The Reagan Centennial having come and gone, we may detect certain trends in current Reaganology. One, exemplified by the new HBO documentary (Reagan) directed by Eugene Jarecki, is that Reagan was not conservative at all—a myth perpetrated by right-wingers, according to Jarecki, who have sought “to engineer Reagan into our drinking water”—but at heart a Mondale Democrat. Another is that the two Reagan offspring who did the most to undermine their father’s objectives in his lifetime—Ron Reagan and Patti Davis—are now the self-appointed custodians of Reagan’s political legacy. Just as the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. could reliably anticipate John F. Kennedy’s opinions on events that occurred decades after his death, the two younger Reagans now provide the same service for their late father.

One point that seems to unite all sides of the partisan divide, however, is the ritual observation that Ronald Reagan was an enigmatic man, self-possessed and self-protective, whose inner being was elusive to outsiders, including his family. His acquaintances and associates, even his widow, have testified that they could penetrate his formidable reserve only so far; and his official biographer Edmund Morris (Dutch) has famously averred that he could never solve Reagan’s mystery, and that the 40th president was the “strangest” man he had ever encountered. Beneath the jovial exterior lurked a glacial heart.