Ronald Reagan remains a mystery. During his first term, he was vilified by the Left. During his second term, when he sided with the deal makers around him and when hard liners began to take their leave, Reagan was slammed from the Right. An accomplished biographer, Edmund Morris, was given extraordinary access to write an account of the man and his presidency. He was so unable to gain a fix on his subject that his botched result, Dutch, was partly fictionalized.
Historians will have a difficult time to settle their accounts of the Reagan presidency. His record of accomplishment on nuclear issues should speak for itself, but what role the President played in this drama is hard to pin down. The first chapter of this history, written primarily by U.S. journalists, wasn’t kind to Reagan, picturing him as woefully deficient on substance and easily manipulated by those around him. These accounts gave most of the credit for the breakthroughs reached during his presidency to Mikhail Gorbachev and to George Shultz and Paul Nitze. A second wave of accounts, relying more on declassified documents and Reagan’s diary, picture the President in command of the momentous developments that occurred on his watch. Perhaps a third wave of historical accounts will depict Reagan somewhere in between.
For those with short memories, here’s a sampler of some of the flak President Reagan took:
[Reagan is] a man singularly endowed with an ability to hold contradictory views without discomfort.
— Reagan’s ACDA Director Kenneth Adelman
Formidable will, based on a mediocre understanding of the facts. As often in politics, ignorance sustains.
— Jacques Attali
Ronald Reagan, who taught us to distrust summitry, to disbelieve in treaties, to reflect always on the duplicity of our communist enemy, is investing his historic reputation and our security in arms control treaties co-signed by communists. The Great Communicator who preached Peace through Strength today preaches peace through parchment.
— Pat Buchanan
[He] let his name and his office be traded about by subordinates in an endless civil war within the executive branch.”
— McGeorge Bundy
To me, the White House was as mysterious as a ghost ship; you heard the creak of the rigging and the groan of the timbers and sometimes even glimpsed the crew on deck. But which of the crew had the helm?
— Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig
What’s going on right now is that the crazier analysts have risen to higher positions than is normally the case. They are able to carry their ideas further and higher because the people at the top are simply less well-informed than is normally the case.”
— Herbert York
What do you do when your president ignores all the relevant facts and wanders in circles?
— Reagan’s OMB Director David Stockman
[Reagan is] a President who confused nostrums with policies and dreams with strategy.
— Strobe Talbott
In relations with the Russians, the Reagan administration most resembles March: in like a lion, out like a lamb.
— Reagan’s ACDA Director Kenneth Adelman
Many other quotes could be added to this list. Feel free to add – especially one by President Reagan’s former speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, which I vaguely recall but can’t find in my shoe boxes.