California Dreamer
PARMET, HERBERT S.
California Dreamer President Reagan: The Triumph of the Imagination By Richard Reeves Simon & Schuster. 571pp. $30.00. Reviewed by Herbert S. Parmet Distinguished professor emeritus, the...
...National Security Decision Directive 32, a classified document distributed to only 36 people, was signed by Reagan with that goal...
...When a notion grabbed him, though, he was attentive...
...The conservative columnist George F. Will, a journalist friendly to Ronald and Nancy Reagan, equated the White House's summit diplomacy with the "loss" of the Cold War...
...The White House was not a happy place as 1985 came to an end," Reeves reminds us...
...Although Reeves, a fine journalist and biographer of the Kennedy and Nixon Presidencies, is not a special fan of the 40th President, he certainly gives his man his due...
...He did not generally care whatjournalists orthe hired help thought of him...
...The GOP won control over both houses of Congress, and, for the first time ever, unseated an incumbent Speaker of the House...
...author, "Eisenhower and the American Crusades,' "George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee" Ronald Reagan, Richard Reeves argues in this sweeping, judicious and readable account of his Presidency, had unambiguous convictions...
...I started it," he added, referring to his policy of glasnost, "and they all applauded me when I started in 1986, and now they don't like it so much, but it's going to be a revolution, nonetheless...
...The great strength of Reeves' comprehensive narrative is that we have a clearer view of both the man and his Presidency...
...But the President, about to lead the way in dismantling the New Deal, was more tempered than his disciples...
...There seemed to be a loss of national momentum, a wilted Congress...
...He did not abandon "simple ideas just because he was told that things were not so simple...
...Critics dubbedReagan's management style "disengaged...
...In fact, most of the insurgents were already denouncing the Geneva accord...
...The "city upon a hill" of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop was still possible...
...Nowhere was that more evidentthan in Reykjavik...
...He relegated details to underlings, who sometimes found themselves strangers to their remote boss...
...had no intention of ending arms shipments to Pakistan for delivery to Afghanistan or sales on the black markets of Asia...
...Reagan presented himself just as he was, but we continued to believe that we never really got him," wrote his former adviser Michael Deaver...
...Fueled by military spending, the economic upturn of 1983 lowered OPEC oil prices and attracted more foreign capital—vindications of Reaganomics that ensured his re-election...
...In April 1988, with 10 months left in the White House, Reagan sent Secretary of State George P. Shultz to Geneva to work out an agreement with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze as well as representatives of Pakistan and Afghanistan...
...The President is so far out of touch," wrote Jack Beatty in the New Republic, "that it amounts to a reality gap...
...He came to the White House in 1980 "with a few simple ideas about taxes and prosperity, the moral and economic bankruptcy of Communism, and a remaking of America back into the remembrances ofhis own boyhood and a Reader's Digest version of the 1950s...
...His "crusading ideology" encompassed what became known as the Reagan Doctrine, the policy of backing local wars to thwart the establishment of Communist regimes...
...As during the Cuban missile crisis, each man needed the other...
...Reagan was not merely, in the words of former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, an "amiable dunce," but in Reeves' telling he was a "likable ideologue" who delivered...
...He envisioned a restoration, something closer to his vision of the "real" America...
...Reagan "had the virtues and failings of an old man...
...It provided for the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and was widely hailed as the triumph of American resolve— "the end of the [Leonid I.] Brezhnev Doctrine that the Soviet Union would never cede control over a Communist country...
...He habitually interrupted discussions with yarns from the past that frequently were more envisaged than actual...
...At the same time, he minces few words about Reagan's role in the Iran-contra scandal...
...A little rebellion, reminiscent of another familiar pattern, came from the Right...
...Republicans made Reagan an iconic figure of the 20th-century Presidency, on a par with Teddy Roosevelt...
...holiday killings in European airports, and new waves of terrorism and fear...
...He already knew what he wanted to know...
...Reagan insisted on a "simple thing" —hi faith that a costly arms race would hasten a Soviet economic collapse...
...Gorbachev, tear down this wall," delivered by Reagan before Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in 1987...
...They wished to establish a fundamentalist regime...
...Almost from its outset, the Administration also decided to back Saddam Hussein's Iraq over fundamentalist Iran...
...To others on the Right, the 40th President was merely another "appeaser...
...For the American President, determined to fiscally bleed his opponent, it meant preserving the goal of a potential Ifnuclear shield by pioneering a budgetbusting program— exactly what Gorbachev had to kill...
...Not unlike what happened after Eisenhower, historians too reconsidered and began to elevate his ranking...
...The intervention in Lebanon and the unconscionable loss of Marines in Beirut gave way to pictures of American medical students gratifyingly kissing home turf after being rescued by the 1983 "liberation" of Grenada, and to the dramatic exhortation, "Mr...
...His most dramatic early move was demolishing the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in 1981 by unceremoniously firing its members, despite the organization's having backed him...
...He was, in fact, "not a man of vision, he was a man of imagination—and he believed in the past that he imagined...
...The more than 900 books inspired by his Presidency tend to lean heavily on his role in defusing the Cold War, on bringing down Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his "evil empire," rather than the much anticipated Right-wing revolt against the "welfare state...
...The U.S...
...According to the U. S. minutes of meetings held in Moscow a week later, quoted by Reeves, Shevardnadze cautioned Shultz that in Afghanistan "opposition leaders...
...Reviewed by Herbert S. Parmet Distinguished professor emeritus, the City University of New York...
...He remembered happy times...
...The 1984 vote confirmed that the former California governor had succeeded Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater "as the public voice of American conservatism...
...That included a deficit of $2.7 trillion, then the highest ever...
...The President, only months after his re-election, was suffering secondterm pains...
...More fascinating, and the heart of this book, is Reagan's pursuit of a missile program—the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known (derisively) as "Star Wars...
...He wanted to take America back to a past imagined, a time of hard work, generosity, all under a God on our side," notes Reeves...
...Both were fully conscious of the stakes involved in the U.S...
...The ultimate responsibility for the events in the Iran-contra affair must rest with the President," reported his counsel in a memo summarizing the findings of Congressional committees...
...Especially eerie today is Reeves' reminder that during the sweeping changes in Gorbachev's diminishing Soviet Union the "American intelligence community was flooding the White House with contradictory analyses of what was happening in the Communist world, but the President saw few of them...
...The Central Intelligence Agency had already sent more than $2 billion in weaponry and another $2 billion had come from Saudi Arabia, much ofthat money supporting 'madrassas' (religious schools) training fundamentalist Islamic militants called 'taliban' (scholars) in remote corners of Pakistan's deserts and mountains...
...should be aware of that and assess it soberly...
...On the domestic front, liberals, while holding that the Reagan years had failed to achieve a true "revolution," nevertheless deplored the "substantial" growth of inequality in American society...
...I'm doing this because there's a revolution taking place in my country," he explained to Reagan in 1988...
...Reagan was no mere bystander, and it was the lame duck's lowest hour...
...As Reeves points out, however, the U.S...
...Unlike Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, he was not obsessed by history...
...Over three years he slashed tax rates, with rewards to the tune of 25 per cent ratcheted up to "the top of the income pyramid...
...The enterprise had the President's full backing...
...First proposed in 1983, it was deployed mostly as a means of diplomacy to intimidate Gorbachev over the next several years...
...He was more confident in his own evaluation of Gorbachev...
...They are in very bad shape," he con fided to his di ary as early as March 26, 1981, "and if we can cut off their credit they'll have to yell 'uncle' or starve...
...pursuit of an outer space defense...
...His denials that deals were made to free hostages required the sort of semantic gymnastics that would tax the ingenuity of a future President...
...Unfulfilled were promises of ever smaller government, regulatory reductions and privatization...
...For Gorbachev, it was all about Moscow and the whole Soviet bloc, including its republics...
...Under Reagan, declared Garry Wills when the "revolution" was over, "the government was not working, and we were paying exorbitant sums for it not to work...
...New York Times columnist William Safire, the former Nixon wordsmith, suggested that Reagan was in his "anecdotage...
...were] declaring they would fight to the end...
Vol. 88 • November 2005 • No. 6
