December 20, 2005
'President Reagan'
By Richard Reeves
Illustrated. 571 pages. Simon & Schuster. $30.
Trying to Tell if Reagan Was a Leader or Was Led
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
In an effort to describe President Ronald Reagan, reporters and biographers have resorted to all sorts of metaphors and images. Garry Wills called him "the perfect Scout," a "Doctor Feelgood," "the demagogue as rabble-soother." Lou Cannon wrote that both conservatives and pragmatists in the Reagan White House treated him "as if he were a child monarch in need of constant protection" - "they paid homage to him, but gave him no respect." Others have described him as a visionary cowboy, a masterly illusionist, "an authentic phony," an "idiot savant," an "amiable dunce," an "ancient king" and the ultimate actor who confused "real life" with "reel life."
Reagan's official biographer, Edmund Morris, was so flummoxed by this man he described as both "a great president" and "an apparent airhead" that he abandoned his efforts to write a serious life of his subject, and instead produced "Dutch" (1999), an embarrassing hodgepodge of fact and fiction narrated by an imaginary alter ego.
Because Reagan has remained so elusive over the years, more symbol than human being, more mythic figure than flesh-and-blood politician, the reader turns in eager anticipation to Richard Reeves's new book, "President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination," the first major portrait of his presidency to be published since his death in 2004.
Mr. Reeves's earlier books on President John F. Kennedy and President Richard M. Nixon provided engrossing and illuminating studies of these two endlessly dissected politicians, simply by giving the reader minutely detailed accounts of what each president knew and when he knew it and what he actually did day to day, month by month. In this volume, Mr. Reeves applies the same technique to Reagan, but once again the Gipper eludes capture - perhaps because the details of so much policymaking in his White House were delegated, perhaps because so many of his appearances were tightly scripted.
Indeed, this book turns out to be a sorry disappointment: a plodding recitation of events that happened during Reagan's two terms, patched together from official government documents, earlier biographies, memoirs by former administration members, the president's own contemporaneous diaries and copious newspaper accounts. Most of Mr. Reeves's observations about Reagan are either poorly supported contrarian assertions or shop-worn clichés (i.e., that Reagan's words were frequently more bellicose than his actions, that he imagined "a gentle God-fearing and whitewashed American past that never was").
Much of this book feels as though it were written on automatic pilot, resulting in a narrative that flattens out the iconic moments in Reagan's presidency - like the "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" moment in Berlin and the 40th anniversary of D-Day moment at Pointe du Hoc. The evaluative intelligence that was showcased in Mr. Reeves's Nixon book and the first half of his Kennedy book is largely absent here. There are few insights into Reagan's decision-making process that haven't been made before; no fresh assessments of his larger, zeitgeist-y achievements in giving the country a new sense of confidence and hope; and equally little analysis of how his often troubled tenure in office - which saw the ballooning of huge budget deficits and the Iran-contra scandal - was refurbished by the myth-making machinery of history.
In fact, this volume is at its most useful in reminding us of the disparity between Reagan's mythic reputation as one of the greatest presidents of all time and the rampant speculation, during his second term, about his intellectual disengagement, his memory lapses and his short attention span, and of the disparity between his image as the godfather of today's Republican Party and the reaction in real time by the right wing to his negotiations with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. (George Will asserted, as the Soviet leader left the 1987 Washington summit conference, that that day would be remembered as the day when the United States "lost" the cold war.)
In the early pages of this book, Mr. Reeves writes that he does "not subscribe to the many theories of Reagan's passivity" and that the Reagan he found in the course of his research was "a gambler, a bold, determined guy." He adds that Reagan, in his view, was "staff-dependent but not staff-driven," that "he went where he was told to go," but "possibly more than any politician of his time he said what he actually thought, often to a fault."
This theory is poorly supported by the remainder of Mr. Reeves's book. Though we get glimpses of the president's stubbornness on matters like Star Wars and support for the contras, the Reagan who emerges from this volume is substantially the same Reagan we've read about in many earlier biographies and articles: a professional actor, who presided over a highly stage-managed administration; a charismatic front man, endowed with some sterling gifts - an unshakeable optimism, a heartfelt sincerity and a brilliant ability to sell his ideas - but hobbled by a limited interest in policy and an even more limited command of policy details.
As in Mr. Cannon's 1991 biography "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime," we are reminded again and again in this volume of Reagan's early training in Hollywood. Mr. Reeves writes that the national security adviser William Clark introduced film or videotape briefings for the president, knowing "that Reagan could instantly memorize such material and quote it for years." And he writes that in order to prep Reagan on the Middle East, Secretary of State George P. Shultz "assigned four of diplomacy's bright young men - Robert Ames, Nicholas Veliotes, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Fairbanks - to produce a drama with each of them playing roles," including those of Menachem Begin of Israel, King Hussein of Jordan and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
Reagan's prescience about the economic woes of the Soviet Union is duly noted, as is his vital role in reaching an arms agreement with the "evil empire." But it is Mr. Gorbachev who comes across, in these pages, as the cannier, more visionary politician; Reagan as the one who, in the wake of the Iran-contra scandal, "needed some kind of foreign policy triumph" to avoid being perceived as a lame duck. In another chapter, Mr. Reeves concedes that Reagan had a "reactive nature," which informed his daily routine: he "responded to what was brought to him, to letters from strangers, anecdotes from Reader's Digest, or conservative dogma in Human Events."
Although Mr. Reeves writes that he does "not think Reagan was an unwitting tool of a manipulative staff," his book is filled with descriptions of the president's appearing blasé, bored or detached, and descriptions of staff members vociferously pushing their own agendas or careers. He shows us Alexander M. Haig Jr. circumventing the president to order the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, "to abstain rather than veto a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease fire in the Falklands war" (she got the order three minutes after casting the veto). And he shows us Donald Regan, the chief of staff, behaving "as if he were a prime minister rather than a hired hand."
As described by Mr. Reeves, the day-to-day functioning of the Reagan White House was bizarre to say the least: not just in terms of Nancy Reagan's astrologer, who had a hand in setting the president's schedule (Donald Regan first wrote about this in his 1988 White House memoir), but also in terms of the curious interaction (or rather lack of it) between the president and his men. "When the boss did speak in private to the fellows, it was usually cryptic, often confusing," Mr. Reeves writes. "It was the job of everyone else, staff and cabinet included, to figure out what to do about it. His typical cabinet meeting exit lines were: 'Maybe we should sleep on this,' or 'You fellas work it out.' "
Mr. Reeves never really assesses the palpable consequences of this dynamic, nor does he integrate such observations into a cohesive view of Reagan and his presidency. His unsatisfying book fails to illuminate Reagan's many contradictions - an outspoken foe of big government who presided over historic budget deficits; a tough-talking anti-Communist who engaged in a series of history-making meetings with the leader of the "evil empire" - and it leaves us with those unhelpful adjectives so frequently used to describe the 40th president ringing in our ears: genial, opaque, unknowable.
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Copyright 2005The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top
'President Reagan'
By Richard Reeves
Illustrated. 571 pages. Simon & Schuster. $30.
Trying to Tell if Reagan Was a Leader or Was Led
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
In an effort to describe President Ronald Reagan, reporters and biographers have resorted to all sorts of metaphors and images. Garry Wills called him "the perfect Scout," a "Doctor Feelgood," "the demagogue as rabble-soother." Lou Cannon wrote that both conservatives and pragmatists in the Reagan White House treated him "as if he were a child monarch in need of constant protection" - "they paid homage to him, but gave him no respect." Others have described him as a visionary cowboy, a masterly illusionist, "an authentic phony," an "idiot savant," an "amiable dunce," an "ancient king" and the ultimate actor who confused "real life" with "reel life."
Reagan's official biographer, Edmund Morris, was so flummoxed by this man he described as both "a great president" and "an apparent airhead" that he abandoned his efforts to write a serious life of his subject, and instead produced "Dutch" (1999), an embarrassing hodgepodge of fact and fiction narrated by an imaginary alter ego.
Because Reagan has remained so elusive over the years, more symbol than human being, more mythic figure than flesh-and-blood politician, the reader turns in eager anticipation to Richard Reeves's new book, "President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination," the first major portrait of his presidency to be published since his death in 2004.
Mr. Reeves's earlier books on President John F. Kennedy and President Richard M. Nixon provided engrossing and illuminating studies of these two endlessly dissected politicians, simply by giving the reader minutely detailed accounts of what each president knew and when he knew it and what he actually did day to day, month by month. In this volume, Mr. Reeves applies the same technique to Reagan, but once again the Gipper eludes capture - perhaps because the details of so much policymaking in his White House were delegated, perhaps because so many of his appearances were tightly scripted.
Indeed, this book turns out to be a sorry disappointment: a plodding recitation of events that happened during Reagan's two terms, patched together from official government documents, earlier biographies, memoirs by former administration members, the president's own contemporaneous diaries and copious newspaper accounts. Most of Mr. Reeves's observations about Reagan are either poorly supported contrarian assertions or shop-worn clichés (i.e., that Reagan's words were frequently more bellicose than his actions, that he imagined "a gentle God-fearing and whitewashed American past that never was").
Much of this book feels as though it were written on automatic pilot, resulting in a narrative that flattens out the iconic moments in Reagan's presidency - like the "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" moment in Berlin and the 40th anniversary of D-Day moment at Pointe du Hoc. The evaluative intelligence that was showcased in Mr. Reeves's Nixon book and the first half of his Kennedy book is largely absent here. There are few insights into Reagan's decision-making process that haven't been made before; no fresh assessments of his larger, zeitgeist-y achievements in giving the country a new sense of confidence and hope; and equally little analysis of how his often troubled tenure in office - which saw the ballooning of huge budget deficits and the Iran-contra scandal - was refurbished by the myth-making machinery of history.
In fact, this volume is at its most useful in reminding us of the disparity between Reagan's mythic reputation as one of the greatest presidents of all time and the rampant speculation, during his second term, about his intellectual disengagement, his memory lapses and his short attention span, and of the disparity between his image as the godfather of today's Republican Party and the reaction in real time by the right wing to his negotiations with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. (George Will asserted, as the Soviet leader left the 1987 Washington summit conference, that that day would be remembered as the day when the United States "lost" the cold war.)
In the early pages of this book, Mr. Reeves writes that he does "not subscribe to the many theories of Reagan's passivity" and that the Reagan he found in the course of his research was "a gambler, a bold, determined guy." He adds that Reagan, in his view, was "staff-dependent but not staff-driven," that "he went where he was told to go," but "possibly more than any politician of his time he said what he actually thought, often to a fault."
This theory is poorly supported by the remainder of Mr. Reeves's book. Though we get glimpses of the president's stubbornness on matters like Star Wars and support for the contras, the Reagan who emerges from this volume is substantially the same Reagan we've read about in many earlier biographies and articles: a professional actor, who presided over a highly stage-managed administration; a charismatic front man, endowed with some sterling gifts - an unshakeable optimism, a heartfelt sincerity and a brilliant ability to sell his ideas - but hobbled by a limited interest in policy and an even more limited command of policy details.
As in Mr. Cannon's 1991 biography "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime," we are reminded again and again in this volume of Reagan's early training in Hollywood. Mr. Reeves writes that the national security adviser William Clark introduced film or videotape briefings for the president, knowing "that Reagan could instantly memorize such material and quote it for years." And he writes that in order to prep Reagan on the Middle East, Secretary of State George P. Shultz "assigned four of diplomacy's bright young men - Robert Ames, Nicholas Veliotes, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Fairbanks - to produce a drama with each of them playing roles," including those of Menachem Begin of Israel, King Hussein of Jordan and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
Reagan's prescience about the economic woes of the Soviet Union is duly noted, as is his vital role in reaching an arms agreement with the "evil empire." But it is Mr. Gorbachev who comes across, in these pages, as the cannier, more visionary politician; Reagan as the one who, in the wake of the Iran-contra scandal, "needed some kind of foreign policy triumph" to avoid being perceived as a lame duck. In another chapter, Mr. Reeves concedes that Reagan had a "reactive nature," which informed his daily routine: he "responded to what was brought to him, to letters from strangers, anecdotes from Reader's Digest, or conservative dogma in Human Events."
Although Mr. Reeves writes that he does "not think Reagan was an unwitting tool of a manipulative staff," his book is filled with descriptions of the president's appearing blasé, bored or detached, and descriptions of staff members vociferously pushing their own agendas or careers. He shows us Alexander M. Haig Jr. circumventing the president to order the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, "to abstain rather than veto a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease fire in the Falklands war" (she got the order three minutes after casting the veto). And he shows us Donald Regan, the chief of staff, behaving "as if he were a prime minister rather than a hired hand."
As described by Mr. Reeves, the day-to-day functioning of the Reagan White House was bizarre to say the least: not just in terms of Nancy Reagan's astrologer, who had a hand in setting the president's schedule (Donald Regan first wrote about this in his 1988 White House memoir), but also in terms of the curious interaction (or rather lack of it) between the president and his men. "When the boss did speak in private to the fellows, it was usually cryptic, often confusing," Mr. Reeves writes. "It was the job of everyone else, staff and cabinet included, to figure out what to do about it. His typical cabinet meeting exit lines were: 'Maybe we should sleep on this,' or 'You fellas work it out.' "
Mr. Reeves never really assesses the palpable consequences of this dynamic, nor does he integrate such observations into a cohesive view of Reagan and his presidency. His unsatisfying book fails to illuminate Reagan's many contradictions - an outspoken foe of big government who presided over historic budget deficits; a tough-talking anti-Communist who engaged in a series of history-making meetings with the leader of the "evil empire" - and it leaves us with those unhelpful adjectives so frequently used to describe the 40th president ringing in our ears: genial, opaque, unknowable.
http://
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コメント(2)
結論は、この本も凡庸であるとバッサリ。
論旨は、レーガンを取り巻く既成の言説→本書もそれらの焼き直し→どの部分が？→改善の余地があるとしたら…
となっています。以下要約。
2004年に亡くなったロナルド・レーガンの伝記を書くことが以下に難しいか。
Because Reagan has remained so elusive over the years, more symbol than human being, more mythic figure than flesh-and-blood politician,
多くの作家たちが彼の全貌を描写・分析することに失敗している中、本書の作者であるRichard Reeves氏（President John F. Kennedy and President Richard M. Nixonについて卓越した伝記を書いたという）に期待が集まる。
しかし、Indeed, this book turns out to be a sorry disappointment
なぜなら、The evaluative intelligence that was showcased in Mr. Reeves's Nixon book and the first half of his Kennedy book is largely absent here. There are few insights into Reagan's decision-making process that haven't been made before; no fresh assessments of his larger, zeitgeist-y achievements in giving the country a new sense of confidence and hope; and equally little analysis of how his often troubled tenure in office - which saw the ballooning of huge budget deficits and the Iran-contra scandal - was refurbished by the myth-making machinery of history.
作者は自論としてReagan he found in the course of his research was "a gambler, a bold, determined guy." He adds that Reagan, in his view, was "staff-dependent but not staff-driven," that "he went where he was told to go," but "possibly more than any politician of his time he said what he actually thought, often to a fault." という主張を展開するもののその主張を支える論拠に乏しい。
結果、この本に立ち現れるレーガンはこれまで、我々がお目にかかった何冊もの本と変わらないレーガンなのだ。
そして読者が期待するレーガン伝とは…the day-to-day functioning of the Reagan White House was bizarre to say the least: not just in terms of Nancy Reagan's astrologer, who had a hand in setting the president's schedule (Donald Regan first wrote about this in his 1988 White House memoir), but also in terms of the curious interaction (or rather lack of it) between the president and his men.
この、レーガンと外交のbrights men（Robert Ames, Nicholas Veliotes, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Fairbanks） との関係の謎と政策決定への影響について解明することなのだ。
論旨は、レーガンを取り巻く既成の言説→本書もそれらの焼き直し→どの部分が？→改善の余地があるとしたら…
となっています。以下要約。
2004年に亡くなったロナルド・レーガンの伝記を書くことが以下に難しいか。
Because Reagan has remained so elusive over the years, more symbol than human being, more mythic figure than flesh-and-blood politician,
多くの作家たちが彼の全貌を描写・分析することに失敗している中、本書の作者であるRichard Reeves氏（President John F. Kennedy and President Richard M. Nixonについて卓越した伝記を書いたという）に期待が集まる。
しかし、Indeed, this book turns out to be a sorry disappointment
なぜなら、The evaluative intelligence that was showcased in Mr. Reeves's Nixon book and the first half of his Kennedy book is largely absent here. There are few insights into Reagan's decision-making process that haven't been made before; no fresh assessments of his larger, zeitgeist-y achievements in giving the country a new sense of confidence and hope; and equally little analysis of how his often troubled tenure in office - which saw the ballooning of huge budget deficits and the Iran-contra scandal - was refurbished by the myth-making machinery of history.
作者は自論としてReagan he found in the course of his research was "a gambler, a bold, determined guy." He adds that Reagan, in his view, was "staff-dependent but not staff-driven," that "he went where he was told to go," but "possibly more than any politician of his time he said what he actually thought, often to a fault." という主張を展開するもののその主張を支える論拠に乏しい。
結果、この本に立ち現れるレーガンはこれまで、我々がお目にかかった何冊もの本と変わらないレーガンなのだ。
そして読者が期待するレーガン伝とは…the day-to-day functioning of the Reagan White House was bizarre to say the least: not just in terms of Nancy Reagan's astrologer, who had a hand in setting the president's schedule (Donald Regan first wrote about this in his 1988 White House memoir), but also in terms of the curious interaction (or rather lack of it) between the president and his men.
この、レーガンと外交のbrights men（Robert Ames, Nicholas Veliotes, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Fairbanks） との関係の謎と政策決定への影響について解明することなのだ。
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