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Summer
Books Reagans legacy and the claims of the true
believers
THE RIGHT
MOMENT: RONALD REAGANS FIRST VICTORY AND THE DECISIVE TURNING POINT IN
AMERICAN POLITICS By Matthew Dallek Free Press, 242 pages,
$25 |
REAGAN, IN HIS OWN
HAND: THE WRITINGS OF RONALD REAGAN THAT REVEAL HIS REVOLUTIONARY VISION FOR
AMERICA Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson,
editors Free Press, 549 pages, $30 |
REVIEWED By JOE
FEUERHERD
A group of true believers wants to add Ronald Reagans
likeness to Mount Rushmore. The still-living 40th president is already
memorialized in Washingtons National Airport, now Reagan
National and, two blocks from the White House, the Ronald Reagan
Building. Former first lady Nancy Reagan recently christened the aircraft
carrier Ronald Reagan, and theres serious talk (serious for Washington)
about building a Reagan Memorial on the National Mall.
While there is some genuine sentiment associated with remembering
Reagan -- conservatives love the man and fondly remember his eight-year reign
-- the effort to place Reagan in his appropriate place within the presidential
pantheon is not, however, a grassroots movement. Its orchestrated,
complete with in-house intellectuals and pundits, supporters at the highest
levels of government, propaganda organs and publishing houses.
Its even got a name: the Reagan Legacy Project.
Members include the Eagle Forums Phyllis Schlafly and the Free Congress
Foundations Paul Weyrich, as well as Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating,
Jack Kemp and Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Not since Ted Sorenson, Arthur Schlesinger
and Theodore White did so much to promote the myth of Kennedys Camelot
have such influential public figures conspired to promote an idealized view of
a president.
And these keepers of the Reagan flame are an increasingly testy
lot: Those who challenge their view of the Reagan years are not simply wrong or
misguided. They are challenging a man whose status, in the eyes of the
faithful, lies somewhere between secular saint and god.
Example: Former Reagan wordsmith Jonathon Wilcox, writing in the
online version of the National Review, the periodical that provided the
intellectual heft to Reagans conservative populism, accused former
Justice Department official and civil rights leader Roger Wilkins of an
ugly smear, pompously poisonous prattlings,
ranting, possessing a tortured mind, and of nothing
less than slander. Why the fury?
Wilkins had commented on a news roundtable program that among the
things Reagan should be remembered for was his use of anti-black
populism. In measured tones -- Wilkins is a mild-mannered man not, like
his antagonist, given to rants -- Wilkins had offered two examples. One,
Reagans first stop as the Republican candidate for president in 1980, was
Philadelphia, Miss., the infamous town where three civil rights workers were
killed in 1964. Reagan didnt mention the slain civil rights workers;
instead, he promoted states rights -- not-so-subtle code words, a
big wink, in fact, to those who still wanted blacks kept in their place.
Example two: Wilkins recalled that some years later Reagan went to
Atlanta and he said, Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine. Everybody
knows what youre talking about then, too. Indeed, everybody
did.
The point is not that Reagan was a racist -- Wilkins
specifically said he wasnt calling him one -- only that Reagan was a
skilled and not entirely principled politician, not above appealing to the
worst instincts of his base constituency.
In The Right Moment, historian Matthew Dallek makes it
clear that Reagan was no stranger to sophisticated race baiting. Racial
issues also were an opportunity, albeit one that demanded careful
handling, writes Dallek in his carefully researched and non-partisan
book, subtitled at great length, but with some accuracy, Ronald
Reagans First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American
Politics.
Reagan, for example, opposed a controversial statewide fair
housing measure -- promoted by Democratic governor Pat Brown over the objection
of the realtor lobby -- in favor of voluntary solution to
discrimination. Likewise, he opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965
Voting Rights Act. It makes movement conservatives uneasy, nasty even, to be
reminded that their hero was on the wrong side of the race question.
But it didnt look like the wrong side of history when the
B-movie actor made his first foray into electoral politics in the California of
1965-66. Students at Berkeley were claiming that their right to free speech was
infringed when they were arrested for shouting the F word at the
taxpayer-supported University of California at Berkeley. California ghettos
were burning. Even liberal hearts were hardening. Perhaps it was time for some
law and order.
In this climate Reagan would, with ease, defeat his Republican
opposition, moderate San Francisco Mayor George Christopher, in a primary. He
would then take on Pat Brown, a two-term governor who would be among the first,
but not the last, of the professional politicians to underestimate the wily
Reagan.
Reagan, you see, had a plan. In a clear departure from the
gloomy defiance that had characterized Barry Goldwaters presidential
campaign, and in a conscious attempt to distance himself from his earlier
statements about communist hordes and totalitarian tyrannies, Reagan showed a
sunny, sanguine disposition that emphasized the possibilities and glories of
California life, writes Dallek.
Reagan, of course, was a charming guy, while Brown was not. Brown
was arrogant, a trait the mild-mannered Reagan did not project. Like many
liberals, Dallek recalled, Brown was well meaning but out of
touch. He simply could not fathom that Californias voters would
substitute his experience and prudence for an untested right-wing actor.
While Dallek offers a well-crafted history of a seminal political
fight, the most recent effort to solidify the Reagan legacy actually comes from
Reagan himself -- in a collection of Reagans radio essays, delivered
after his failed 1976 presidential run. They were recorded in anticipation of
another run in 1980.
To the right, the essays show that their man had not only good
instincts but a brain to match. That is a problem we Reagan champions
have: always trying to prove that our man -- undeniably a political leader of
great skill -- was an intellectual force as well, writes National
Review managing editor Jay Nordlinger. In Reagan, In His Own Hand,
the legacy-builders have found a cache of documents proving their case. The
writings, says Nordlinger, are profound and simple. Well, they are
simple.
Some of the speeches were little more than cut-and-paste jobs. A
six-part series on arms control, for instance, consisted of Reagan reading from
a report by anti-arms control advocate Eugene Rostow. Others do not withstand
the test of time: Does anyone remember that Ronald Reagan opposed the breakup
of AT&T?
Some are revealing: Congressman John Ashcrofts late 1970s
push to resurrect the House Un-American Activities Committee is recalled
favorably. Still others are heartfelt but misbegotten: Support for brutal
dictatorships of the right, a sympathy for the plight of South Africas
racist government not balanced by any real concern for the millions it
oppressed.
Only one of the nearly 700 essays deals with abortion, and here
Reagan makes one of the stranger arguments for the pro-life position: that
since an unborn child can inherit property in the event of its mothers
death, then the state should not sanction abortion. It is part of the enduring
Reagan myth that he struggled for the pro-life cause, an area where, as
president, he expended almost no political capital.
Reagans many admirers do a disservice to his legacy when
they make him out to be, above all, a noble man, the mayor of the city on the
hill he frequently invoked. It is silly of them to continue arguing over his
intelligence: He was smart enough to outwit his opponents at nearly every turn.
And pragmatic enough to govern, as Californias chief executive for eight
years and as president, just to the right of the middle. It was Reagan, after
all, who accepted the New Deal and, in the face of Democratic majorities in the
House and Senate, backed down from attempts to roll back the Great Society. He
signed a massive tax increase, signed legislation making Martin Luther
Kings birthday a national holiday and failed to eliminate any significant
federal program.
The real Reagan legacy, the one that will place him among our
great presidents, is the absolute clarity he had about the evil of the Soviet
Union and his belief that such a cockeyed system would ultimately fall under
its own weight. In October 1975 he wrote of the Soviets incompetent
and ridiculous system. That disdain would be repeated in presidential
speeches and later to the British parliament, where he predicted that the
communist system would land on the ash heap of history.
Reagan was at his best in the mid-1970s radio addresses when he
told the stories of Soviet, East German or Cuban prisoners, locked away for
speaking their minds and trying to change an unjust system. He was still at his
best, and perhaps his most dangerous, when he did the same as president. And --
with the possible exceptions of John Paul II and Mikhail Gorbachev -- Reagan
was the man who won the Cold War.
The problem, of course, is what to make of that today: There is no
comparable threat, no empire that is the focus of evil in the modern
world. So the right is left with the remainder of Reagans legacy:
tax-cuts, small government, cracking down on welfare cheats. Hardly the stuff
of Mount Rushmore.
Washington journalist Joe Feuerherd covered some of
Reagans White House years for NCR as political affairs reporter
and Washington Bureau Chief.
National Catholic Reporter, May 11,
2001
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