite past times, he would have had no qualms about shooting a bear, of course he may have also decided to save the bear and established a national park in the woods so people would leave it alone and come to admire it in its natural splendor.
Sarah Palin would hunt the bear, with the help of Reality TV star, Kate Gosselin, and then make a rug out if it. "If you are unarmed and you're out in the wilderness, well, you're putting yourself and your family in danger," Palin said in an episode of her reality show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska." She also remarks on bears, "They could think that we are their lunch instead of those little tiny salmon." So think about it: What would you do if there was a bear in the woods? The answer really says a lot about you.
