Reason’s review of a new book, [1] Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, [2] by John Patrick Diggins makes a strong case that Reagan was no George W. Bush. The review was well-written and persuasive on several fronts.
Diggins sets out to write an intellectual biography not just of Reagan but of his times, with special attention to the neocons who always urged the president to take a firmer line against the Soviet Union. The hawks in Reagan’s administration assured him he couldn’t reason with communists. One adviser, the historian Richard Pipes, told Reagan the Russian mind worked in ways fundamentally different from our own. The peasant mentality of the Russian muzhik, Pipes had written in 1977, held “that cunning and coercion alone ensured survival: one employed cunning when weak, and cunning coupled with coercion when strong. Not to use force when one had it indicated weakness.” Reagan disagreed. Ignoring the advice of hard-liners like Pipes and the neoconservative strategist Richard Perle, Reagan preferred jaw-jaw to war-war. “We must and will engage the Soviets in a dialogue as serious and constructive as possible,” he insisted in a 1984 address.
A nuclear close call in 1983, when Soviet early-warning systems wrongly reported American missiles on the horizon and nearly triggered a Russian retaliatory strike, reinforced for Reagan the imperative of building trust with the enemy. After that incident, “I was even more anxious to get a top Soviet leader in a room alone and try to convince him we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us,” Reagan later wrote in his memoirs. Negotiation was possible, regardless of what the hard-line “experts” said.
It was 1980 when I voted in my first presidential election. I voted for Reagan, at a time when he ran against a man for whom I now have much greater respect, Jimmie Carter. I was often disappointed by Reagan as his presidency played out. On the other hand, I find it incredible that admirers of George W. Bush often put Reagan on a pedastal, as though George W. Bush is a Reagan clone. Yes, they both opposed abortion and they both invoked rhetoric that America needed to be strong militarily. They both spoke of individual responsibility. This book review makes it clear, however, that Reagan didn’t have a thirst for reckless military adventures. Further, Reagan did believe in the power of diplomacy. Reagan lacked Bush’s xenophobia, religious zealotry and parochial thinking. In fact, I am absolutely convinced that had Ronald Reagan been part of the current Bush Administration, they would have had such differences that Reagan would have been fired by George W. Bush.
Reagan is not on any pedastal for me, but I don’t despise him, as I do George W. Bush.
I’ve followed Reason [3] over the years, because of its good non-partisan writing. Tonight, Bill Moyers’ Journal [4] featured an lively interview with the editor of Reason, Nick Gillespie. I highly recommend viewing it when the video is made available on the PBS site. [4]
Print this post [5]
[6]