For Reagan, an indefatigable optimist, there was always a pony in there someplace. While his predecessor, the earnest Jimmy Carter, sat huddled in a sweater to lecture the country about saving energy, Reagan swept into the White House merrily asserting there was more oil under third base at Yankee Stadium than we would ever need. That was a metaphor of course, but the message was clear. American ingenuity could solve anything.
President George W. Bush fashions himself more after Reagan than his own father, but stylistically they have little in common. “Reagan sought converts while Bush seeks to consign his political enemies to hell,” says a Senate Republican. There are no Bush Democrats to parallel the Reagan Democrats who transformed the political landscape. Reagan’s embracing style enabled him to reach out and hire Jim Baker as his chief of staff after Baker had been his opponent’s campaign manager in two elections, first for Gerald Ford in ‘76, and then for George H.W. Bush in ‘80. It would be unimaginable for Bush to hire anyone from John McCain’s camp, for example.
Reagan started a revolution that President Bush is ending. Tax cuts don’t have the resonance they had when the top marginal rate was 70 percent, as it was when Reagan took office in 1981. Bush has no domestic agenda for a second term, if he gets one. And if Reagan had been cogent these last years, he surely would have aligned himself more with the first President Bush. Reagan pulled out of Lebanon after 241 Marines died in a single nighttime attack, and the only time he invaded another country was Grenada, and that was a cakewalk.
Reporters who covered the Reagan White House marveled at the president’s inattentiveness. When Baker tired of his job and decided to swap positions with Treasury Secretary Don Regan, Reagan signed off on the deal without a qualm. It turned out to be a bad idea, and it took Nancy Reagan’s intervention to cut Regan loose. Her fine hand was behind the firings of several top officials, including at least two national-security advisers. Reagan hated confrontation. When his advisors differed, he would say plaintively, “I like it better when you fellas agree.”
Reagan was without guile, and he needed Nancy. She was a force for moderation in his presidency. She pushed him toward talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, overcoming resistance on the Republican right, and she restrained his impulse to join anti-abortion protesters on their annual march in Washington. He telephoned his greetings instead. If Reagan chafed sometimes under his wife’s insistent ways, he didn’t let on. Others found Nancy imperious and impossible to please, but Reagan’s view of her was so idealized that he refused to believe anything negative about her. A former aide recalls that when Reagan was governor, Nancy was berating some government workers over exactly where and how Reagan’s official portrait should hang in the statehouse. Concerned the press was nearby, the aide rushed back to tell Reagan that his wife was creating a ruckus and could he please do something about it. Reagan looked up and said, “My Nancy wouldn’t do that.” Case closed.
Moved by a picture of starving deer out West, Reagan impulsively wrote a check to help. But he could cut programs that hurt millions of people because those were just numbers on a balance sheet. He would joke about “welfare queens” who bought an orange with their food stamps and used the change for a screwdriver. But if he was touched by personal experience, he could alter long-held views. After visiting China as president and seeing a variety of vendors in a marketplace set up for him, Reagan, the staunch anticommunist, pointedly referred to his hosts as “the so-called Chinese communists.”
When Reagan underwent surgery for colon cancer, he insisted he didn’t have cancer–his colon did. Reagan had a good sense of humor, but this time he wasn’t kidding. Press secretary Larry Speakes called reporters into his office and asked us to allow Reagan this bit of deception, that it was important to his recovery. Late in his presidency, Reagan would joke about his failing memory. He’d never been good at remembering names, or who anybody was, but with his advancing age, he made light of it, saying that with Alzheimer’s, you get to meet new people every day.
I covered Reagan for six of his eight years in Washington, and he didn’t know who I was. At one point, the White House organized afternoon teas for the regulars to let us get to know Reagan better. I remember how charmingly boyish he was, reaching for the cookies and explaining he’d only had half a sandwich for lunch. Reporters wanted to talk about his opposition to stronger sanctions against the white regime in South Africa. Reagan answered with a story about how more blacks owned cars in South Africa, despite the grip of apartheid, than all the car owners in the Soviet Union. He governed by anecdote and he lived a storybook life because he would have it no other way.
title: “Capitol Letter A Storybook Life” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Jonathan Duncan”
For Reagan, an indefatigable optimist, there was always a pony in there someplace.
While his predecessor, the earnest Jimmy Carter, sat huddled in a sweater to lecture the country about saving energy, Reagan swept into the White House merrily asserting there was more oil under third base at Yankee Stadium than we would ever need. That was a metaphor of course, but the message was clear. American ingenuity could solve anything.
President George W. Bush fashions himself more after Reagan than his own father, but stylistically they have little in common. “Reagan sought converts while Bush seeks to consign his political enemies to hell,” says a Senate Republican. There are no Bush Democrats to parallel the Reagan Democrats who transformed the political landscape. Reagan’s embracing style enabled him to reach out and hire Jim Baker as his chief of staff after Baker had been his opponent’s campaign manager in two elections, first for Gerald Ford in ‘76, and then for George H.W. Bush in ‘80. It would be unimaginable for Bush to hire anyone from John McCain’s camp, for example.
Reagan started a revolution that President Bush is ending. Tax cuts don’t have the resonance they had when the top marginal rate was 70 percent, as it was when Reagan took office in 1981. Bush has no domestic agenda for a second term, if he gets one. And if Reagan had been cogent these last years, he surely would have aligned himself more with the first President Bush. Reagan pulled out of Lebanon after 241 Marines died in a single nighttime attack, and the only time he invaded another country was Grenada, and that was a cakewalk.
Reporters who covered the Reagan White House marveled at the president’s inattentiveness. When Baker tired of his job and decided to swap positions with Treasury Secretary Don Regan, Reagan signed off on the deal without a qualm. It turned out to be a bad idea, and it took Nancy Reagan’s intervention to cut Regan loose. Her fine hand was behind the firings of several top officials, including at least two national-security advisers. Reagan hated confrontation. When his advisors differed, he would say plaintively, “I like it better when you fellas agree.”
Reagan was without guile, and he needed Nancy. She was a force for moderation in his presidency. She pushed him toward talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, overcoming resistance on the Republican right, and she restrained his impulse to join anti-abortion protesters on their annual march in Washington. He telephoned his greetings instead.
If Reagan chafed sometimes under his wife’s insistent ways, he didn’t let on. Others found Nancy imperious and impossible to please, but Reagan’s view of her was so idealized that he refused to believe anything negative about her. A former aide recalls that when Reagan was governor, Nancy was berating some government workers over exactly where and how Reagan’s official portrait should hang in the statehouse. Concerned the press was nearby, the aide rushed back to tell Reagan that his wife was creating a ruckus and could he please do something about it. Reagan looked up and said, “My Nancy wouldn’t do that.” Case closed.
Moved by a picture of starving deer out West, Reagan impulsively wrote a check to help. But he could cut programs that hurt millions of people because those were just numbers on a balance sheet. He would joke about “welfare queens” who bought an orange with their food stamps and used the change for a screwdriver. But if he was touched by personal experience, he could alter long-held views. After visiting China as president and seeing a variety of vendors in a marketplace set up for him, Reagan, the staunch anticommunist, pointedly referred to his hosts as “the so-called Chinese communists.”
When Reagan underwent surgery for colon cancer, he insisted he didn’t have cancer–his colon did. Reagan had a good sense of humor, but this time he wasn’t kidding.
I covered Reagan for six of his eight years in Washington, and he didn’t know who I was. At one point, the White House organized afternoon teas for the regulars to let us get to know Reagan better. I remember how charmingly boyish he was, reaching for the cookies and explaining he’d only had half a sandwich for lunch. Reporters wanted to talk about his opposition to stronger sanctions against the white regime in South Africa. Reagan answered with a story about how more blacks owned cars in South Africa, despite the grip of apartheid, than all the car owners in the Soviet Union. He governed by anecdote and he lived a storybook life because he would have it no other way.
