TIME: Almanac 1995

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ TIME: Almanac 1995 / TIME Almanac 1995.iso / time / 110590 / 1105480.000 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-02-27 | 10.8 KB | 224 lines

<text id=90TT2923> <title> Nov. 05, 1990: Reagan:What You Saw Is What You Get </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990 Nov. 05, 1990 Reagan Memoirs </history> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990 Nov. 05, 1990 Reagan Memoirs </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> EXCERPT, Page 74 COVER STORIES What You Saw Is What You Get </hdr><body> 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. </body></article> </text>