Syndicated columnist George Will has joined a chorus of historians and other experts who say Fox New host’s Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency, is a sloppily written and thinly sourced “slander” on America’s 40th president.
“The book’s perfunctory pieties about Reagan’s greatness are inundated by its flood of regurgitated slanders about his supposed lassitude and manipulability,” Will said in his column Thursday. “This book is nonsensical history and execrable citizenship, and should come with a warning: ‘Caution — you are about to enter a no-facts zone.'”
The book is “a tissue of unsubstantiated assertions,” he added, bemoaning that O’Reilly’s latest offering currently sits atop the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.
The thrust of the book is this: The 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan failed to take his life, but it apparently sparked his mental decline, likely quickening his succumbing later to Alzheimer’s disease. O’Reilly suggested that he alone is responsible for discovering this little-known fact, and that historians and other Reagan experts somehow missed it.
“The book says Reagan was often addled to the point of incompetence, causing senior advisers to contemplate using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove him from office,” Will wrote.
In the days after the failed assassination attempt, Reagan produced an economic boom and defeated the Soviet Union, he noted, suggesting that the president’s mind was anything but addled.
So how does O’Reilly explain Reagan’s knack for success despite his supposedly deteriorated mental state?
“On his bad days, he couldn’t work,” the Fox host wrote in his book. On his good days, however, “he was brilliant.”
Also, former First Lady Nancy Reagan would pinch-hit when the president couldn’t handle his duties, O’Reilly claimed, saying elsewhere that Reagan’s success, despite his mental state, was “almost miraculous.”
Will goes directly at O’Reilly’s supposed sourcing for the story.
“The book’s pretense of scholarship involves 151 footnotes, only one of which is even remotely pertinent to the book’s lurid assertions. Almost all contain irrelevant tidbits (‘Reagan’s hair was actually brown’),” he wrote.
“At the Reagan Library, where researchers must register, records show that neither O’Reilly nor Dugard, who churn out a book a year, used its resources,” Will added, referring to co-author Martin Dugard. “The book’s two and a half pages of ‘sources’ unspecifically and implausibly refer to ‘FBI and CIA files,’ ‘presidential libraries’ and travel ‘around the world.'”
The book also appeared to lean heavily on sources that have claimed over the years several lurid and unfounded rumors regarding Regan’s supposed sexual indiscretions.
“Ed Meese was, from Sacramento to Washington, Reagan’s longest-serving adviser. George Shultz was Reagan’s confidant and secretary of state,” Will noted.
“James Baker served Reagan as chief of staff and treasury secretary. None was contacted in connection with the book. Scores of Reagan’s White House aides would have shredded the book’s preposterous premise, which might be why they were not interviewed.”
Will’s wife worked as a speechwriter for Reagan from 1981 to 1983. She returned in 1986 and was in the administration until its final year. She saw nothing to hint that Reagan was slowly losing his mind, Will wrote.
The book’s publisher was reportedly put in touch with Annelise Anderson, whose late husband served as a longtime Reagan adviser. The two of them also wrote several books about the former president.
She was allegedly offered $5,000 dollars to look over O’Reilly’s book. She was also given only one week to do it. After reviewing the book, she reportedly declined the money and told the publisher, “I don’t think this manuscript is ready for publication.”
They published it anyway.
Will joins with several Reagan experts in decrying Killing Reagan.
Historians Craig Shirley, Kiron K. Skinner, Paul Kengor and Steven F. Hayward published a Washington Post op-ed in October, accusing O’Reilly of engaging in outright revisionism.
“‘Killing Reagan’ … is supposed to be a book of new scholarship on the Reagan presidency,” they wrote. “Instead, it restates old claims and rumors, virtually all of which have been discredited by the historical record.”
O’Reilly responded to the historians’ criticisms by accusing them and others of engaging in a conspiracy to undermine his credibility. He said his detractors are afraid to tell the truth, and that the pushback is “comical.”
He also said that two longtime Reagan allies, former California Gov. Pete Wilson and former Reagan White House staffer Christopher Cox, tried to get Fox to “spike the book.” For once, he said on his show, “it’s not the Left attempting to deceive us.”
Shirley, for his part, was unimpressed with O’Reilly’s attempts to discredit not only those who served Reagan, but also those who have documented his life.
“So far, I’ve written four books on Ronald Reagan, written dozens of articles, given dozens of lectures, am a trustee of Eureka College, taught a course there [titled] Reagan 101, and have lectured at the Reagan Library and the Reagan Ranch,” Shirley told the Washington Examiner’s media desk. “[I]t is fair to say we probably know a little bit more about Ronald Reagan than Bill O’Reilly. We certainly know the facts of Ronald Reagan.”
A spokesperson for Fox did not respond to the Examiner’s request for comment.
