TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/110590/1105480.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.3 KB | 212 lines

                                                                                EXCERPT, Page 74

COVER STORIES

What You Saw Is What You Get


His memoirs show the well-meaning Gipper America knew -- but
didn't

By BARRETT SEAMAN


    More than 90 books about Ronald Reagan and his presidency
have already come out -- including 10 "inside" accounts by
former aides such as David Stockman, Donald Regan, Michael
Deaver and Alexander Haig, written variously for revenge, the
chance to air their own frustrated agendas or the simple lure
of hefty publisher's advances. Collectively, they leave a thick
and unsatisfying residue of mystery as to who Reagan really is
and how he ran the White House. Almost to a man (and woman, in
the case of speechwriter Peggy Noonan), the erstwhile insiders
confess a certain wonderment about Reagan and about how much
he knew or thought or did as he held the most important job in
the world.

    Now comes An American Life, Dutch Reagan's own
recollections, written felicitously by journalist Robert
Lindsey from Reagan's presidential papers, his personal diary
and the good-natured recollections of a veteran raconteur. To
the certain disappointment of the Washington whisper set,
Iran-contra buffs and friends of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who
said, "If you haven't got anything good to say about anyone,
come and sit by me," there are no juicy revelations here. At
least none intended. As to the inner Ronald Reagan, the mystery
remains unsolved.

    But An American Life offers a quick refresher course in what
America liked in Reagan and why he was so enormously successful
in politics. It puts to rest the spiteful notion clung to by
his liberal detractors that Reagan was some sort of devious
defender of the military-industrial complex, an older, duller
Richard Nixon dressed up in a cowboy suit. Reagan was and
remains a stubborn dreamer, a radical reformer out to rid the
world of nuclear war and Big Government. He comes across as a
man totally without guile operating in a world full of cunning
rascals.

    Measured by the usual standards applied to such
autobiographies -- depth of self-analysis and an ample parting
of the public veil -- An American Life is celluloid thin, a
chronological collection of Reagan's own press clippings
lightly augmented by personal observations. It leaves the
nagging feeling, not entirely inaccurate, that Reagan was as
much a witness to his own public life and presidency as the
rest of us. Even casual Reagan watchers will find his
recollections of private incidents, such as Stockman's trip to
the woodshed, no more enlightening than press accounts at the
time.

    In his book, as in life, Reagan has hardly a bad word to say
about anybody -- except those, like Regan, who attacked Nancy,
or Haig, who proved an obstreperous pest. In the main, the
stories he tells are gentle and purposefully placed to support
his vivid and clearly defined views of the world. We are
reminded of why George Bush took such a beating over "the
vision thing," for Reagan really had a vision, and America
liked the fact that he did.

    But clear visions are easily marred by the loose gravel of
facts and consequences that life kicks up along the way. Reagan
deals with this contradictory detritus simply by plowing
stubbornly through it.

    In his lengthy, personal exchanges with Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev, excerpted in the preceding pages, Reagan
once and for all buries the idea that he ever contemplated
trading his Strategic Defense Initiative for Soviet cuts in
intercontinental ballistic missiles, or any other concessions.
Some members of his own national security team thought, or at
least hoped, he would do so; Gorbachev himself tested the
prospect at Reykjavik. But it was at the dramatic close of the
Iceland talks that Gorbachev came to see that Reagan really
wasn't bluffing about Star Wars: he meant to build it; he meant
to render nuclear weapons obsolete, no matter how expensive or
how treacherous the path to SDI's deployment might be.

    Gorbachev realized at Reykjavik that this avuncular American
was a genuine article, a sweet soul with firm if simple
beliefs. For Reagan, of course, SDI was an article of faith --
which may explain why he chose not to recount in his book
Gorbachev's conclusions about Star Wars as he expressed them
during the 1987 Washington summit. Gorbachev told Reagan, in
effect, "You can build your SDI. I think it's a waste of money,
but if you want to, go ahead. We have ways to deal with it, and
if you persist, we will do so." For his part, Gorbachev was
ready to move on to other aspects of the U.S.-Soviet
relationship, but with a solid confidence that he could accept
Reagan for what he was.

    On domestic matters, Reagan is equally single-minded. His
account of his economic policy is unapologetic. "A number of
things that happened during my watch as President gave me great
satisfaction," he writes, "but I'm probably proudest about the
economy."

    As for the budget deficits that are currently strangling
government efforts to cushion the oncoming recession, Reagan
writes, "Deficits, as I've often said, aren't caused by too
little taxing; they are caused by too much spending. Presidents
don't create deficits; Congress does."

    Reagan is partly right, of course; Congress shared in the
irresponsibility. But he seems unappreciative of the enormous
role he played in institutionalizing those deficits and in
polarizing the political protagonists who could have patched
together a series of budgets that would have worked. Reagan's
version of events does nothing to contradict the verdict of
several former aides, notably Stockman, that he simply refused
to make the hard choice of cutting programs that affected real
people whom he could identify. The other variables -- lower
taxes and higher defense spending -- were sacrosanct.

    That he ultimately failed to get Congress to do the cutting
for him and balance the budget, he says, "was one of my biggest
disappointments as President. I just didn't deliver as much to
the people as I'd promised."

    Unlike his successor, George Bush, Reagan seldom reached out
from the Oval Office even to seek, let alone accommodate, other
views, discordant as they might have been. Inadvertently, his
book documents his passivity. His own account of his knowledge
of funding for the Nicaraguan contras is utterly consistent
with his pattern of disengagement from other affairs of
government. He read in the newspapers that the National
Security Council and the CIA might have been waging an illegal
war in Nicaragua, he writes, and "when I inquired about this,
I was told the reports were inaccurate . . . When reports were
published about other alleged illegal activities by the U.S.
government in Central America, [CIA director] Bill Casey said
the articles were wrong or distorted, and I accepted that. I
trusted and believed in Casey."

    If the devil is in the details, Reagan sees angels on the
big screen of his presidency. He cut and reformed taxes,
reduced the scope of Big Government and oversaw the longest
peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. He rebuilt the
American military machine, hung tough with the Soviets and
signed, in the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, one of the
most significant arms-reduction pacts in history. In Berlin in
1987, he called on Gorbachev to "tear down this Wall," and, by
golly, Gorbachev helped do just that, and won the Nobel Peace
Prize last month for this and other efforts. Hard to argue with
such a track record.

    Reagan deserves at least some credit for success. He
inspired a renewal of national confidence, dangerously
atrophied at the close of the 1970s. His economic policies,
even if they were charged to a credit card, unshackled and
inspired American enterprise, helping create 18 million new
jobs -- not all of them flipping Big Macs. The acerbic talk
about the "Reagan legacy" as a kind of terminal moraine of the
ills that befell America in the '80s is unfair and just too
glib. It is silly to blame Reagan for such problems as urban
crime, racism, drug abuse, even the decline in the schools.

    But America must live with the unintended consequences of
Reagan's policies. He meant to achieve a balanced budget, but
he didn't. When he deregulated the nation's financial system,
he meant to unleash capitalism, not the great S&L scandal. With
deregulation, tax cuts and tax reform, Reagan crows, "we got
government out of the way and began the process of giving the
economy back to the people." What he doesn't report and surely
didn't mean to have happen was an increase in the disparity of
wealth in America.

    One among many damning statistics cited by conservative
political analyst Kevin Phillips in The Politics of Rich and
Poor shows an astounding growth in the income gap between
American CEOs and manufacturing workers. In 1979 chief
executives made 29 times what workers did; in 1988 they made
93 times as much. The intention of Reaganomics may have been
to benefit the middle class and solidify conservatism's
grass-roots base. The consequences have included the glaring
spectacle of Trumped-up wealth and Milkenized chicanery that
has sadly eclipsed the image of "morning again in America."
Reagan, in his cheery fashion, may have written these unwanted
results out of the script. But they remain here for the rest
of us to sort out.

    What also remains is the mystery, which may be the best we
can hope for with Reagan. He readily ascribes several of his
successes -- even his survival -- either to luck or to some
higher being. Nancy, in her book, My Turn, recalls the shaft
of sunlight that broke through the gray skies and shone down
upon him as he began his first Inaugural Address in 1981. In
an uncannily similar episode, when Air Force One came to a stop
on the tarmac at Shannon airport in Ireland in 1984, not only
did the sun come out, but a rainbow on a hill on the far side
of Shannon Bay framed the President and his plane for the
waiting TV cameras.

    "He wrests from us something warmer than mere popularity,
a kind of complicity," wrote Garry Wills in Reagan's America:
Innocents at Home. We were invited to share in his
preternatural conviction that everything would turn out O.K.
For better and for worse, we accepted.