You just don’t know Reagan.
You seem to lack the depth to see where he stands in history, and in winning the disastrously unfinished WWII which was heading to our eventual defeat, and which would eventually end in our final suicidal spasm of resistance called WWIII, he is our greatest war time president, and he barely fired a shot, the man was a genius, far superior to the lesser minds that you think superior to his.
Before Reagan we knew the world was doomed, that communism was eating the world, and that at some unknown point, total global, thermonuclear war would end what we knew was a forever stalemate, that could only end in Communism’s victory, or in mutual destruction, a total reset of the human race.
Reagan knew better, he knew that he could undo the Gordian knot, if only he could make himself the most powerful man on earth. Thankfully Reagan knew how to out smart and defeat everyone who ever stood in his path.
Ugh. You don’t get. You can be a genius and never do anything with your life. To specifically be an intellectual, to understand and traffic in ideas, you have to be cultured. You have to devote an awful lot of time to “the best that has been thought and said.” Reagan had time to read and think and write, but not for that.
If he wad a genius, it was in practical politics and public relations. Not in higher culture. In transmitting the thoughts of others to the masses, not in thinking them up himself. If you don’t believe me try reading his stuff then reading something by a man of culture along similar lines, like “The Road to Serfdom.” It’s like going from preschool to law school.