Steven F. Hayward: Reagan and the Historians
The Reagan book industry is shifting into high gear these days with several important new perspectives on our 40th president and his statecraft. Midge Decter wrote in 1991 that "[i]t will, one day, take a truly gifted writer, perhaps a novelist, to solve the puzzle of such a man." Edmund Morris essentially tried this approach, and made a fool of himself. The new passel of books adds fuel to the debates over Reagan, though it may be wondered whether the best guide to the man isn't still Reagan himself, in the form of his newly published diaries.
Romantic Imagination
Overall, the flood of books is highly encouraging, especially John Patrick Diggins's Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, which, except for the diaries, has attracted the most attention. The great fear of conservatives when the Gipper left office was that the liberal professoriate would "Coolidgize" him. And starting with Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, conservatives got a feeling of déjà vu all over again as liberals deplored the Republican '80s in terms strangely recalling Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., John Hicks, William Leuchtenburg, and other historians who had deplored the Republican '20s. So when a board-certified liberal intellectual like Diggins, a professor of history at the City University of New York Graduate Center (he worked down the hall from Schlesinger for many years), comes along and ranks Reagan among the four greatest American presidents (alongside FDR, Lincoln, and Washington), Reaganites may be tempted to spike the ball, do an end zone dance, and declare "game over."
But not so fast: a closer look suggests that there may be some mischief afoot. At the end of his preface Diggins discloses that part of his purpose is "[t]o rescue Reagan from many of today's so-called Reaganites." Is he trying to pull off a Brinks Job on us? Cause some dissention in the ranks? The author explains subsequently that he has chiefly in mind the dreaded "neoconservatives," such as Vice President Dick Cheney, who led us into the Iraq War. But the book's comparison of Reagan to Lincoln is also politically problematic, since, as Diggins well knows from his own fine writings on him, significant factions on the Right intensely dislike the Great Emancipator. There would be few better ways to undermine Reagan with some conservatives and libertarians than to link Reagan and Lincoln.
Anyone who has read the author's previous intellectual histories will know that he is not a man given to mischievous errands, or to kowtowing to anyone's agenda. His highly original and provocative approach to Reagan breaks new ground in understanding American political culture, and deserves careful reflection. He gets several things absolutely right that have escaped the gaze of other liberals who have written with grudging respect toward Reagan, such as Richard Reeves in his President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination (2005; see "Respecting Reagan," CRB, Fall 2006).
The typical liberal line today is that Reagan was right on the Cold War, but his domestic policy was a train wreck. Diggins perceives the fundamental unity between Reagan's domestic and foreign policy, based in his idiosyncratic—the book rightly says romantic—imagination. And unlike Reeves and even sympathetic writers such as Lou Cannon, Diggins gets Reagan's economic policy correct. He offers an unusual reversal of another familiar theme of the president's critics, that Reagan was a creation of his superb staff work. Diggins flips this around, attributing most of the administration's mistakes and black marks to the staff, who didn't share Reagan's imagination and good judgment....
Read entire article at Claremont Review of Books
Romantic Imagination
Overall, the flood of books is highly encouraging, especially John Patrick Diggins's Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, which, except for the diaries, has attracted the most attention. The great fear of conservatives when the Gipper left office was that the liberal professoriate would "Coolidgize" him. And starting with Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, conservatives got a feeling of déjà vu all over again as liberals deplored the Republican '80s in terms strangely recalling Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., John Hicks, William Leuchtenburg, and other historians who had deplored the Republican '20s. So when a board-certified liberal intellectual like Diggins, a professor of history at the City University of New York Graduate Center (he worked down the hall from Schlesinger for many years), comes along and ranks Reagan among the four greatest American presidents (alongside FDR, Lincoln, and Washington), Reaganites may be tempted to spike the ball, do an end zone dance, and declare "game over."
But not so fast: a closer look suggests that there may be some mischief afoot. At the end of his preface Diggins discloses that part of his purpose is "[t]o rescue Reagan from many of today's so-called Reaganites." Is he trying to pull off a Brinks Job on us? Cause some dissention in the ranks? The author explains subsequently that he has chiefly in mind the dreaded "neoconservatives," such as Vice President Dick Cheney, who led us into the Iraq War. But the book's comparison of Reagan to Lincoln is also politically problematic, since, as Diggins well knows from his own fine writings on him, significant factions on the Right intensely dislike the Great Emancipator. There would be few better ways to undermine Reagan with some conservatives and libertarians than to link Reagan and Lincoln.
Anyone who has read the author's previous intellectual histories will know that he is not a man given to mischievous errands, or to kowtowing to anyone's agenda. His highly original and provocative approach to Reagan breaks new ground in understanding American political culture, and deserves careful reflection. He gets several things absolutely right that have escaped the gaze of other liberals who have written with grudging respect toward Reagan, such as Richard Reeves in his President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination (2005; see "Respecting Reagan," CRB, Fall 2006).
The typical liberal line today is that Reagan was right on the Cold War, but his domestic policy was a train wreck. Diggins perceives the fundamental unity between Reagan's domestic and foreign policy, based in his idiosyncratic—the book rightly says romantic—imagination. And unlike Reeves and even sympathetic writers such as Lou Cannon, Diggins gets Reagan's economic policy correct. He offers an unusual reversal of another familiar theme of the president's critics, that Reagan was a creation of his superb staff work. Diggins flips this around, attributing most of the administration's mistakes and black marks to the staff, who didn't share Reagan's imagination and good judgment....