Replies

Well, just read this from Wikipedia Reagan had absorbed the liberal Democratic opinions of his father and became a great admirer of Franklin Roosevelt after his election in 1932. Reagan's father eventually found work as an administrator in a New Deal office established in the Dixon area, a fact that Reagan continued to appreciate even after his political opinion of Roosevelt had dramatically changed.
From 1947 to 1952 Reagan served as president of the union of movie actors, the Screen Actors Guild. He fought against communist infiltration in the guild, crossing picket lines to break the sometimes violent strikes. (Such violence and chaos were abhorrent to Reagan, and, when police and students clashed in Berkeley in May 1969, Reagan, as governor of California, called out the National Guard to restore order.) Much to the disgust of union members, he testified as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee and cooperated in the blacklisting of actors, directors, and writers suspected of leftist sympathies.
Although Reagan was still a Democrat at the time (he campaigned for Harry Truman in the presidential election of 1948), his political opinions were gradually growing more conservative. After initially supporting Democratic senatorial candidate Helen Douglas in 1950, he switched his allegiance to Republican Richard Nixon midway through the campaign. He supported Republican Dwight Eisenhower in the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956, and in 1960 he delivered 200 speeches in support of Nixon's campaign for president against Democrat John F. Kennedy. He officially changed his party affiliation to Republican in 1962. Just get any biography to fill in the details. As to FDR, he appreciated FDR's qualities as a leader and especially his bonhomme. Someone once said of Roosevelt that had had a second classs intellect but a first class temperament.

So far as I know, FDR never wrote anything, nor studied anything. The irony is that Reagan was a student of public affiars--apparently all his life. Yet he was portrayed as a dunce. He was as blind as a bat without his glasses, which is what kept this very fit man from enlisting in combat arms. I have heard a story from an old Goldwater supporter who encountered Reagan in a hotel lobby, reading a newspaper with great attention. To his surprise Reagan was wearing thick, horn-rimmed glasses. As soon as he was greeted, he quickly whipped off the glasses and stuck them in his coat pocket. He was famous in Hollywood for his almost photographic memory. He had to; he could not read dialogue off a board.If he forgot a line--which was rare--he asked a prompter to read it from the script. Most of the time if he was doing a scene, and someone else forgot a line, he could supply it. He lost that facility with age, along with his hearing, which was a sign that--surprise, surprise--he suffered lasting harm from taking a near fatal bullet, but also from the fact that this is what happens to all of us as we age.