At the risk of sounding insensitive, Ronald Reagan’s death did wonders for his historical repu- tation. Since the week-long, coast-to- coast funeral festivities in June 2004, the public discussion about America’s 40th president has shifted dramatically. Once dismissed as an \u201d\u0153amiable dunce,\u201d\u009d Reagan is now hailed as a shrewd, silver-tongued, substantive orator. Once mocked as a \u201d\u0153Good Time Charlie,\u201d\u009d he is now appreciated as an optimistic leader who restored American patriot- ism and self-confidence. Once derided as a lazy, incompetent, borderline senile chief executive who dodged impeachment after the Iran-Contra scandal by pleading ignorance, he is now remembered as the presidential superhero who triggered the 1980s’ boom, rebuilt America’s military capacity, revived American conservatism, defeated Great Society liberalism and won the Cold War.<\/p>\n
Ronald Reagan’s successors as president have helped bolster his standing in the presidential stock market, unin- tentionally. By lacking what he pooh- poohed as \u201d\u0153the vision thing,\u201d\u009d George H.W. Bush failed to excite America and failed to win re-election after one term in office. Bush’s failure made Reagan’s big-picture governing seem all the more appealing by comparison. By act- ing inappropriately in the Oval Office itself, Bill Clinton increased Americans’ appreciation in retrospect for Reagan, an old-fashioned Midwesterner who squirmed during sex scenes in modern movies and so revered the White<\/p>\n
House he never removed his suit jacket in the Oval Office. Moreover, with a Democrat in office throughout the 1990s promoting \u201d\u0153peace and prosperi- ty,\u201d\u009d it was much harder for liberals to criticize Reagan for seeking the same in the 1980s. And by governing with a heavy hand ideologically while stum- bling in Iraq militarily, George W. Bush made Ronald Reagan appear more flex- ible, pragmatic and effective. Today, many Bush critics like to forget how harshly they criticized Reagan, to emphasize that this Republican conser- vative is beyond the pale.<\/p>\n
The Reagan Diaries<\/em>, ably edited by Douglas Brinkley, will help the Reagan revival by illustrating Reagan as a far more engaged President with a more sup- ple mind than his detractors assumed. Love him or hate him, agree with his policies or not, it is difficult to put the book down without being impressed by Reagan’s wit, his balanced perspective on life, the many hats a president wears and his involvement with the big governing issues of his day. To those who believe that the Alzheimer’s disease that he acknowledged in 1994 hit while he was still President, the diary entries from the end of his administration in 1988 and January 1989 are as coherent and pithy as the first one when he entered the White House in January 1981.<\/p>\n The nearly 800-page book offers only highlights of the five fat vol- umes of Reagan’s diaries, written in his characteristic scrawl. Visitors to the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, who have pored through Reagan’s speech draft files and the \u201d\u0153Presidential Handwriting Files\u201d\u009d pre- serving every paper he personally scribbled on, will recognize both the small, surprisingly delicate handwrit- ing recreated on the inside cover, and the robust approach to governing now immortalized in these pages.<\/p>\n Readers looking for headline-generating revelations will have to look elsewhere. Douglas Brinkley admits that the entries \u201d\u0153are prosaic, not grandiose. The power of the diaries is in their cumulative effect.\u201d\u009d Depending on one’s perspective, Ronald Reagan was either remarkably transparent or remarkably opaque. Ronald Reagan’s wife Nancy would complain in her autobiography that her beloved \u201d\u0153Ronnie\u201d\u009d was like a brick wall; even she found it difficult to access his innermost thoughts. The diaries suggest that there was nothing to hide. After decades in the public eye as both Hollywood celebrity and leading California politician, the public man and the private man were one.<\/p>\n The diaries are most important as snapshots catching Ronald Reagan in the act of being himself. Born in Tampico, Illinois, in 1911 and raised mostly in the larger but still small town of Dixon, Illinois, Reagan really was a golly-gee whiz, aw shucks Midwesterner. Feeling \u201d\u0153homesick\u201d\u009d for old friends after five months in the White House, he admitted he \u201d\u0153was surprised to find my back tingled a bit\u201d\u009d when he visited some at a dinner. Having never met a clich\u00e9\u0081 he did not like, lacking the Northeastern intellectual’s cynical, critical, self-consciousness, Reagan blithely recorded, on October 5, 1981, the universal sentiment, \u201d\u0153I hate Mondays.\u201d\u009d He noted on February 2, 1988, that on this Ground Hog Day \u201d\u0153Puxatawny Phil didn’t see his shadow \u201d\u201d Spring will be early.\u201d\u009d When he attended the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, the most powerful man on earth was really \u201d\u0153impressed,\u201d\u009d exclaiming, \u201d\u0153It really is the greatest show on earth.\u201d\u009d And after sustaining a near-fatal chest wound from John Hinckley’s gun on Monday, March 30, 1981, barely two months into the presidency, this most non-reflective, non-process-oriented Californian report- ed, \u201d\u0153Getting shot hurts.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n The assassination attempt brought out other dimensions of Reagan’s private side. He was not a regular churchgoer, even before the blanket Secret Service protection that followed him everywhere provided him with a great excuse to stay home on Sunday. Still, Reagan had a deep, direct and simple faith in God. \u201d\u0153Whatever hap- pens now I owe my life to God and will try to serve him in every way I can,\u201d\u009d he wrote during his convales- cence. As a committed Christian who believed in sin and salvation, forgive- ness and repentance, Reagan struggled to forgive Hinckley, the shooter. \u201d\u0153I realized I couldn’t ask for Gods [sic] help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed up young man who had shot me,\u201d\u009d he wrote in his first diary entry after the shooting. \u201d\u0153Isn’t that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all Gods [sic] children & therefore equally beloved by him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Reagan expressed sympathy for Hinckley’s parents, calling them \u201d\u0153par- ents of the boy with the gun,\u201d\u009d when he received \u201d\u201d and accepted \u201d\u201d an apologetic mailgram from them. Reagan was tougher on the assassins of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat than he was on Hinckley, although even after that outrage, Reagan’s language was typically subdued: \u201d\u0153I’m trying not to feel hatred for those who did this foul deed,\u201d\u009d Reagan confessed on October 6, 1981, \u201d\u0153but I can’t make it.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Always staying in character, Ronald Reagan truly loved his wife, okay, his sec- ond wife, Nancy \u201d\u201d although, in fairness, Reagan was shocked when his first wife Jane Wyman dissolved their marriage and always described that trauma in the passive tense, saying \u201d\u0153I was divorced.\u201d\u009d The diary is filled with sweet nothings about \u201d\u0153my sweetheart,\u201d\u009d including con- fessions with a properly prudish touch that the White House \u201d\u0153seems lonely as h \u201d\u201d l when I know she isn’t here.\u201d\u009d Reagan was furious, and felt guilty, about the \u201d\u0153bum rap\u201d\u009d his controversial wife endured from what Reagan termed, in a rare lapse into vulgarity, \u201d\u0153a few bitchy columnists.\u201d\u009d Canadians will be particu- larly interested to discover that when the Reagans were \u201d\u0153quartered at Rideau house\u201d\u009d in Ottawa, Reagan deemed it \u201d\u0153a truly magnificent old mansion \u201d\u201d except that Nancy & I were in separate rooms \u201d\u201d 1st time in our marriage.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n It seems that the intensity of the bond between Ronnie and Nancy Reagan excluded their children. Reagan had two children from his first marriage, Maureen and Michael, and two with Nancy, Ron Junior and Patti Davis \u201d\u201d who rejected her father’s name and her mother’s parenting even more intensely. All were adults dur- ing the presidency, yet Patti and Ron in particular seemed still to be in the throes of adolescent rebellion. The diary is filled with banal reports of the Reagan children’s comings and goings, peppered with sharper asides about various tiffs.<\/p>\n The tumultuous relation- ship between Patti and both Reagans is well known; the diaries show great ten- sion between Ron, Jr., and his parents too. One perennial flashpoint was the Secret Service protection. Ron, Jr., resented the loss of privacy.<\/p>\n Especially, after the assassination attempt, Nancy was desperate for even more intense coverage for her loved ones. In May 1983, while President Reagan was struggling over \u201d\u0153the budget & the MX vote plus the interference with Presidential authority in interna- tional affairs\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d meaning congressional oversight of Reagan’s moves in Nicaragua and El Salvador \u201d\u201d Nancy called \u201d\u0153very upset.\u201d\u009d Ron had surprised the Secret Service with news that he was popping off to Paris. \u201d\u0153I don’t know what is with him. He refuses to cooperate with them,\u201d\u009d Reagan noted, then added: \u201d\u0153I’m not talking to him until he apologizes for hanging up on me.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Reagan’s strong small government conservative ideology emerges clearly as well. After one \u201d\u0153long Cabinet meeting on policy planning,\u201d\u009d Reagan exclaimed: \u201d\u0153We really found out why we came here. We saw and heard the impossible management structure of government. It is by any standard a cumbersome, costly incompetent monster.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Reagan believed that individuals had personal obligations to help the poor, but questioned society’s collective obligation to assist. He frequently sent personal cheques and encouraging notes to people in trouble. Sometimes, he heard about their plight from the poignant letters they sent to the White House.<\/p>\n Sometimes, he learned about them from the newspapers or from acquaintances. \u201d\u0153It was a lump in throat call for me,\u201d\u009d Reagan sentimentally \u201d\u201d and probably quite literally \u201d\u201d noted after speaking to one recipient, who initially did not cash the one hundred dollar cheque Reagan sent, to keep it as a souvenir. Reagan promised to send back the cancelled cheque so the person could have the money and the memento.<\/p>\n On social issues Reagan was equally definitive, writing: \u201d\u0153How anyone could deny that the fetus is a living human being is beyond me.\u201d\u009d After a meeting with Republican congress- women, Reagan revealed his hopelessly old-fashioned and self-satisfied approach to feminism and many other issues: \u201d\u0153We (our admin.) have already done more to correct inequities than any other admin. before us,\u201d\u009d he insisted. Then he added a particularly 1950s touch: \u201d\u0153A couple of the gals are pretty aggressive sounding.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n In fact, Reagan was remarkably impervious to criticism. Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney once observed admiringly that Reagan entered office as a man in his 70s, with a thicker skin and less to prove than younger leaders. Such self-confidence in a democratic leader is good; bullheaded- ness is not. Reagan rarely learned from criticism, or even took it as legitimate. He dismissed critics as \u201d\u0153demagogs\u201d\u009d and liars. Reagan confessed to \u201d\u0153getting a real hang up on the press.\u201d\u009d He frequently called reporters a \u201d\u0153lynch mob\u201d\u009d and felt they did \u201d\u0153a trashing job\u201d\u009d on him.<\/p>\n During the Iran-Contra scandal Reagan chided reporters rather than being self-critical or angry about what his subordinates had done. \u201d\u0153The press continues to harp on the Iran situation to the point of writing & broadcasting pure fiction,\u201d\u009d he complained. Reporters during an Iran-Contra-scandal-related news conference \u201d\u0153were out for blood \u201d\u201d every Q. had a sharp barb.\u201d\u009d Ever the performer seeking approval, Reagan added in one of many reviews of his performances he chronicled: \u201d\u0153Our gang seems to feel \u201d\u02dcI done good.’\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Although a true believer, Reagan was also a shrewd politician who knew when to compromise and then try to declare his ideology vindicated. As a result of his compromises \u201d\u0153some of our pure ultra conservatives deserted.\u201d\u009d But Reagan wanted to get the job done. Explaining one of his concessions in rejecting an \u201d\u0153unreasonable\u201d\u009d conserva- tive critique, Reagan wrote: \u201d\u0153The tax increase is the price we have to pay to get the budget cuts.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Reagan was particularly agile \u201d\u201dand remarkably effective \u201d\u201d in dealing with the Soviets. Reagan was a staunch anti-Communist who found Soviet Communism particularly repellent. When he visited the Soviet embassy in Washington, relatively early in his tenure, he noted: \u201d\u0153There’s a strange feeling in that place \u201d\u201d no one smiles.\u201d\u009d Reagan recognized the Soviets’ structur- al weaknesses long before most experts did. As early as November 1985, he wrote, \u201d\u0153The Soviet U. is an ec. Basket case & among other things there is a rapidly spreading turn by the people to religion.\u201d\u009d Reagan was shrewd enough to try flattering the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, explaining when they met \u201d\u0153that we were the two nations that could destroy or save the world. I figured they nurse a grudge that we don’t respect them as a super- power.\u201d\u009d The diary shows how step by step, warm relations with the new Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and then a reforming Soviet Union, developed. Reagan put great stock in nurturing warm personal chemistry with world leaders. Many who remember the fric- tion between Reagan, the down-to- earth American capitalist, and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the sophisticat- ed Canadian social democrat, will be surprised to hear of Reagan’s positive first impression. \u201d\u0153Discovered I liked him,\u201d\u009d Reagan wrote. \u201d\u0153Our meetings were very successful. We have some problems to be worked out having to do with fishing, energy & environment but I believe we’ve convinced them we really want to find answers.\u201d\u009d Over the years, the tensions with Trudeau grew. At world summits, Trudeau and French president Francois Mitterand often frus- trated Reagan and British prime minis- ter Margaret Thatcher with their \u201d\u0153nitpicking,\u201d\u009d and their more socialist and Europeanist orientation. Reagan sensed that Trudeau \u201d\u0153leans toward out- right nationalization of industry.\u201d\u009d During one confrontation at the May 1983 summit that Reagan witnessed between Trudeau and Thatcher, Reagan recorded gleefully: \u201d\u0153I thought at one point Margaret was going to order Pierre to go stand in a corner.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Reagan was thrilled when Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister, improving both the personal and politi- cal chemistry. \u201d\u0153He’s a super fellow,\u201d\u009d Reagan wrote after his first meeting with Mulroney. \u201d\u0153We got along fine & will continue to do so.\u201d\u009d Reagan was thrilled as the friendship developed, boasting, \u201d\u0153I have to believe US-Canadian relations have never been better & certainly not at the leader level. Brian M. & I have really established a warm personal friendship.\u201d\u009d When Mulroney ran into political \u201d\u0153trouble…based on pol. attacks that he’s beholden to me & the U.S,\u201d\u009d Reagan responded. \u201d\u0153We’re trying to find some things to bolster him,\u201d\u009d the President admitted.<\/p>\n Scholars will continue to debate the merits of Ronald Reagan and his presi- dency. The Reagan Diaries<\/em> will not deter- mine what caused the 1980s boom, how equitably prosperity was distributed, which social programs should have been cut and which should have been kept, or who won the Cold War. But the Diaries<\/em> do offer the texture of the times, a wealth of insights and the challenge to take Reagan seriously as perhaps the most influential president since Franklin Roosevelt, rather than all too quickly dismissing simplistic, politically motivated caricatures of him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the risk of sounding insensitive, Ronald Reagan’s death did wonders for his historical repu- tation. Since the week-long, coast-to- coast funeral festivities in June 2004, the public discussion about America’s 40th president has shifted dramatically. Once dismissed as an \u201d\u0153amiable dunce,\u201d\u009d Reagan is now hailed as a shrewd, silver-tongued, substantive orator. Once mocked as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[9356],"tags":[],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-217860","issues","type-issues","status-publish","hentry","category-non-classifiee"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n