No one really cares about the lives of the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Former presidents are another story. Consider Ronald Reagan whose presidency ended in January 1989 and who died in June 2004. When he died it took seven days to haul him across the country from California to Washington and back to the land of fruits and nuts, to round up the usual fawning suspects to praise him fulsomely to the heavens before finally putting him in the ground. It is not unreasonable to suspect his early career in show business influenced his final bow on the American stage.
As time passes, however, it is possible to look at Mr. Reagan and consider whether he was the great savior of the Western World from the evil empire, the Soviet Union, or the "amiable dunce" as early critics labeled him. Or, perhaps he was something else, something in between the worshipers and the icon bashers. Two new books by Will Bunch (Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our future, Free Press, 276 pages, $25.00) and William Kleinknecht (The Man Who Sold The World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America, Nation books, 316 pages, $31.00) will provide new insights.
Like the chameleon who changes the color of his skin to suit his mood or match his surroundings, Reagan flipped from being a Roosevelt liberal and union president to being a co-operator with the House Committee on Un-American Activities in outing Hollywood reds and a spokesman for General Electric where he honed his "Morning in America" image.
The one constant in Reagan's career from hawking light bulbs to occupying the Oval Office is that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The middle class got stuck with the resulting bill. Much is made these days about a small percentage of rich people paying all the income taxes. Well, hell, they got all the money they ought to pay the taxes.
These two new books aside, one political observer, Garret Keizer, a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, suggests that a longer view of Mr. Reagan may be necessary. Perhaps twenty-years is not enough time to properly assess the man and the myth. In the April Notebook essay in Harper's, Mr. Keizer writes:
"Take for example, that 'arch conservative' Ronald Reagan, who from the perspective of a hundred years will be seen as the last of the California hippies, a man who told us that if we just let the markets run wild and the Magic Bus of juggernaut capitalism go barrel-assing down the road with its freak flag flying all would be groovy and out of sight. What was his 'Morning in America,' but a cover of 'Aquarius'; what was his presidency but the last act of 'Hair?' - preferable, I admit, to the helter-skelter criminality of Cheney and Bush. But to call either administration 'conservative' in its blithe overconfidence is to hold up a picture of your brain on drugs."
