The Real Deal

IN 147 PAGES OF TEXT, Lee Edwards has accomplished what Ronald Reagan’s official biographer, Edmund Morris, was unable to do in 674: He has captured the essence of the 40th president’s character.

Unlike Morris, who resorted to the dubious device of inserting fictional characters and himself into the biographical narrative, Edwards works his way concisely and precisely through the chronology of Reagan’s life, pinpointing the people and events that solidified his values and shaped his worldview. At the same time, his clear writing style carries the reader along smoothly from beginning to end.

While Edwards does not uncover new facts about Ronald Reagan’s childhood and youth, he concentrates his efforts on relationships and events that show the development of Reagan’s character.

The role of his parents in the development of Reagan’s personality unfolds early in the book. His mother, Nelle, deeply religious and a teetotaler, made it clear to her sons that her husband’s alcoholism was an illness. Thus, Reagan had a sympathetic understanding of his father, Jack. From his mother came his deep faith, his love of reading, his sense of duty, and the beginnings of his interest in acting (his mother often gave dramatic readings at church groups). His father, a cheerful optimist much of the time (even when business was bad), was a great storyteller.

Reagan’s acting abilities developed while he was at Eureka College, where he also gave his first political speech (during a student strike to save classes and teachers’ jobs in the midst of the Depression). Not long after landing his first job in radio, he learned–through making mistakes–the value of preparation, a lesson he carried with him throughout his career in films and public life. It was at WHO in Des Moines, where he was a sportscaster in the 1930s, that he showed his first concerns about “big government.” His fellow broadcaster, H.R. Gross, later a member of Congress, discussed his conservative views often with Reagan, then a New Deal Democrat.

Edwards gives us an insight into Reagan’s developing interest in world affairs from his early years in films. He tells of a fellow actor who said Reagan had “all the dope on just everything, from this quarter’s up-or-down figures on GNP growth, Lenin’s grandfather’s occupation, baseball players’ ERAs [and] the outlook for California sugar beet production.”

Too nearsighted to serve overseas, Reagan, in World War II, was assigned to the Army Air Force’s training film unit in Southern California. The details of this are covered in other books; however, the author reveals that Reagan, when he asked that his promotion from captain to major be canceled, wrote, “Who was I to be a major for serving in California without ever hearing a shot fired?”

At the end of the war, civilian bureaucrats took over where Reagan’s unit operated and he had his first experience with (civilian) bureaucratic “empire-building.” Reagan described it as resulting in “the first crack in my staunch liberalism.” In those days, he had frequent discussions about issues with conservative friends such as businessman Justin Dart and actor Dick Powell.

The author takes us through Reagan’s family life, first with Jane Wyman, then with Nancy Reagan, who was to become the single most important person in his world. His days as host of General Electric Theatre, and his question-and-answer sessions with GE workers, are covered. These events helped shaped Reagan’s favored format for later political campaigns. At the same time, he bonded with average working men and women.

Later, in 1965, when Reagan was deciding to run for governor of California, Edwards visited his home for an interview and had a few moments to scan the books in the library. He was impressed by the volumes on economics and history, much read because they were “dog-eared and underlined.” Edwards adds: “This was the . . . library not of a shallow actor, dangling at the end of someone’s strings, but a thinking, reasoning person who had arrived at his conservatism the old-fashioned way–through careful study and serious reflection.”

The book covers the high points of Reagan’s eight years as governor of California, and his 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns. Entering the White House, he had a carefully prepared agenda with three major objectives: straighten out the economy, reduce the influence on decision-making of the federal government, and end the Cold War. His tax-reduction legislation of 1981 was a great personal triumph for Reagan, the author contends, for it set the stage for a long-running economic expansion that lasted well beyond Reagan’s White House years. As to social policy reforms, the welfare reforms enacted in 1996 were a direct legacy of Reagan’s efforts dating back from his gubernatorial and presidential years, according to Edwards.

The author saves his most detailed exposition for Reagan’s strategy for bringing the Cold War to an end. He meets head-on the argument, still clung to by Reagan critics on the left, that the Soviet Union would have collapsed of its own weight with Reagan just a lucky bystander.

Edwards reveals the series of studies and National Security Decision Directives initiated by Reagan and his administration in 1981-82 to reverse the expansion of the Soviet Union and undermine its economy. Before he became president, Reagan suspected, and, once he received classified briefings, knew that the Soviets were straining their economy dangerously in order to build their armaments. His intention was to push them to the brink so they would have to choose between collapse coming to the table to negotiate reductions and elimination of arms.

The “Reagan Doctrine,” as it came to be called, moved forward in several ways. In Afghanistan, it was supplying shoulder-fired missile launchers to bring down Soviet helicopters. In Poland, it was providing aid to Solidarity to confront the Communist regime.

As events unfolded one at a time, it was difficult for all but Reagan and his strategic planners to see them as part of a plan. For the public, it was akin to seeing snapshots now and then instead of an album full of photos. It is understandable that, at the time, “arms control” professionals and left-of-center journalists and academics criticized Reagan’s moves, for they were seeing these through an intellectual rearview mirror. For the arms control fraternity, it was a case of “not invented here.” As to the others, they did not take Reagan seriously. Thus, his “evil empire” speech, the deployment of cruise missiles in Western Europe, and the Strategic Defense Initiative were all denounced.

The public record now shows clearly the Reagan strategy and the various tactics used to carry it out. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a large body of evidence–written records and testimony by former officials–makes it clear that the Kremlin took Reagan seriously, and was especially worried about Strategic Defense Initiative. In fact, Mikhail Gorbachev played his last card at the Reykjavik summit in 1986 when he insisted, unexpectedly, that Reagan keep SDI in the laboratory. When Reagan refused and left, it was the climactic event of the Cold War. Reagan had trumped him.

The book is not error-free. For example, in illustrating California’s diverse composition, the author includes Los Alamos, which is in New Mexico. He describes the frequency of Reagan’s newspaper column, resumed after the 1976 Republican National Convention, as “biweekly.” It was semiweekly; that is, twice a week. These and a few other glitches, however, do not mar the flow of the narrative or the thrust of the author’s argument that Ronald Reagan had in him uncommon shares of courage, justice, and prudence–the essential qualities of leadership.

Peter Hannaford, whose long association with Ronald Reagan began with a gubernatorial appointment in California in 1971, is author of Reagan and His Ranch: The Western White House, 1981-1989.