And while everything I have read of Reagan tells me that was true, Reagan also had ambition, inner hardness, and a capacity to act and to reinvent himself as needed, common attributes of children of alcoholics. From a young age, Reagan had to accommodate to a fickle audience in the form of a kind and loved but troubled father who was crushed by alcoholism and unemployment during the Depression.
Reagan embraced Christian teachings from his mother and had a lifelong reading habit that gave him a deep understanding of economics, politics, and current events. I think that the President whom Reagan is most similar to his fellow President from Illinois, Lincoln, both with fathers haunted by failure, unchurched but deeply Christian in world view, and ambitious, self-educated actors. Lincoln an actor? Of course, he was, that being a requirement to be a successful trial lawyer.
Like much of the country, Reagan became an FDR loving New Dealer because Roosevelt had lifted the country out of the Depression. Yet there was a line that Reagan and the rest of the country would not cross. Socialism and communism simply cannot be reconciled with Christianity or traditional American values of freedom and individuality. Indeed, the ideals of communism are inherently at odds with the cruel reality of communism.
As President of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan championed the interests of individuals against notoriously powerful, money-driven studio heads. Yet Reagan was successful as SAG President because he directed the economic and professional interests of SAG’s membership into demands and measures that could be reconciled to the economic and organizational realities of the movie and TV business.
As a leader and negotiator, I think Reagan instinctively drew on the Christian admonition to be of good will and to look at things from the other person's perspective. Again and again, as SAG President, as California Governor, and as US President Reagan showed an ability to understand, charm, pressure, reason with, and find agreement with adversaries.
As for Reagan's political career, compare videos of his 1964 speech for Goldwater with his later speeches as candidate for Governor and President, and then as President. Reagan's speech for Goldwater was magnificent but was a Jeremiad, admonitory and often angry in tone. Reagan's later speeches, including his radio talks in the 1970s, were fact intense and reasonable, disarming, even genial in tone. Reagan had developed the capacity to not only inspire those who agreed with him but to confound and beguile even those inclined to dislike him and his message.
As a student at Tulane University in March of 1973, I saw this first hand when Reagan spoke to a student audience of decidedly mixed sentiments. Reagan began by praising the students, urging them to do great things, and hoping that he would live to see the wonderful accomplishments to come for our generation.
Then Reagan went on to make his pitch for conservative ideas, but saying that we should take nothing that he said for granted, but to check the facts, test what he and everyone else told us, and to think for ourselves. That was far more flattering than much of what we got daily in the classroom. I briefly shook hands with Reagan at a small private reception and talk the next day. Reagan was gracious and charming.
Some of the credit for Reagan's success must also go to his adversaries. Consider Robert F. Kennedy, who after Reagan's speech for Goldwater, vindictively got Reagan fired as GE spokesman and actor on the Death Valley Days show they sponsored. That made Reagan free and ready to try his hand at running for office.
Later, when Reagan bested RFK in a debate over the Vietnam War before a British university audience, Kennedy warned his staff sourly never to put him up against Reagan again. Who know, but for Sirhan's bullets, RFK and Reagan may well have been opponents for President.
I have gone on too long and will close here rather than exhaust your interest.