There is little doubt which former President of the United States most right-wing Republicans most admire: in a vote, Ronald Reagan would easily win, hands down. Reagan’s policies are those constantly advocated by the faithful and none more so, presently, than by the Tea Party element. Then there was the public, if not the private, persona; avuncular, limitless charm, humour – the type, moreover, his admirers think would probably use “shucks” for some mild disappointment.
Richard Nixon got there first with the politics but, even without Watergate and the disgrace which followed, he wouldn’t quite fit the bill. As the author of this very brief biography says, no one ever described Nixon as charming.
Reagan was pretty fortunate in
his adult life; leaving college at the height of the Depression, he quickly became a popular radio sports announcer and success there was to take him to Hollywood.
Michael Schaller, in 94 pages, doesn’t have much space to explore Reagan’s very long life, particularly before the political career. While never in the top ranks of stardom, he made a comfortable living combined with being president of the Screen Actors Guild for a time. That was when he was a Democratic Party and New Deal campaigner, although it later emerged he was also doing a bit of informing for the FBI on the side.
Not surprisingly, given the emphasis he placed on patriotism, Reagan liked to give an impression of having done active wartime army service. In reality, he served in a film unit on his home patch and never left the country throughout the conflict.
As his film career came to an end, so did the liberal politics. He became an ambitious Republican, eager for high office and campaigned successfully for Governor of California. Schaller mentions how Reagan’s voice actually oozed with contempt when referring to liberalism. Opposition to big government, for state rights (in other words, no action on segregation), lower taxes, much emphasis on free-market economics that even other Republicans found simplistic, were policies that would lead from California to the White House.
As President, and despite all the rhetoric, the national deficit grew and, overall, taxes accounted for much the same as previously. Nevertheless, as Schaller points out, there was a substantial tax reduction for the richest 20 per cent. Abroad, Reagan ensured no regime, however murderous, would fail to get US support, as long as it was sufficiently right-wing. Saddam Hussein also got Washington’s backing for a while.
Reagan was lucky that it was during his time that the Soviet system started to unravel. He tried to claim some credit for standing up to Moscow. In fact, once Mikhail Gorbachev took over, the totalitarian state in the Soviet Union was not going to survive, regardless of who was President of the United States of America.
Did John F Kennedy’s assassination save his being as discredited, in the end, as his successor Lyndon B Johnson? It was during Kennedy’s presidency that the number of what were euphemistically described as “military advisors” sent to Vietnam increased from 800 to more than 16,000. Robert Dallek, in another very short biography, thinks Kennedy had serious doubts about doing this. But, succumbing to military pressure or not, he still did do so. The same occurred when he decided, whatever the initial hesitation, to go ahead with the CIA plan he inherited to overthrow Fidel Castro by force; hence the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Pushed by his very rich father, Joe Kennedy, whose reputation ensured he was kept well in the background, the son was equally determined on getting to the White House. Elected at 43, he brought with him not just comparative youth but, as with Reagan later, a likeable public profile combined with considerable charisma, not forgetting a glamorous and even younger wife.
The reforms he proposed never came to much until Johnson’s time when events on the ground, particularly concerning civil rights, forced the pace. Incidentally, according to this account, it was Charles de Gaulle who warned Kennedy that intervention in south-east Asia would be a bottomless military and political quagmire. If only that advice, given with all the experience of the earlier French defeat in Vietnam, had been accepted.
Both these biographies are useful for those who know little about the subject, but they are really much too short to give us a rounded picture of two still controversial presidents, particularly Ronald Reagan.
