President Reagan – The Triumph of Imagination

President Reagan – The Triumph of Imagination by Richard Reeves

I almost passed on this one.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed this author’s similar works on John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, there were many reviewers that claimed this book had a heavy liberal bias and was unfair towards Ronald Reagan. That fact shouldn’t surprise anyone when you consider the author is a liberal journalist and Reagan was a staunch conservative.  Since biased books aren’t my thing, I was tempted to turn the other way.  Fortunately, I chose to ignore my inner ear and read this book. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy it, I also thought it was the best of the Richard Reeves’ Presidents “trilogy”.  Yes, the author points out many of Reagan’s faults, but he does acknowledge the good things as well, and sells his audience that Reagan was, indeed, a great communicator.

With a subtitle “The Triumph of Imagination”, one should carefully realize that this moniker can mean more than one thing.  When one thinks of “imagination” they might use the word in a highly positive context. Before one can accomplish great things, one must imagine great things.  When their imagination becomes a reality, it’s a win-win for all that are involved when results are achieved.  However, the word “imagination” can also infer things less kind. Imagination is also a substitute for reality, and when one spends too much time imagining and not enough time doing, there can be consequences.  We look at such individuals as living in an alternate reality kin to a fantasy land.  Whether or not it was the author’s intentions, he seemed to attribute both of these definitions to Ronald Reagan.  Reagan could be an incredible visionary that made many feel great and he reinstalled a state of patriotism throughout the country, but he also seemed more like an actor in a movie reading made-up lines trying to convince a skeptical audience that his fictitious ideas were real.

Like the Kennedy and Nixon books by this author, the style and layout of the narrative focuses on Reagan’s tenure in office as president.  We get snippets of life before 1980, but the bulk of this book focuses on all of the major events during his two terms.  The great strength of this (and the other two) book(s) by Reeves is that he is a compelling storyteller.  He knows how go through the major events of these eight years without boring his readers.  We read the good's and the bad's as well as read about the key members of Reagan’s administration. The book seemed to be a perfect length; about 500 pages.   Had it been twice as long it would have only been half as good.

We see that Ronald Reagan is brilliant when handling a crowd and talking to reporters during press conferences.  I was surprised to read that, early in his administration, he wrote many of his own speeches. In many ways, a leader’s job should be to do just that; lead.  The president doesn’t have to be the smartest person in the room nor know the intricacies of the many aspects of government. This is why a president has a Cabinet.  It’s impossible to not make comparisons against Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter.  When Carter would be asked a tough question during a press conference, he would often look like a cat that just swallowed a stale mouse and plod his way through an unpleasant, unintelligible answer. Reagan, on the other hand, would shrug his shoulders, tell a funny-one liner, smile, say something along the lines of “aw shucks….” and manage go up five points in the polls overnight.

Of course, there needs to be some substance to go along with that style, and Reeves is clear to point out the bad decisions Reagan made, and the bad advice (whether coming from an insider or an astrologer) Reagan chose to heed. So in addition to a soaring economy, Grenada, and escalating the end of the cold war with Russia, we also read about massive deficits, Beirut, and a heckuva lot of Iran-Contra.  

We must then remember that once Reagan became president, he was already and old man. 70 when he entered office, 78 when he left.  Although 70 sounds old, 78 sounds a lot older. A lot older. We see the effects of this quite often during the latter years of his administration.  We see Reagan confused and frequently falling asleep during cabinet meetings. He didn’t even know where he was at times (‘You’re in the Oval Office, Mr. President…’)  It might surprise readers, but this isn’t quite as rare as one might think. Woodrow Wilson was an invalid due to a stroke his last 18 months in office, and FDR was basically at death’s door before his fourth term even began.  It’s just that we didn’t have a thing called “television” back then, so these things could be veiled.  Although the author doesn’t explicitly state this, it seems Reagan starts falling apart mentally after John Hinkley emptied a gun into him.  It’s quite scary to read how serious Reagan’s wounds were, and it seemed touch and go for a while.  Since this event happened a mere two months after Reagan takes office, we don’t really have enough information to do a “before and after” comparison. Still, though, judging from what we read, Reagan definitely had much more vitality before the attempted assassination.

Another thing I found interesting while reading this book is how much more cooperative the congress seemed to be then in recent history. Although Reagan was dealing with Democratic majorities, he was able to pass a lot of legislation and there seemed to be a much better spirit of cooperation.  Of course, we read about Reagan diligently making phone calls to members of congress whenever there was an important vote, and I would guess the Gipper regularly turned on the charm.  Again, this is something that Jimmy Carter could not (nor would not) do.  I also found it a bit of an eyebrow raiser to find that many well-known Republicans turned against him after successful negotiations on nuclear disarmament and a reduction in weapons production in 1988 with the USSR.  One scathing conservative accused the president’s accomplishments of nothing more than “Liberal Detente”.

So the majority loved the man, the far left hated him, and the author does a brilliant job throughout his book telling us why.  I’ll say it again, I didn’t think this book was biased in the least. I thought it was a very fair treatment.  In fact, had the author been a strong conservative instead of a strong liberal, I could feasibly see the exact same finished product.

For me, this is a trait of an excellent book.