Prologue

The Wise Men and the Dummy

Sometimes it really helps to be a dummy. Consider the dinner that took place in mid-1985 at Republican grande dame Clare Boothe Luce's apartment in Washington, D.C. Conservative luminaries George Will and Michael Novak were there, and they were taken aback when their president, Ronald Reagan, who was scheduled to meet in Geneva with the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, revealed his naiveté to them in the following way. "I only wish that I could get in a helicopter with Gorbachev," Reagan said, "and fly over the United States. I would ask him to point to people's homes, and we could stop at some of them. Then he would see how Americans live, in clean and lovely homes, with a second car or a boat in the driveway. If I can just get through to him about the difference between our two systems, I really think we could see big changes in the Soviet Union." At this point, Novak recalled, his glance met Will's across the table, and both of them rolled their eyes and sighed.

"Our view," Novak recently told me, "was that it was foolish bordering on suicidal to think that the Soviet leaders would respond to personal initiatives. We thought in terms of a totalitarian system. The particular leader of the Soviet Union didn't matter, because it was the system that dictated policy. It was a bit of a shock, and an unpleasant one, to see that Reagan didn't share our view at all." Novak permitted himself a nervous chuckle. "It really makes you wonder, doesn't it? What did he know that we didn't?"

Wise men from the fields of politics, economics, and divinity issued Solomonic pronouncements about the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s that now make for informative reading. Here is the Reverend Billy Graham, commenting on material conditions on returning from a 1982 trip to the Soviet Union: "The meals I had are among the finest I have ever eaten. In the United States you have to be a millionaire to have caviar, but I have had caviar with almost every meal."

Perhaps this eminent clergyman, possessed by a religious afflatus, was misled by his Russian hosts, so let us consult a more objective source. In 1982, the learned Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University wrote inForeign Affairs,"The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decade, in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability." This view was seconded that same year by historian andeminence griseArthur Schlesinger, Jr., who observed that "those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse [are] wishful thinkers" who are only "kidding themselves."

John Kenneth Galbraith, the distinguished Harvard economist, wrote in 1984: "That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene....One sees it in the appearance of well-being of the people on the streets...and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops....Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower."

Equally imaginative was the assessment of Paul Samuelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Nobel laureate in economics, writing in the 1985 edition of his widely used textbook: "What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth....The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth."

James Reston, the renowned columnist of theNew York Times,in June 1985 revealed his capacity for sophisticated evenhandedness when he dismissed the possibility of the collapse of communism on the grounds that Soviet problems were no different from those of the United States: "It's clear that the ideologies of Communism, socialism and capitalism are all in trouble."

But the genius award undoubtedly goes to Lester Thurow, economist and well-known author, who, as late as 1989, wrote, "Can economic command significantly...accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can....Today it is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."

Wise men tend to be impatient with dummies, and thus we can understand the tone of indignation with which Strobe Talbott, a senior correspondent atTimeand later an official in the Clinton State Department, faulted officials in the Reagan administration for espousing "the early fifties goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," an objective he considered misguided and unrealistic. "Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end," Talbott scoffed, adding that if the Soviet economy was in a crisis of any kind, "it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis with which the U.S.S.R. has learned to live."

Equally scornful was Sovietologist Stephen Cohen of Princeton University, who wrote in 1983: "All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned both containment and détente for a very different objective: destroying the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist system."

Finally, a wise man gets something right. But then he spoils it by condemning Reagan for pursuing a wrongheaded and suicidal objective, one that revealed that the president was suffering from "a potentially fatal form of Sovietophobia...a pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union."

Perhaps one should not be too hard on the wise men. After all, explains Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse: "History has an abiding capacity to outwit our certitudes." The wise men may have been wrong, Schlesinger concedes, but then"no one foresaw these changes."

But here is the problem with this view.The dummy foresaw them!Consider what he said long before the wise men issued their pronouncements. In June 1980, Ronald Reagan met with a group of editors at theWashington Post.As reporter Lou Cannon, who arranged the meeting, recalled the incident to me, his colleagues expressed grave concerns that Reagan was escalating the arms race. Reagan told them not to worry: "The Soviets can't compete with us." Everyone around the table was astonished, because no one shared Reagan's presumption of Soviet economic vulnerability. Yet Reagan assured them, "I'll get the Soviets to the negotiating table." Cannon recalls, "When he said that, nobody believed him."

In 1981, Reagan told the students and faculty at the University of Notre Dame, "The West won't contain Communism. It will transcend Communism. It will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." He repeated this theme, in almost exactly the same words, in a subsequent speech in Orlando before the National Association of Evangelicals.

How dumb can you get? From the wise men's point of view, Reagan's rhetoric was too inane and outlandish to take seriously. But Reagan wouldn't stop. In 1982, he addressed the British Parliament in London. "In an ironic sense," Reagan said, "Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis....But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union." Reagan added that "it is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens," and he predicted that if the Western alliance remained strong, it would produce a "march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history."

The wise men could hardly contain their derision: Give the man a brain transplant. In 1987, Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin. "In the Communist world," he said, "we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards....Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself." Thus the "inescapable conclusion" in his view was that "freedom is the victor." Then Reagan said, "General Secretary Gorbachev....Come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Not long after this, the wall did come tumbling down, and Reagan's prophecies all came true. The most powerful empire in human history imploded. These were not just results Reagan predicted. He intended the outcome. He advocated policies that were aimed at producing it. He was denounced for those policies. Yet in the end, his objective was achieved.

If Reagan was such a fool, what does that make the wise men? What does that make us?

Chapter One

Why Reagan Gets No Respect

Ronald Reagan did more than any other single man in the second half of the twentieth century to shape our world, yet his presidency and his character remain little understood and often grossly misunderstood. Any intelligent examination of Reagan must begin with the recognition that he was a mystery personally and politically. Most people find this difficult to believe, because during his two terms in office Reagan established an intimate television rapport with us. Whether we approve or disapprove of his policies, we think that we know him. Yet we forget that he was an actor.

Lou Cannon, who has covered Reagan journalistically since the 1960s and written three books about him, told me, "I regard Reagan as a puzzle. I am still trying to understand the man." Virtually everyone who knew Reagan well or observed him closely would agree. They are familiar with the public Reagan, but their efforts to discover the individual behind the mask have proved frustratingly elusive. Historian Edmund Morris, Reagan's official biographer, confesses that from a personal or human point of view, Reagan is the most incomprehensible figure he has ever encountered. Reagan's chief of staff, Donald Regan, who felt an Irish affinity with the president, writes that despite his best efforts, he couldn't figure out his boss at all.

Even Reagan's family found him enigmatic and impenetrable. His four children confess that, in many ways, he was a stranger to them. "I never knew who he was, I could never get through to him," remarked Patti Davis. "You get just so far, and then the curtain drops," Ron Reagan told a reporter. "He doesn't like to open himself up, even with us," Maureen Reagan wrote in her autobiography. Reagan's adopted son, Michael Reagan, revealingly titled his book about his relationship with his father,On the Outside Looking In.The conventional view is that Reagan had such a close relationship with his wife that even the children felt excluded. Yet Nancy Reagan also felt that there was a part of Reagan that was inaccessible to her. "There's a wall around him," she writes. "He lets me come closer than anyone else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier."

Peggy Noonan, a shrewd observer of Reagan and one of his star speechwriters, told me that his life was "paradox all the way down." Here was a man who had the most important job in the world, yet he seemed relaxed, even casual, about the way he went about it. He seemed determined to transform the size and role of the federal government, but he seemed curiously detached from its everyday operations. Even though he was the most ideological man to occupy the White House in half a century, he was the furthest thing from an intellectual. Indeed, he provoked the derision of the intelligentsia and many in the press; even his own aides condescended to him; yet he laughed it all off and didn't seem to mind the scorn. He was comfortable consorting with aristocrats and playing golf with millionaires, who considered him one of them, yet he was equally at home with miners and construction workers, who were convinced that he shared their values and had their interests at heart. Few other presidents have enjoyed greater public accolades and affection, yet none of it appeared to satisfy a deep emotional need in him; he was far too self-contained for that. He was gregarious and liked people, yet he allowed virtually no one to get close to him. As president, he often spoke of God and championed a restoration of spiritual values in American life and politics, but he didn't go to church. He was an avid exponent of "family values," yet he was divorced, had strained relationships with his children, and rarely saw his grandchildren.

The political mystery surrounding Reagan was well expressed by his national security adviser, Robert McFarlane, in a conversation with Secretary of State George Shultz. "He knows so little," McFarlane said, "and accomplishes so much." Richard Nixon made the same point at the opening ceremonies for the Reagan Library in 1991. Earlier, Nixon had visited Reagan in the White House and tried to engage him in a discussion of Marxist ideas and Soviet strategy, but Reagan simply wasn't interested; instead, he regaled Nixon with jokes about Soviet farmers who had no incentive to produce under the communist system. Nixon was troubled to hear such flippancy from the leader of the Western world. He wrote books during the 1980s criticizing Reagan's lack of "realism" and warning that "the Soviet system will not collapse" so "the most we can do is learn to live with our differences" through a policy of "hard headed détente." Yet two and a half years after Reagan left office, Nixon admitted that he was wrong and Reagan was right: "Ronald Reagan has been justified by what has happened. History has justified his leadership."

The American electorate did not regard Reagan as an enigma. During his two terms in office, he was a beloved and popular man who was also seen as an effective leader. In evaluating Reagan's leadership, most people used a simple "before and after" rule that seems to apply to all presidents: What was the world like when he came to office? What was it like when he left? For better or worse, a president is held responsible for the things that happen during his tenure. Most people considered Reagan a successful president because the world seemed a better place in 1989 than it did in 1981. For practical people who don't follow politics closely, this fact was decisive. Reagan himself endorsed this crude standard when in 1980 he posed the question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

Reagan won the affection of the American people because he seemed like a "regular guy," and they identified with him. Young people thought of him as a national father figure. Even those who disagreed with his policies were quick to concede that he brought dignity and aplomb to the presidency and that he had a twinkle in his eye and laughed a lot. How could you dislike a man who was asked whether he was too old to run for reelection at the age of seventy-three and replied, "What the devil would a young fellow like me do if I quit the job?" People understood that Reagan wasn't an intellectual, but this only confirmed his identification with the average person. Sure, he made mistakes, but that showed he was normal.

Yet this public understanding of Reagan as a good-natured typical American, which predominated throughout the 1980s, solves neither the personal nor the political mystery of the man. Here was the son of the town drunk who grew up poor in the Midwest. Without any connections, he made his way to Hollywood and survived its cutthroat culture to become a major star. He ran as a right-wing conservative and was elected governor of California, the largest and one of the most progressive states in the country. He challenged the incumbent president, Gerald Ford, for the Republican nomination in 1976 and almost beat him. In 1980 he defeated Jimmy Carter to win the presidency in a landslide. He was reelected in 1984 by one of the largest margins in history, losing only his opponent's home state of Minnesota and winning 525 electoral votes to Walter Mondale's 13. For eight consecutive years, the Gallup Poll pronounced him the most admired man in the country. When he left office, his approval rating was around 70 percent, the highest of any president in the modern era -- higher than that of Eisenhower or Kennedy. He was one of the few presidents in this century to bequeath the office to a hand-picked successor, George Bush, who was elected president in 1988 largely on the strength of Reagan's success. With the election of many of Reagan's ideological offspring to a new Republican majority in both houses of Congress in 1994 -- one of the most stunning developments in modern political history -- one may say (as political pundit William Kristol put it) that Reagan won his fourth term. Television reporter Sam Donaldson, who sparred with Reagan throughout his presidency, recently told me that if not for constitutional limitations and his physical condition, Reagan could have been president for life. Moreover, Reagan was more than a mere occupant of the White House. Throughout the world, his name was identified with a coherent philosophy and outlook that people called "Reaganism." He thereby defined a whole era; the 1980s would be inconceivable without him. He changed both his country and the rest of the world, and his legacy continues to loom large over the landscape of contemporary politics, dwarfing politicians of both parties.

How many ordinary fellows have accomplished all of that?

To the intellectual elite -- the pundits, political scientists, and historians -- all of this speculation about the mystery of Reagan's success is sheer nonsense. To the degree that Reagan accomplished anything, the wise men attribute it to "incredible luck," in the words of economist and Nobel laureate James Tobin. Overall, however, the wise men do not believe they have to resort to blind fate to account for Reagan's success. Many of these professionals argue that, taken as a whole, Reagan's record is one of embarrassing failure. They contend that his short-term gains are greatly outweighed by the long-term liabilities with which he burdened the country. Even accomplishments directly attributable to his administration, they charge, are not his work but those of his aides, who handed him a script and stage-managed his performance.

In this view, Reagan was a thoroughly inadequate and inept chief executive. Like Peter Sellers's character Chauncey Gardiner in the filmBeing There,Reagan was a cheerful simpleton who had no idea of what was really going on, but happened to be in the right place at the right time and somehow managed to convince everyone that he was in charge. But even his critics grant Reagan one skill: he was a master illusionist, the Great Communicator, whose theatrical and oratorical skills kept his countrymen spellbound and cheering through the 1980s, after which the curtain went down, the lights came on, and most of us, at least the smart ones, realized that it was all an act.

This view may seem unduly harsh, but the cognoscenti mean it to be duly harsh. Many intellectuals are convinced that future generations will remember Ronald Reagan in precisely this way. History, the editors of theNew York Times Magazinedeclare, is the "ultimate approval rating." In December 1996 the magazine asked historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who served in the Kennedy administration and helped establish the Camelot myth, to recruit several of his colleagues for a collective verdict on how history is likely to judge American presidents. Schlesinger's list included historians who have apotheosized the New Deal, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and James MacGregor Burns; Robert Dallek, a Lyndon Johnson enthusiast; the Marxist scholar Eric Foner; and two liberal Democratic politicians, former New York governor Mario Cuomo and former Illinois senator Paul Simon. Not surprisingly, these historians ranked Reagan in the bottom half of the "average" category. They scored Reagan even below his successor, George Bush, and placed him in the undistinguished company of Jimmy Carter, Chester Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison. Other surveys of American social scientists have produced similar results.

"There they go again," Ronald Reagan might have said. It is easy to laugh off such surveys, which tell us more about the pundits being polled than they do about the subjects under consideration. Most adults have lived through the tenure of several presidents. They know and remember too much to have their views altered by scholarly evaluations that can hardly be termed objective or balanced. Yet we now have a new generation of young people with no alternative source of information about Reagan. All they hear is the perspective of their teachers and the media. It is hard for them to detect even transparent bias under those circumstances.

Here is another example of how young minds are being shaped. When Adam Meyerson, editor ofPolicy Review,consulted the 1992 edition ofBartlett's Quotations,he found thirty-five entries from Franklin Roosevelt, twenty-eight from John F. Kennedy, and only three from Reagan. Even Carter had twice as many as the man whom critics called the Great Communicator. Moreover, the quotations from Reagan were hardly memorable; indeed, they were selected to make him look inane. For example, Reagan is quoted as saying that there is no shortage of food in America. Meyerson contacted Justin Kaplan, the editor ofBartlett's,who said he had made his selections quite deliberately. He added, "I'm not going to disguise the fact that I despise Ronald Reagan."

Even with its excesses, the critique of Reagan is worth examining because it reveals such hostility on the part of the cognoscenti. The degree of animus requires an explanation. Why was this man whom so many people held in such high regard viewed by elites with such fierce derision? Moreover, stated in its most defensible form, the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the critique is based on facts that we know about Reagan; thus there is a ring of truth to it. Consequently the RSV has made its way into the body politic in one form or another. It is no longer just the enlightened people's view of Reagan, as it was in the 1980s. It seems to have sunk in more broadly. Even some people who like Reagan and voted for him now partly embrace the RSV, and many who don't are unsure how to resist it. So let us face, as candidly as possible, the critique of the Reagan era.

First: those awful Reagan deficits. The RSV blames Reagan for attempting the impossible -- cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget at the same time. Obviously, the critics said, that cannot be done; the numbers don't add up. So Reagan must be held responsible for what his budget director, David Stockman, termed "two hundred billion dollar deficits as far as the eye could see." The national debt tripled during his eight years in office. The Reagan years added $1.5 trillion (measured in 1990 dollars) to the national debt, more than was accumulated in the entire prior history of the United States. Our children and grandchildren, we are constantly reminded, are going to have to pay it off.

The RSV acknowledges that there was prosperity in the 1980s but insists all the good stuff was purchased on credit. "It was an age of illusions," writes Haynes Johnson of theWashington Post,"when America lived on borrowed time." Social critic Barbara Ehrenreich is ashamed of the selfishness unleashed during what she terms a "decade of greed." She titled her account of that period,The Worst Years of Our Lives.Who can deny in retrospect that the 1980s were a "me decade" in which many people went on a kind of national spending binge? This was the age of Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, of junk bonds, corporate takeovers, and insider trading. The Reverend Jim Bakker installed gold-plated fixtures in his bathroom and an air-conditioned doghouse for his favorite pet.Dynastywas a top-rated television show, and Madonna made her reputation as the "material gift." Then there were those selfish yuppies in their BMWs, speaking animatedly into their car phones. These were all unattractive symbols of the Reagan era.

The end of the cold war? Well, okay. The RSV holds that Reagan deserves praise for signing an arms control treaty with an adversary he once called the "evil empire." But does it really make sense, his critics ask, to credit Reagan with bringing down the Soviet Union? No. The Soviet Union collapsed for internal reasons. There was an economic crisis, the RSV affirms, and finally the old men in the Kremlin had to face it. They appointed a younger man, Mikhail Gorbachev, and he dismantled the Soviet empire and ended communism. Gorbachev deserves the credit for ending the cold war. No wonder thatTimein January 1990 named Gorbachev and not Reagan as Man of the Decade. Reagan's critics insist that it would be wrong to give him credit for events he merely witnessed but did not control. In this view, Reagan was like Peter Sellers once again: when the processes ofglasnostandperestroikagot under way, he just happened to be there.

So much for Reagan's record. What about the man? According to the RSV, Reagan cannot be regarded as an effective leader because, let's face it, he just wasn't that smart, and he had a penchant for kooky ideas. He was, in diplomat Clark Clifford's view, an "amiable dunce." Columnist Michael Kinsley charged that Reagan was "not terribly bright" and therefore "not up to the most important job in the world. Robert Wright of theNew Republicpronounced him "virtually brain dead." Frances FitzGerald wrote that "he knew not much more than what was written on the three-by-five cards his advisers handed him." Writing inHarper's,Nicholas von Hoffman confessed that it was "humiliating to think of this unlettered, self-assured bumpkin being our president."

These observations will strike Reagan supporters as cruel, but it is not difficult to see how some could reach these judgments. Reagan graduated with a C average from Eureka College, which isn't exactly Harvard. At various points in his career, he was quoted as saying that trees cause pollution, and if you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all. Environmentalists were not amused. Later, when he was president, Reagan outraged scientists by confessing doubts about the theory of evolution. He expressed interest in the use of biblical prophecy as a guide to future events, especially the last days of the world, raising fears of what he might do to bring about Armageddon. He made a statement implying that intercontinental nuclear missiles, once fired from their silos, could be recalled. Tip O'Neill, Democratic Speaker of the House, who worked with Reagan, said "he knows less than any president I've ever known." Reagan's aides seemed to be constantly trying to protect him from gaffes or issuing "clarifications" correcting his misstatements. Indeed there is an entire book of such gaffes, titledReagan's Reign of Error.

More broadly, it must be conceded that whatever Reagan's strengths, he was not an intellectual. He didn't have the historical learning of Woodrow Wilson or the encyclopedic knowledge of Teddy Roosevelt. He lacked the two characteristics of the liberally educated person: self-consciousness and open-mindedness. Even Reagan's defenders say this. Peggy Noonan writes that Reagan's life is proof that "the unexamined life is worth living." He had a famous stubbornness to him that is the hallmark of dogmatism. As governor, Reagan liked to quip that he considered all proposals for government action with an open mind before voting no. Ever since he first ran for political office, it is hard to think of a single major point on which he changed his mind.

A second major element of the critique of the RSV is that Reagan was too uninterested and detached from the process of government to function effectively. Reporter Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, charged that Reagan was "remote" and "disengaged" in the White House. Authors Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus dubbed Reagan's governing approach as a "no-hands presidency." Anthony Lewis, a columnist for theNew York Times,faulted Reagan for being "a president with a seven minute attention span." He was said to nap at cabinet meetings. Author Gaff Sheehy worried about the state of the nation while its chief executive went about his business "half asleep."

In a 1986 article on Reagan's preparation for the Iceland summit with Gorbachev,Timeportrayed a president who spent most of his time on photo opportunities while aides made major decisions. Reagan was "less the originator of policy than the chief marketer of it." The critics' view of Reagan's disengagement was reinforced when he announced in November 1994 that he had Alzheimer's disease. The wise men winked at each other and exchanged meaningful looks. Publicly they were more reserved, but they knew that this latest medical information carried with it a subtle implication that, even as president, Reagan might not have been "all there."

There is no factual basis for the Alzheimer's accusation. Reagan was frequently examined by doctors during his presidency, and there were no traces of mental decline apart from the natural aging process. Aides who visited him in California during the early 1990s testify that he was in full possession of his faculties. When his illness was diagnosed, it was found to be in an early stage. Still, the broader point of the critique seems to be confirmed by Reagan's obvious lack of interest in the minutiae of government. He seems to have been outside the loop when major decisions were made. Nothing illustrates this better than the Iran-contra affair, which seems to have been transacted in the White House without Reagan's knowledge or approval. Reagan obviously didn't have Jimmy Carter's attention to the detail of administration or Bill Clinton's interest in policy implementation.

An incident at the very end of Carter's presidential term appears to illustrate Reagan's blithe indifference to the complexity of executive responsibility. Reagan had just been elected, and Carter felt it was important to brief him on some of the major issues that the new president would have to face. Carter went down his list, discussing various treaties and secret agreements the United States had with other countries. Reagan listened politely but did not write anything down or ask any questions. The information was "quite complex," Carter writes, "and I did not see how he could possibly retain all of it merely by listening." Yet when Carter asked him if he wanted to take notes, Reagan said no. Carter was understandably nervous about turning over presidential authority to a man like Reagan.

By all accounts, Reagan persisted with this approach while in office. At a meeting of big-city mayors early in his administration, Reagan didn't even recognize Sam Pierce, his secretary of housing; he addressed him as "Mr. Mayor." At the beginning of his second term, Treasury Secretary Donald Regan and chief of staff James Baker decided to switch jobs. They made the decision to do this on their own. Reagan's attitude seemed to be that of the bored teenager: Whatever.

Conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan remembers a meeting in the White House where a furious debate over the issue of grain exports erupted between budget director David Stockman and Secretary of Agriculture John Block. Others got into the fray, and tempers were heating up. Buchanan looked over at Reagan, who seemed to have removed himself from the argument. He reached toward the middle of the table and pulled over the jar of jelly beans. Then he fastidiously began to pick out his favorite colors. Buchanan was amazed. What in heaven's name was wrong with the guy?

Finally there is the issue that Reagan's critics could never get over: he was an actor. Reagan's Hollywood background was seen not only as an unworthy springboard for an American president, but, according to the RSV, Reagan could not distinguish the fictional universe of moviemaking from the real world of public policy. Lou Cannon writes that for Reagan, "the heroic world of make-believe and the real world coalesced....The man who lived in both of them could not always distinguish one from the other, and he came to believe in many things that weren't true."

When Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative, his critics quickly nicknamed it "Star Wars" after the popular motion picture of that name. Some even suggested that, in a case of life imitating art, Reagan probably derived the very idea of missile defense from the 1940 filmMurder in the Air,in which he played U.S. intelligence agent Brass Bancroft, whose mission was to recover a secret weapon developed by America that would paralyze the forces of the enemy. Critics traced a number of Reagan's presidential ideas to old movie plots.

The elites found in Reagan's movie background an important clue as to why he was so popular and why their disdain for the man was not shared by the American public during the 1980s. Many pundits argue that Reagan was an "acting president" who converted politics into show business. His was a celluloid presidency in which aide Michael Deaver supplied the lighting and stage directions. Reagan's critics allege that he used his acting skills to bedazzle the people. Columnist Anthony Lewis called the president a "master magician." Social critic Garry Wills wrote that Reagan "cast a spell" drawing Americans into a "vast communal exercise in make-believe."

The wise men do not take a benign view of Reagan's theatrics. Rather, they charge that he was able to deploy his rhetorical skills to mesmerize the voters, distracting them and preventing them from seeing the world as it really was. For some, Reagan's title of Great Communicator was not intended entirely as a compliment; it was a veiled insult, as one Democratic party strategist made clear when he observed that a more accurate description would be Great Manipulator. Writing in theAtlantic Monthly,James Nathan Miller alleged that Reagan made "skillful use of the manipulative techniques of Hollywood" to con the American people into adopting his destructive policies.

Critics complained that Reagan had a peculiar knack for deflecting criticism; Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder dubbed him the Teflon president, because nothing negative seemed to stick to him. Revisionist critics believe the reason was that the country was enraptured by "Hollywood on the Potomac." Reagan is said to have played his part so well that he really had the people going, at least for a while. During the 1980s we were, in journalist Haynes Johnson's view, "sleepwalking through history." The Reagan era constituted, in author Sidney Blumenthal's phrase, a "long national daydream." Then we woke up.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the pundits and intellectuals were so critical of Reagan. They accused him of being outside the mainstream of enlightened thinking about issues -- and they were right. Reagan represented a challenge to their entire worldview. Moreover, accustomed as they were to calling the shots, they had come to see their perspective not as one view among many but as an objective account of reality itself. Thus they considered Reagan's challenge to their orthodoxy to be not only wrong but rude. Right when they were busy sorting out the world's problems, along came this corny Californian with no credentials or experience, armed with nothing but his own wacky ideas. He was able to oppose them successfully because he enjoyed a rapport with the American public that the elites never really understood.

Since many of these pundits disapproved of Reagan's views from the outset, regarding his policies as wrongheaded and destructive, we cannot expect them to applaud his success in enacting his agenda. It is human nature to judge the effectiveness of a leader based on whether we approve of what he put into effect. Incredible resources have been invested by Reagan's opponents since the 1980s to discredit his record, which in a way is a tribute to his legacy.

What is surprising is that since he left office, Reagan has not had more defenders from among his aides and from political conservatives in general. One might expect these former lieutenants and their ideological allies to mount a ferocious counteroffensive for the Gipper. No such luck. While his enemies have been excoriating him, his aides and allies have responded for the most part with a deafening silence. Their failure to defend Reagan naturally reinforces the liberal critique. Why the reticence? It turns out that many intellectuals and pundits on the right were, even during Reagan's tenure, ambivalent about the man and no less mystified than the liberal elite as to the source of his appeal. Even now, they cannot bring themselves to credit the remarkable events of the 1980s to a man of Reagan's unusual background, unscholarly intellect, and whimsical style. In truth, they do not rush to defend Reagan because they are a little embarrassed by him.

A reluctance to defend Reagan is one thing; outright hostility is another. No other president seems to have inspired less loyalty among his aides. There are a few exceptions -- Attorney General Edwin Meese and domestic adviser Martin Anderson come to mind -- but by and large, the memoirs penned by senior officials who served in his administration have been antagonistic and demeaning to Reagan. Even the legendary loyalist, George Bush, broke ranks with Reagan in his last year of office. How can Bush's 1988 promise of a "kinder, gentler America" be interpreted other than as an implicit criticism of Reagan? Bush was too much of a gentleman to put down Reagan himself, but officials in the Bush administration made no effort to defend the Reagan record, and sometimes they expressed undisguised scorn for the man. They seemed resolved to get beyond what they regarded as Reagan's amateur, simplistic approach and finally do things like true experienced professionals.

Reagan's other aides were no different. To judge them by their comments when he left the White House, Reagan was surrounded by ingrates and apostates. The memoirs of several Reagan aides are characterized by an almost defiant disloyalty. David Stockman, Reagan's budget director, presents his former boss as a tragically confused figure who "accepted but never grasped" the political consequences of his policies and who allowed himself to become the puppet of supply-side fanatics and hard-liners in the Defense Department. In his 1987 memoir, Michael Deaver, a senior White House aide, portrayed the president as a kind of detached figurehead, whose statements and actions had to be carefully managed so he didn't embarrass himself. Deaver also disclosed that Nancy Reagan played an active role in many aspects of personnel and policy, lobbying her husband on issues from the homeless to Star Wars. This portrait was reinforced by Donald Regan, Reagan's chief of staff, who confirmed the first lady's machinations and revealed that some of her actions on the president's behalf were based on her consultations with an astrologer. Regan depicted the administration as utterly lacking direction from the top and perennially prone to blunders. Indeed in 1986 he told theNew York Timesthat "some of us are like a shovel brigade" following the circus elephant, cleaning up his droppings along the parade.

Political conservatives are more appreciative of Reagan and view him as a successful leader. Robert Bartley, editor of theWall Street Journal,published an unapologetic defense of supply-side economics, and right-wing magazines likeNational ReviewandPolicy Reviewhave consistently defended Reagan against his liberal critics. A committee of conservative historians, recently assembled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute to counterbalance Arthur Schlesinger's liberal group, rated Reagan in the top tier of American presidents. Yet, although Reagan is fondly remembered at GOP conventions, his style and approach have had few self-conscious political imitators in the Republican leadership. Moreover, right-wing pundits like John O'Sullivan, editor ofNational Review,have expressed their doubts that the "Reagan model" is a useful one

Excerpted from Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader by Dinesh D'Souza
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