Posted on 08/19/2003 7:46:05 AM PDT by bedolido
On the day that Ronald Reagan left office in January 1989, I had dinner with the Soviet ambassador. He was a guest at three Bush inaugural dinners that night, but he generously stayed at the National Review dinner for two courses and 90 minutes. And in that time he electrified the other guests with his remarks on Eastern Europe.
The Soviet Union, he said, would not intervene in Eastern Europe if the peoples there decided they wanted non-communist governments. Questioned closely by his fellow guests William Safire and Jeane Kirkpatrick, he repeated this assurance several times. When he left, we were both excited and somewhat skeptical.
That skepticism was unwarranted. Within a year, while the Soviet Union watched from the sidelines, communist governments fell all over Eastern Europe, and the Berlin Wall was torn down.
That occurred almost exactly 18 months after Ronald Reagan's speech in Berlin when he uttered the prophetic injunction: ''Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'' At the time these words were considered by sophisticated analysts to be foolish hyperbole. Yet they both aroused and reflected the passionate rebelliousness of the ''captive nations'' that seized their liberty two years later--and whose growing resistance to Soviet repression was already evident to seasoned observers.
At the time of the 1989 inaugural dinner, for instance, National Review's roving correspondent, Radek Sikorski (later deputy foreign minister of Poland and now executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative), was writing our next cover story on the topic of ''the coming crack-up of communism.'' Maybe the ambassador had an advance copy.
As these dates suggest, it was Reagan who brought about the collapse of communism, even though the Bush administration handled that collapse with extraordinary diplomatic skill. Yet Reagan received little credit. Even as communist regimes were toppling like ninepins, his reputation was in decline. Academic historians gave him poor ratings in rather silly surveys of presidential greatness. And the liberal left repeated the dismissive formula of Washington insider Clark Clifford that Reagan was an ''amiable dunce'' who had simply been standing by when things went right.
In recent years, however, Reagan's reputation has risen again to reflect his undoubted achievements. Several biographies have contributed to this revival, even the much-criticized official biography, Dutch by Edmund Morris, by demonstrating that Reagan was a much more attentive and diligent chief executive than either the media or even self-described ''insiders'' realized at the time.
But Reagan has done much of this repair work himself. Martin Anderson, a former Reagan aide, collected and published an impressive collection of Reagan's columns and radio talks. His love letters to Nancy Reagan and his voluminous correspondence with ordinary Americans were also turned into books. And all these showed not an ''amiable dunce'' but a thoughtful, well-informed and acute mind (and, in the case of the love letters, a devoted heart).
Now there comes along an important book that gives us still deeper insights into the former president by a former speechwriter--indeed, by the man who actually wrote the Berlin speech calling for the wall to be torn down. In How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life (Harper Collins, $24.95), Peter Robinson tells how he studied Reagan closely, partly to solve the mystery of how such a nice guy came to be president--and partly because he was unsatisfied with his own slightly directionless life and felt he needed a role model. [Full disclosure: I know Peter Robinson, I have appeared on his television program, and we are both former speechwriters.]
Robinson's study of Reagan, made easier and deeper by the access a speechwriter enjoys, has produced a moving account of how the president developed and improved his character (and, by extension, how Peter Robinson, you and I can do the same thing).
Reagan jokingly encouraged the idea of his own laziness, but in fact he worked steadily at being president. The papers he took to the personal quarters at night would all be marked and annotated in the morning.
His private journals are full of prayer. His national security adviser and close friend, Judge William Clark, claims that he knew when the president was praying--he would look upward and close his eyes--at Cabinet meetings. Yet with the exception of his love for Nancy, Reagan avoided talking about such personal matters. He did not wear his virtues on his sleeve. He was a serious man with a light touch.
Fittingly, this is a serious book with a light touch. Among the many good Reagan stories it contains, one illustrates his sense of what was appropriate: Reagan was told the French government wanted to award him the Croix de Guerre.
''That's for bravery,'' he says, and his face darkens. ''All I did was fly a desk. I couldn't possibly accept the Croix de Guerre.''
When the report is corrected and he is told he is to receive the Legion d'Honneur instead, he remains uncertain. He asks: ''What for?'' and is told ''statesmanship.''
''Statesmanship?'' He relaxes. ''I can play that role.''
Indeed he could. He made the part his own. And if he can no longer receive the gratitude of those who live in the freer world his statesmanship established, then perhaps on his behalf a little light prayer is called for.
Slime.
Reagan, in His Own Hand by Kiron, K. Skinner (Editor), et al (Paperback - October 2001)
If, after reading this book, you still have doubts concerning Reagan's intelligence then, well, you're...uhhh...not very perceptive.
Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism by Peter Schweizer
RONALD REAGAN: HOW AN ORDINARY MAN BECAME AN EXTRAORDINARY LEADER by Dinesh D'Souza
He shows how the liberals misunderstood and, because of their misunderstanding, underestimated Reagan.
Don't start laughing yet, because he also shows how conservatives did the same.
The Best! from the best President I'll ever know. May God bless him & Nancy.
Ann Coulter points out in Treason that academic historians tend to take the conceit that "journalism is the first draft of history" seriously--and they produce a history which is not truly based on hindsight, but merely the second draft of journalism.If that sounds remotely sensible to you, you need to seriously consider how anyone could rewrite silence--the news CNN kept to itself--into meaningful truth about Saddam Hussain's regime.
If Henry Ford was thinking of the second draft of journalism when he said, "History is Bunk," then he certainly had a point.
When future "historians" conduct their polls on the Greatest Presidents, I hope they'll reflect on the literally billions of people (and tens of billions of man-years) now living in relative freedom and liberty because of this man's convictions and leadership. All the pretenders who protested his policies, called him an "amiable dunce", laughed at his "evil empire" and "tear down this wall" speeches, thought his "Star Wars" policy was lunacy, apologized for his insistence at deploying the Pershing II's in Euorpe, protested his Defense build-up and deficits: all of these "people" (I have other words in mind), now want credit that they "helped bring about the collapse of communism"...
NO! Reagan was the architect, the author, the voice, and the leader of the most important victory of our lifetime. Credit Margaret Thatcher and the Pope for their important supporting roles, but Reagan was the "Star"! I can't imagine what a different world we would be currently living in had it not been for Ronald W. Reagan and his presidency...
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