What Reagan Couldn't Tell Us

Por Lawrence Nesbitt

Many of Ronald Reagan's ways were not only unusual, but seem to contradict his others. Some authors are so perplexed by his nature they are reluctant to even assign intelligence to his mentality. They suspect he operated on everything from instinct to hunches to gut feelings and guesses.

Lawrence Nesbitt's six years of extensive research has revealed a single psychological key that makes sense of the anomalies and contradictions. He has uncovered a powerful and nearly unique mindset that directed almost all of Reagan's conduct then and causes the confusion now. This unusual belief also explains how a man so old and riddled with flaws could accomplish so much and leave the presidency with an approval rating of nearly 70%, the highest of any two-term president in United States history.

Nesbitt shows the controlling role this mindset played in Reagan's youth, in his years as a Hollywood actor, during his tenure as California governor, through his two terms as president, and even later.

What Reagan Couldn't Tell Us offers a previously untold analysis of Reagan, one that will encourage discussion for years to come.

I found Lawrence Nesbitts explanation of what made Ronald Reagan tick very plausible, fascinating, and enlightening. His revolutionary conclusions about the former president seem well-founded on solid evidence. He gives us a new Reagan to appreciate.
James D. Mallory, MD, author, former psychiatric director of Atlanta Counseling Center, and medical director of RAPHA

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: iUniverse
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 22 dic 2011
• ISBN: 9781462071166

Lawrence Nesbitt

Lawrence Nesbitt graduated from the Tennessee University System in the 1960s. Since college he spent three decades teaching psychology at Blayton College in Atlanta, and was published in such periodicals as Psychology Today. A psychological counselor until 2005, Nesbitt has since retired to travel, write and play tennis.

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What Reagan Couldn’t Tell Us

Lawrence Nesbitt

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

What Reagan Couldn’t Tell Us

Copyright © 2011 by Lawrence Nesbitt.

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Lawrence Nesbitt

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgments

I dedicate this book, with gratitude, to an amazing nephew, James Hopkins. He deserves as much credit for this work as I do. Though living in a distant state from mine, with plenty to keep up with in his own busy life, he somehow kept abreast of my project’s development and found time to assist in any way he could. Whether researching Reagan’s defense expenditures, critiquing a passage from my early drafts, or rescuing my manuscript from an outdated iMac that even Apple couldn’t help me with, he was always there to help with information or solve a problem.

I should also thank the ladies of the Sandy Springs and Roswell, Georgia libraries where I did much of my research. Their tolerance for endless, probably bothersome, requests has always impressed me. And if they lacked what I needed, they got it.

Thanks also go to Dianne Lee, a special person and manuscript coordinator with my publisher. She not only goes out of her way to be helpful and accommodating, but is simply a delightful lady to work with in the stressful atmosphere of bringing a book to market.

I also feel grateful to the army of authors and reporters, many of whom I’ve quoted, whose recorded observations of Ronald Reagan helped immeasurably in my conclusions about the man.

Prologue

"What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or

rather indicates, his fate."

Henry David Thoreau

It’s little wonder that Ronald Reagan’s ways confuse so many writers. They successfully report the events of his life, and take their best shot at explaining his nature, but what he concealed defeats them. Biographer after biographer gives up and declares his mentality a hopeless mystery. His secret was too personal for him to disclose, and strong enough to control him. No religion, no drug, nor the act he put on, this enigma was elusive as clouds in the wind, but just as real as their rain. His staff and others sensed this in Reagan, but they were clueless as to what it could be.

This psychological paradox gave him what some called his magic.

When he died in 2004 the country mourned the passing of one of its most beloved leaders in U.S. history. Day after day the news media flourished on accounts of his various careers and on interviews with his former associates. Even Joe Sixpack and his woman were glad to offer their views. But did we really know him? Based on the works of biographers, apparently not. According to them, he was not knowable. They agree that he was the most amiable and honorable of men, but confess befuddlement over how his mind seemed to work. This suggests a strange mentality, and one could wonder, as he physically left us, if this was any way to leave the legacy of such an important leader.

I had closely followed Reagan’s political career, and my background in psychology told me there might be an answer to the mystery of that mind—a psychological key that makes sense of it all. On that June day in 2004, as he passed from the living death of Alzheimer’s into history, it seemed someone should take another shot at that mystery now, while there are still people living who remember how he lit things up in the eighties.

Though the task seemed daunting, I set out in search of a key to the riddle of contradictions and anomalies that clutter the image of this president who prompted his six-time biographer Lou Cannon to write, Even in the presidency, he remained unknown and unknowable.¹ Might a single key unlock that mystery? The brilliant and accomplished Allen Gotlieb apparently thought not. Among his impressive stations in life was his Canadian ambassadorship to the United States during both of Reagan’s presidential terms. In those eight years Gotlieb became well acquainted with Reagan, and concluded that the former president was the most enigmatic character of modern times.² Most of Reagan’s biographers and those who associated with him agree.

The confusion springs from not just his unusual ways, but also from conflicting characteristics: He was a man of great vision, but avoided tasks that required mental effort. He attacked the Soviets with more damning rhetoric than Give ’em Hell Harry Truman and yet was the only president to make peace with them. He was cheerful and friendly, but emotionally isolated from others. He was determined to change the mission and size of government, but once in the White House, he ignored a good part of it. He showed a deep Christian faith but did not attend church. He was the most ideological president in over a century, but was the antithesis of an intellectual. He had the most high-powered job on the planet, but performed it with the lackadaisical air of your friendly neighborhood barber. Had this last characteristic not made him so likable, it could have been a real problem.

We see this trait clearly in a comical scene on the very day he became president. Reagan’s close aide Michael Deaver had been with the former president since Reagan’s days as California governor. On the morning of Reagan’s first presidential inauguration, around 9:00 A.M., Deaver arrived at Blair House to assist the Reagans in preparing for the ceremonies.

Where’s the governor? Deaver asked, and Nancy replied, I guess he’s still in bed. Astonished, Deaver walked into the bedroom, where the lights were out and the curtains were drawn. Governor?

Yeah?

It’s nine o’clock.

Yeah?

You’re going to be inaugurated in two hours.

Does that mean I have to get up?³

Do not be fooled. Reagan was probably half serious. He assumed the presidency with the same confidence and calm that he took to his tailor’s for a fitting. Though shamefully blase toward his role as president, at the same time he had the greatest respect for the office—another seeming contradiction, but one that will vanish with the others when considered in the light of the key we’ll soon see. It’s a key that reveals a powerful truth that applies to the mentality of each of us—a principle seldom discussed, but one with a priceless message of insight to the source of enduring contentment.

And it’s the single key that unlocks the riddle of Reagan.

I knew that taking a closer look at this man could be a project of humbling dimensions, but one too fascinating to resist. I wondered what kind of seventy-four-year old man embarks on a second term as U.S. president in a world about to explode, and how a president unfamiliar with foreign lands perpetuates a movement that freed four hundred million people in those lands from ruthless political enslavement. I had to know how a president who dozed in cabinet meetings could run a country the size of ours, and how a man who thought more oil reserves lay under the U.S than under Saudi Arabia could dominate a superpower summit to negotiate nuclear weapons programs. I wondered how a president who couldn’t manage his own staff could manage the affairs of the world. And beyond all this, I marveled that so flawed a man could possess self-esteem that defied the limits of logic.

In tackling the subject, I hoped for two things: That my background in psychology would help, and that any answer to the Reagan riddle would be a single, easily explained key to his mentality. He seemed too well-adjusted and too happy to be the inexplicable figure writers judged him to be. I felt that the simple psychological key I sought might answer the questions and resolve the contradictions, and I am happy to say it does.

I approached the task with eyes wide open to the skepticism certain to face any professed revelation of a key to Reagan’s mystery. The first to discover much of anything faces that. In this case, the loudest scoffing may come from the many who have already diagnosed Reagan inexplicable. Knowing this, I would not have the audacity to present my conclusions without complete certainty and substantial evidence to back them. To the skeptics, I would ask that they consider my evidence in these pages before jumping to any conclusions about my correctness.

My six years of research reveal that Reagan has yet to receive credit from the news media and the classroom for many of the 1980s foreign and domestic breakthroughs for which he was largely responsible. The media and the educators, most being liberal, are unwilling to recognize the size of the furrow he plowed through the political landscape of the eighties. This leaves most Americans sadly uninformed on many of Reagan’s achievements. Although no president in recent U.S. history was more popular with the people, they are largely unaware of the extent of his world-changing influence that gave us a better planet. Therefore, one of the goals of this book is to correct that by showing what Reagan did that made him one of America’s greatest presidents.

When he left office in 1989 Reagan’s approval rating was close to seventy percent, the highest in the nation’s history for a two-term president. His death in 2004 produced the greatest outpouring of public sentiment for the death of a politician in over four decades. Of course popularity is only one measure of a president, but in other respects Reagan was equally impressive, as more and more people are coming to acknowledge. He brought conservatism out of the political wilderness and set it in America’s lap. Had he done nothing more than produce the political and fiscal debate he created, he would be a significant president, but his broad-ranging mystique did much more that impacted both his country and the world.

I would tell the scoffers to look at the domestic and foreign political breakthroughs in the decade of the 1980s and immediately thereafter. Reagan’s imprint is all over them: from the mass emancipation of the citizens in the Soviet bloc, to the continued progress in the development of a U.S. strategic missile defense system. From the rejuvenated spirit that Reagan left Americans with, to the dramatically diminished number of socialist autocracies at the end of Reagan’s watch, and from bold alternatives in fiscal philosophy and the government’s role as provider, to the longest and most powerful uninterrupted span of U.S. peacetime economic growth and personal wealth creation in the nation’s history. And most important of all, is the end of the half-century-long Cold War. Reagan’s willful influence courses through all of these.

In changing Washington up to that point more than any president since FDR, Reagan made us reconsider the role and reach of the federal government. Although FDR had once been Reagan’s political hero, Reagan hit the federal city intending to tear down the monstrosity FDR had built up. Reagan meant it when he said in his January 20, 1981 inaugural address, "In the present crisis, the government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

In that January 1981 the country could hardly have been in worse shape for newly-elected President Reagan. When Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan surrendered at the end of World War ll, Americans were victorious and brimming with pride. Then the prosperity of the 1950s bolstered their confidence further and forecast a future worthy of great optimism. But all this came undone in the next two decades when almost everything that could go wrong for a country, did. By the end of the 1970s every segment of U.S. society had experienced the painful effects of the social, political, military and economic calamities of the previous two decades. America had lost a lot.

Dreams had been lost. An insidious economic condition cleverly called stagflation (stagnant growth with crippling inflation) had gripped the economy, destroying the dreams from better times. They die surely and painfully amidst double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment and the highest interest rates in the history of the nation, along with negative business growth.

Trust had been lost too. A government that had built a nationwide expressway system and had steered the nation to victory in the largest war ever fought had then become a government unable to solve an energy crisis or revive a dying economy. Worse, that government had kept the country in an unpopular, prolonged war that it would not allow the military to win, and its chief executive had left office cloaked in the shame of the Watergate scandal. Americans’ trust was gone before he was.

Hope was also lost. Assassins saw to that. Their bullets brought down not only three revered leaders, but with them, the hope for future greatness in those men. And many wondered, what leader might be next?

The sense of security had been lost. As World War ll ended, the safest place on earth seemed to be the good old U.S.A. until Soviet missiles in communist Cuba and a terrifying showdown at sea turned the good old U.S.A. into the most dangerous place on earth. Then two more decades of Cold War tension made a justified phobia for nuclear annihilation an ingrained part of the American psyche.

National pride had been lost. By the late 1970s concerned voices were lamenting the neglect of the dilapidated U.S. military, no longer a bulwark of American pride. Diplomatically there was little to be proud of either, with America failing to gain release of 52 members of her Tehran embassy staff, ultimately held captive by Iranian fanatics for nearly fifteen months. A humiliating, failed military rescue attempt had left what remained of American pride in the sands of an Iranian desert, after even more pride had been left four years earlier in a jungle called Vietnam.

To compound these blows to Americans’ morale, Reagan’s predecessor had started telling the nation that it should learn to expect more of the same. The future, he said, was likely to bring less comfort and more difficulties than Americans had come to expect. Sacrifices would be necessary and routine. The country had had its fun, and now it must pay.

It had been nearly fifty years since Americans’ spirit and will had been so decimated.

The nation also at war might have created the only conditions worse than those under which Reagan assumed the presidency. In addition to the domestic problems demoralizing the country’s citizens, Reagan faced foreign difficulties as well. As usual for that period, the Soviets were behind the most serious of these, as their communist tentacles stretched for a grip on vulnerable nations in Central America and Africa while their military was eating away on Afghanistan. Reagan was faced with the challenge of trying to stop this steady communist advance while encouraging worldwide freedom movements without provoking the most horrendous of all events—a nuclear war with the Soviets.

As Ronald and Nancy Reagan moved into the White House, America was seen overseas as an increasingly impotent player in the global arena. Her citizens, allies and financial interests appeared to be in jeopardy everywhere. So why would a nearly seventy-year-old man want to take all this on? That’s getting ahead of ourselves, but we will know shortly. It’s the same answer that explains virtually every confounding question about the former president.

Time, and greater historical objectivity, will surely bring more of Reagan’s achievements to light. His finest domestic accomplishment is more widely known than some of his others. It resulted from an astonishing display of political effectiveness during his first year as president. That summer he won over a hostile Democratic House of Representatives to steer through legislation that produced the greatest transformation of government priorities since FDR’s New Deal. He amazed observers by obtaining the passage of laws that reduced the following year’s domestic spending by $35.2 billion, while cutting income taxes by twenty-five percent over the next three years. Historians agree that this represents a political coup of the highest order, and is considered one of the most impressive legislative successes in the country’s history. Highly esteemed reporter David Broder of the Washington Post, and no Reagan fan, spoke for many writers in his column. Pointing out the poor record of recent presidents in managing the difficulties of government, he termed Reagan’s hard-fought fiscal victory one of the most remarkable demonstrations of presidential leadership in modern history.⁴

This legislation, the centerpiece of Reagan’s economic recovery plan, soon launched his powerful economy, with his supply-side economics working much better than most had expected. The country’s worst economy since the Great Depression became the most powerful, with the longest-running period of peacetime growth the nation has ever seen before or since. Of all the denials of Reagan’s successes put forth by his detractors, the denial of his overall economic success, because of the federal deficits, is the most egregious. His sizable military spending was a necessary component of those deficits, and not only were those expenditures more than justified for Cold War purposes, but what the U.S. economy did during that time was nothing less than stunning.

Many of Reagan’s detractors have made a career out of denouncing him for those deficits, produced to a large degree by his expanded defense spending. They ignore the priceless benefits of that military buildup and the fact that Jimmy Carter had planned a similar overhaul in a second term that he failed to win. Of the buildup’s several benefits, only one more than justifies the expenditures: the role of the strengthened military in ending the Cold War. Many Americans seem unaware that it was the rebuilt military and Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that made his Cold War victory possible. Virtually all Soviet officials agree. The Kremlin’s economic problems alone would not have brought this about, as we will see. Like George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt, Reagan knew the U.S. could negotiate effectively with adversaries only from a position of impressive armed power. Moscow’s record shows they had no respect for weak nations. Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, he told the British Parliament in June 1982. Is there a sane person who believes it would have been better to continue the Cold War, risking nuclear catastrophe, than to incur those deficits?

But Congress must share blame for the red ink. The Democratic leadership refused to work with Reagan to reduce nondefense spending. This was their price for allowing funding of his military overhaul. They had made this clear to Reagan, tying his hands on most domestic spending control. In his first year only, he beat them, winning a large spending cut with the help of votes from the southern boll weevil Democrats. After that, he lost those Democrats to their leaders’ threats of punishment.

Other Reagan antagonists say he should have raised taxes after he had lowered them, but we saw what this did to his successor’s economy. And Reagan’s America was overcoming a brutal recession.

Though his domestic accomplishments were substantial, Reagan’s foreign successes were the most historic and impressive. His role in reducing superpower nuclear arsenals has been appropriately reported and understood, but his part in liberating the Soviet satellite nations, and other foreign accomplishments, still awaits proper recognition. The least understood of these seems to be the magnitude and true effects of his influence on worldwide breakthroughs for freedom during the 1980s. Though the many changes are scattered, when viewed collectively, along with Reagan’s actions during that time, the conclusion is clear: Reagan’s incessant crusade for international self-reliant freedom provided an inspirational catalyst for many, probably most, of these breakthroughs. There is good reason why some have called this period the hinge of history in the modern era. And we are not looking at a subtle change hard to identify: During Reagan’s tenure global politics did a complete about-face.

Consider: For six decades autocratic socialism and capitalistic democracy had been competing to determine which would emerge the world’s predominate political system. Just prior to Reagan’s presidency it appeared socialism was winning, thanks to the Soviets’ aggressive and ruthless tactics to spread their communist control throughout the world. But during the Reagan years this trend changed. A new political force had harnessed history and swung it the other way. This force was surprising because it came in the form of an American president whom the world’s intellectuals had identified as a bungling nincompoop. This is no exaggeration. Some highbrows seemed even frightened, believing Reagan’s views to be reactionary and dangerous. Other big-time liberal thinkers simply saw nothing to respect in this graduate of little Eureka College who committed too many public verbal faux pas to count, and whose political philosophy seemed to them close to that of Attila the Hun compared to their enlightened thought. And his self-assured, happy-go-lucky air only added to the elites’ revulsion: Where was at least a modicum of humility one would expect from someone so ignorant and wrong?

So they slammed him. Well-known columnist William Greider spoke for many reporters when he wrote, My God, they’ve elected this guy who… . we thought was a hopeless clown.⁵ New York Times writer Anthony Lewis claimed we’d elected a president with a seven minute attention span.⁶ Economist Benjamin Friedman accused Reagan of intellectual incompetence of the first magnitude as well as moral irresponsibility on a truly astonishing scale.⁷ Robert Wright of the New Republic pronounced Reagan virtually brain dead.⁸

And so it went. It seemed unlikely, even incredible, that such a person would leave an outstanding legacy that few politicians have matched. It’s a legacy that will in time reflect the importance of Reagan’s accomplishments in helping to turn the world’s political tide from socialism to democracy. In his speeches, his scolding letters to Moscow, his diplomacy and other means (such as deals with the pope), Reagan’s creed of self-reliant freedom touched every corner of the globe in the widespread democratic renaissance of the 1980s. The opposite trend had existed when he took office in 1981. Communism had been on the march, stalking nations that were economically weak or in political disarray. Third world countries right and left had either ignorantly opted for, or had been forced into, one type or another of Marxist-Leninist socialism. Khrushchev’s boast in the 1950s that the Communists would bury the West was looking more and more likely.

In just the six years before Reagan became president, no less than ten countries had fallen under the shadow of the hammer and sickle. From 1974 to 1980, while the U.S. wallowed in post-Vietnam remorse, the Kremlin was doing what it did best: empire-building. In those few years, Angola, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Ethiopia, South Vietnam, Grenada, Mozambique, South Yemen and Laos had been sucked into the Soviet sphere, and Moscow was grinding its way through Afghanistan.

The sucking and grinding had the attention of the new American president, and things abruptly changed—not gradually, but suddenly, in historical terms. One change was in the relationship between the U.S. and the Kremlin. The Soviets were shocked to quickly learn that the new man in the White House saw no honor in the usual Washington policy of peaceful coexistence with an unprincipled Moscow, and he let them know it. In language stronger than that of any other U.S. president, in his first press conference Reagan declared that the Soviet leaders reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime—to lie, to cheat to create a world revolution and a one-world socialist or communist state. The astounded Kremlin was used to years of appeasement from Washington, but for the next several years the Soviets and the rest of the world would hear more of the same, accompanied by a loud message that citizens anywhere who were abused by an autocratic government could be certain that the U.S. was in their corner and supported any efforts such people might make to obtain their freedom. Reagan’s loud message was heard and felt by more downtrodden citizens of dictatorships around the world than was known until years after he left office. Many still do not know. Some refuse to.

The trend of successful socialist expansion did not just stop when Reagan took office—it reversed itself. After the ten countries noted above had fallen prey to autocratic socialist governments in the few years just before Reagan’s presidency, during his eight years in the White House socialism was not foisted upon a single additional country. More remarkable, during this period Panama, Chili and Haiti dumped their dictatorships, while nine other nations took steps toward a democratic government: Honduras and Bolivia in 1982, Grenada and Argentina in 1983, El Salvador and Uruguay in 1984, Guatemala and Brazil in 1985, and the Philippines in 1986. Two other autocratic governments held free elections shortly after Reagan left office: South Africa and Nicaragua.

This sweeping political transformation was no coincidence. It was too widespread geographically and too concentrated in the era of one world leader: Ronald Reagan, freedom’s most outspoken advocate of the century. But the greatest liberation Reagan inspired occurred just after he left Washington. In a magnificent echo of his presidency, history saw its most massive emancipation ever. Hundreds of millions of oppressed souls were freed from a tyranny that had murdered some thirty million of them and confined the rest to a miserable existence walled and fenced inside their communist borders. Their breakout began in Soviet Europe, in a fervor felt across one fourth the girth of the globe, eastward from Germany’s Harz Mountains all the way to Russia’s Anadyrs at the eastern end of her eleven time zones.

Scoffers who doubt Reagan’s role in this unparalleled liberation should discuss the matter with citizens of those countries. Most of those freed souls, including the Russian intelligentsia, have always maintained that Reagan had as much or more to do with the Soviet Union’s disintegration than Mikhail Gorbachev did. Western travelers have been surprised to find that some liberated citizens appreciated Reagan so much they had his photograph on their mantels. He’s their bona fide hero. One such Reagan fan is Lech Walesa, the first freely elected legitimate president of Poland, where the big revolt began. Walesa said, When talking about Ronald Reagan I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century… .⁹ Or ask such liberation heroes as Nathan Sharansky or Vaclav Havel about Reagan’s role in this, or the millions of politically enslaved others who knew Reagan was regularly pleading their case to the world and condemning the tyrants in Moscow who abused them. They will tell you of the inspiration they took from Reagan’s words assuring them the free world was on their side. And he did much more than give speeches about this, as shown in chapter nine.

The elites and the media are not a good source of information on Reagan’s role in this because they were the ones who had informed the world that the U.S. had elected an idiot for president, and no one likes to admit he is wrong later. Many of these people would still have us believe that Reagan was standing around popping jelly beans and telling stories of Hollywood glory while the Soviets starved themselves into democracy.

Anyone who thinks Gorbachev was the only person responsible for this, or that he didn’t care if the Soviet Union imploded, does not have all the facts. Gorbachev deplored his empire’s collapse, and we will see later why he allowed it and what Reagan’s involvement was. This was not brought about simply from the Soviet Union’s economic problems, as some like to believe. There have been many destitute empires throughout history, but no autocratic regime has ever relinquished power because of poverty, and it’s not likely any ever will. A government that will systematically murder tens of millions of its citizens, as the Kremlin did, is not going to even notice that the survivors are hungry. The Soviets’ economic woes were only part of the problem. Their biggest woe was Ronald Reagan.

However, the man was far from perfect. The elites did have their evidence. This washed-up actor was, in fact, old, sleepy and riddled with flaws (he once fell asleep in front of the pope). And he was powered not by intellect, but by emotion. But regardless of his weaknesses, there is no question that the global political trend reversed itself during his eight-year campaign for freedom. It is also true that during this period no figure on the world stage was as active in battling autocracies to promote freedom as Reagan was. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a close Reagan ally, wrote, From the strong fortress of his convictions (Reagan) set out to enlarge freedom the world over at a time when freedom was in retreat—and he succeeded.¹⁰

Although others were involved, Reagan was the force of this worldwide crusade, wielding the loudest voice and reaching the largest audiences. He was the core of this effort, the heart of the movement’s pulse. It is one of the most impressive and noble accomplishments in history, and yet few Americans are aware it.

Another remarkable and overlooked Reagan achievement for freedom involves his persistent struggle throughout his eight years as president to assist the Contra freedom fighters in Nicaragua. These militants were fighting the spread of Soviet-sponsored communism in our hemisphere’s backyard, where it was already established in Cuba and Nicaragua, with Soviet plans to push it northward after gaining Central America. Though virtually unknown to most Americans, Reagan played a key role in quashing the real possibility of the U.S. some day facing communism across the Rio Grande.

The real wonder of Ronald Reagan is that so flawed and so aged a man could achieve so much, so casually. This was possible because of how he saw himself—which contains a powerful message for all of us. Though born with brain power to spare, as president he forgot people’s names, ignored details, perceived reality to his liking, dozed in meetings and allowed subordinates to run wild until others (especially George Shultz) threatened to resign. He also refused to admit he was wrong, failed to follow up after instructions to staff, kept aides on who should have been fired and ignored much of the government he was in charge of. And yet his accomplishments made the world a better place, and history will see him as a great president, largely for deeds most Americans are unaware of. Along with the world, he changed millions of the Americans in it, including some in Washington. This shook up an entrenched federal establishment that was accustomed to doing business as usual. Democratic Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, who was used to getting his way, didn’t know what hit him. Nor did the rest of the House until they regrouped and O’Neill got control of the boll weevil Democrats.

Reagan’s influence on many of us went beyond government issues. Over time, he converted much of the country to his own views and values,¹¹ wrote David Gergen, author and political analyst. Gergen discouraged measuring the Reagan legacy by only statistics, explaining, His more important legacy is how much he changed our minds.¹² Margaret Thatcher got more specific. Writing in National Review just days before Reagan left office, she stated, When we attempt an overall survey of President Reagan’s term of office… . one thing stands out. It is that he has achieved the most difficult of political tasks: changing attitudes and perceptions about what is possible.¹³

He did this with both words and deeds. The words convinced us we were still a great nation and an industrious people. To deserve that, we tried harder to find jobs and start new businesses. The deeds were his most impressive accomplishments, seen initially by most as nearly impossible to achieve: Conventional wisdom viewed successful arms-reduction negotiations with the Soviets as virtually impossible, which they had been for decades. Yet he kept the Communists coming back to the table until the first treaty in history to destroy great quantities of nuclear weapons was hammered out in what Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz called the the highest-stakes poker game ever played.¹⁴ Creating cordial relations between the U.S. and the Kremlin was also considered close to impossible, as was the breakup of the Evil Empire. Reagan managed both. Certain of his domestic endeavors were also seen by others as a lost cause until he prevailed at them too. But to him, these feats were never long shots. What only he knew of himself put them within his reach.

Much Reagan success was due to an unusual personality. Few people, not even political opponents, could resist falling under the spell of his cheerful, optimistic attitude and a personality full of humor. Those with no sense of humor still liked him for his fundamental decency. But his friendly, laid-back demeanor fooled many who thought that was all there was to Reagan. Beneath his congenial exterior he contained a core of clear, specific principles and steadfast ambition.

Reagan was also successful because he believed few goals were beyond his reach, and because as obstacles blocked his path, he moved them with words the world believed. With few analytical skills and aging, time and again he struggled with circumstance and shaped it to his will. He is perfectly suited to the most varying scenes of his life, wrote social historian Garry Wills, yet his manner never changes. He is the opposite of a chameleon: Environments adapt themselves to him.¹⁵ This would be some of the magic.

Nothing endeared Reagan to Americans more than his aura of authenticity. To a degree he was a perpetual actor in any situation, enhancing his behavior with a bit of showmanship. But this was such a natural part of him, one could say even when acting, he was being himself. Wills saw this too, and wrote, Because he acts himself, we know he is authentic.¹⁶

This projection of authenticity was more than how the man spoke and looked. It also came from his message, the honorable, traditional beliefs that earlier had guided the growth of the world’s greatest nation. It took Americans back to a simpler, warmer place in time that seemed, itself, more authentic. It was also a prouder time. He took them there, and Americans loved him for it.

Fair-minded people look at the surprising Reagan accomplishments and see something special. It’s not only surprising that these feats were realized, but that they were realized by someone who seemed so functionally limited. Limited in some respects, he surely was, but various overwhelming talents prevailed in his performance. Among those who saw this was George Shultz, who wrote, One of his magics is looking to the future.¹⁷ This was one of his strongest talents. Time after time he foresaw events that others denied would happen—until the events occurred. It made him the nation’s most visionary president in over a century. But to the people, he was America’s Everyman made good—the quintessential citizen celebrity without the vanity to stain him.

What Reagan was and believed certainly worked for him: One thing writers, liberal or conservative, agree on is his obvious, consistent happiness. He was likely the happiest president to ever occupy the White House. But those writers find his ways confusing; many call them incomprehensible: Was he genius or dufus, caring or cold, a politician or an actor playing a politician? Did he know where Poland is? Without the answers buried in youth, Reagan is hard to figure. But when the key piece of his puzzle emerges, something simple, logical and good takes form. The threads of seeming incongruities woven in the smooth fabric of his nature camouflaged a mind of principle, consistency and contentment. It was a tidy mind that kept things simple. Simple tastes. Simple relationships. Simple philosophy. And the simplest essence of any complicated concept. This is a man who preferred macaroni and cheese for dinner, pruning trees for entertainment and the Reader’s Digest for intellectual stimulation. Wrought from the mold of Thoreau, he proved simplicity works.

But simple does not mean stupid, nor does it represent even a weakness. Reagan was burdened with his share of flaws, but his bent for simplicity was not one. How could a trait promoted since the Old World philosophers be considered a fault? We should all be so lucky as to simplify life. If only we could do it as successfully as Reagan. Or be half as happy as he.

In his time, voters sensed his principled simplicity and placed their trust in him for it. Americans were heartened with him in the White House, and near the end of his first term many agreed with a political writer who brought Reagan’s magic to his column. Time and Life’s veteran White House reporter Hugh Sidey knew, and had reported on, every American president during the last half of the twentieth century from Eisenhower through Clinton. In his August 27, 1984 article in Time, Sidey wrote of Reagan, He is a whiff of a kinder age out of the attic… . He is comfort that things aren’t as bad as the experts say they are. Ronald Reagan is a mood that has seeped through the land like the beguiling scent of honeysuckle on a soft Georgia night.¹⁸

Reagan thrived on spotlights like this, but never allowed them to change him. He remained untouched by the forces that warp the nature of many who know such fame.

Chapter One

BEFORE THE GLORY

It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.

Sir Winston Churchill

Since my book is not chronologically formatted after this chapter, the following concise review of Reagan’s pre-presidential life will be useful in the subsequent exploration of the man’s makeup, especially for those readers who are not already students of Reagan’s life.

Many details of the man’s early years are covered in chapter two when explaining the key to his paradoxical personality. Therefore, to avoid repetition, some details of that period are kept to a minimum in this chapter.

On February 6, 1911, on a lumpy bed in a cramped corner of a small room above a bank in a hamlet sixty miles west of Chicago, a plump baby boy was born to a Scots-English seamstress and an unemployed Irish shoe salesman. They named the baby Ronald, but the lad was such a porker his father said they should call him Dutch. The mother agreed, and so they did. History has yet to