Was there anybody there?
John Vincent DUTCH: A MEMOIR OF RONALD REAGAN by Edmund Morris HarperCollins, f24.99, pp. 874 If young men no longer grow up wonder- ing if they will die in uniform, the credit belongs to President Reagan as much as to anyone. He established American supremacy, won the Cold War, and per- haps saved the planet. If anyone is the world historical figure of our century, he is, rather than smaller fry like Kennedy or Mandela. Reagan, however, did not glitter, was not politically correct, and had to endure the onset of old age in public. Worse still, just as Eisenhower had to con- tend with the military-industrial complex, Reagan suffered the unremitting virulence of the media-academic complex. Despite which, out of 60,000 nuclear weapons only two have ever gone off; if that doesn't make one grateful for American world leadership, nothing will.
Morris's intimate portrayal is not a polit- ical biography but an analysis of a person- ality presented in semi-fictional form. Even the presidency itself is used largely as a means to understanding the inner Reagan. The author's privileged access to Reagan himself, which did not begin until as late as 1985, did not entail access to matters of state. Morris found the president, very properly, 'disappointingly taciturn' and this has perhaps coloured his judgment. Since as an author he wished to Boswellise Rea- gan, and Reagan declined to play Johnson, he unhappily concluded after his first year as biographer in residence that Reagan was an 'apparent airhead'.
The author reacted by adopting the tech- niques of the novelist to cover the decades in which he had not known Reagan. He does not attempt traditional biographical narrative. Instead, he says no one voice is enough to tell such a many-sided story. So we see Reagan through the eyes of a non- existent radical student, a non-existent political cynic and a non-existent biogra- pher who chanced to grow up with Reagan. We have before us not only the biography of Reagan, but the biography of three non- existent biographers to imbibe, to say noth- ing of much non-existent dialogue. If the object of this virtual biography is balanced understanding, my main objection would be that it fails to give a fair hearing to those who hated Reagan.
This is a spacious, meandering book Reagan does not enter politics until page 248 — and it brilliantly evokes small-town America in the radio age and Reagan's utter ordinariness. This is not untrue but it only augments the puzzle. Dishwasher, life- guard (77 lives saved), college footballer, radio sports announcer, Hollywood star, trade union leader, big business spokesman, California governor, president — all came his way without difficulty and were executed with rare success. Morris mentions `good looks and gab', and 'a sec- ond-class mind combined with extraordi- nary powers of persuasion' and rather plays down his beliefs. He makes an interesting suggestion: that lifelong myopia led him to compensate by extraordinary warmth of manner to people he could never recog- nise. (He once introduced himself to his son.) But the general theme that effortless mediocrity is enough to take one to the top remains unconvincing.
It is easy to forget what massive experi- ence he brought to the presidency. He had grown up with television in the Fifties, spending '250,000 minutes in front of the mike'. In the Sixties, he was the world's most successful conservative. He won strongly Democratic California for the Republicans by a million votes. For eight years he ran a state which was the world's sixth largest economy, pioneered abortion, shot students and carried a welfare reform which hugely increased grants to the deserving. In the Seventies, he narrowly failed to get the Republican nomination in 1976.
In 1980, nearly 70, but hardly aged at all, Reagan became president by 44 million votes to 36 million. Within days he began the biggest tax cuts in history. Tax fell by a third, America spent itself rich and its deficits are now surpluses. Keynseian orthodoxy was outraged, quite unreason- ably. Our understanding of whether Reagan knew what he was doing remains minimal, but economically he made mod- em America.
His other hunch came after a near-death experience from an attempted assassina- tion. (He sent for a priest and said 'What- ever time I have left I have left for Him.') The first sign that something was up was his famous 'Evil Empire' phrase (actually occurring in an anti-abortion speech attacking modern secularism); with the Red army butchering the Afghans, this was no more than fair comment. The announcement of Star Wars a fortnight later gave body to the phrase. (Opponents
murmured that the anagram of Reagan's full name was INSANE ANGLO WAR- LORD).
Star Wars never really existed in any physical sense. It was nonetheless supreme- ly real as a bargaining counter. Andropov saw at once that it threatened to remove the principle of mutual assured destruction
(MAD) on which the Cold War was based.
This meant the end of Russia as a super- power. Star Wars for Reagan was a screen role which he embraced with the concen- trated commitment necessary to convince Russia that the game was up.
Russia had the terrible choice, around 1983, of starting a pre-emptive war (which
it might have won), of entering an arms race it was sure to lose, or of becoming a different kind of country. The years around 1984 were dangerous ones for the world, for Star Wars initially made war more like- ly. In the West, millions looked back to a golden age of detente (alias Russian supe- riority) and Mr Blair supported unilateral- ism.
Without Reagan, Russia would still have crumbled and the Cold War might still have ended, but the process might have taken a generation longer. His contribution was to embrace Star Wars with alacrity, to sell it to the American people, to make it clear that unlimited funds were available, and to convince Gorbachev that whatever else was negotiable this was not. It was one of the great acting roles of all time. Russia blinked first, and the Cold War was over.
Morris has written a very unusual, very readable biography. He deals with Rea- gan's second term, when he was on the spot, excellently. He is brilliant about the Geneva and Reykjavik summits. In literary terms he makes a brave shot at a new departure, but is he any the wiser about Reagan at the end? Is it (as he sometimes feels) that there is nothing much to under- stand? Or is it (as he also hints) that there are exceptional qualities, akin to genius, which nobody has penetrated? Both views are consistent with the facts. That is the problem.
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