Throughout American History, there have been many Presidents. But no other past chief executive has lived a life quite like Ronald Reagan. Born to a poor family in a small mid-western town, Dutch (Reagan’s nickname) lived a true “American life”, an average child with mediocre knowledge who had a dream and worked hard to attain it. Motivation, vision, and luck allowed him to become the leader of the most powerful country in the world. While he is loved and hated by many, few can dispute that he had an amazing ability to persuade the American people. This paper will topically analyze how historians have portrayed Reagan’s personality and administration.

Throughout my study of Ronald Reagan, he has been portrayed as a man of contradictions. He was America’s most anti-Communist leader, yet he helped end the Cold War. He often preached that the government should be small, yet it grew in size throughout his administration. He vowed to never make deals with terrorist, yet he traded arms for hostages. He had many acquaintances, but few close friends. He claimed to have held to the highest of ethical standards, yet many of his appointees were corrupt. No matter what the authors thought of his administration, all could agree (based on these contradictions and more) that Ronald Reagan was an enigma, which no one, not even his wife Nancy, fully understood.

To analyze Reagan, it is hard to divide historians and political scientists into schools of interpretation. Instead, I have found two extreme views, with the rest of the literature being between them. The left-wing extreme view stems from Wilbur Edel. He considers Reagan to be simple-minded in thinking, ignorant of history and confused about reality.^, The right-wing extreme view comes from Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza sees Reagan as

almost a god-like figure, who should be a “rival to FDR”, in respect to greatness, and also blames many of Reagan’s failures on others (be it Congress, his appointees, etc.). In between these two extremes are the rest of the books and articles that I have read. Most of the authors’ views would lie close to Edel’s opinions, but specific topics do cause some authors to bend their general view of Reagan. (Due to the length and nature of this assignment only four prevalent topics will be discussed. They are Reagan’s Intelligence, Reagan and the Cold War, Economic Policy, Scandals.)

The extent of Reagan’s intelligence is one of the most debated topics when discussing our 40th president. While all of the authors admit that Reagan was not highly intellectual, different approaches are taken to this conclusion and the at least four different final conclusions about his intelligence. Edel, Schaller, and Pemberton conclude that Reagan is not too bright, although none were bold enough to say that without quoting someone else. Morris looks really focuses in-depth on his childhood, while Cannon uses behavioral theory. Finally, D’Souza mentions Reagan’s passivity when discussing intellect and considers Reagan to be of average intelligence.

Edel claims that Reagan “never had an original thought” in his life. One reason for this was because Reagan lived in a world of Hollywood illusion. This perfect Dreamworld within Reagan’s mind caused him to think too simplistically and optimistically. Another reason was because he lacked introspection and could not choose between alternatives. This reason was very prevalent during his administration when he could not choose between cabinet suggestions.

Schaller also questions Reagan’s intelligence, but does concede that Reagan had a great ability to read the public. In discussing Reagan’s management style, Schaller

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believes that the President played an actor who supplied the vision, voice and good looks while his closest advisors managed the affairs. Instead of being overwhelmed, Reagan limited his attention to a few issues that interested him such as, taxes, SDI, and abortion.

Morris’ conclusions about Reagan’s intelligence are based on his warped youth and young adult experiences. The young, visually impaired, Reagan grew up with an alcoholic father and ultra-religious mother. Reagan became a dreamer, greatly influenced by religion (Armageddon, city on a hill). As he became a sports announcer and later an actor, Reagan had to quickly move into and out of reality. Acting also taught him to follow a script. Bad memory, poor hearing and eyesight, combined with his other distortions of reality, would force many to believe that he was not intelligent. But Morris goes beyond that interpretation and finds evidence to support that Reagan was self-confident and insular in his thoughts.

Cannon takes a new approach on Reagan’s intelligence. After finding many contradictory sources proving and disproving Reagan’s intelligence, Cannon studied behavior theory. After researching Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Cannon concluded that Reagan did not exhibit logical intelligence but instead ranked high in intelligence areas such as, “interpersonal” intelligence. This type of intelligence was normal in an actor but unusual for a president (Concrete thinking not Abstract thinking). Cannon still blames most of his failures on his passivity and his management style.

Pemberton believes that Reagan’s passivity and detachment make it hard to judge his intelligence. He seems to agree with Cannon, that Reagan is highly intelligent in selective ways of thinking. Many of Reagan’s admirers thought he was very intelligent but admitted

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that he was intellectually lazy. This laziness led to many mistakes when presenting facts, but somehow the public understood it was not deliberate and still trusted him.

Even D’Souza admits that Reagan wasn’t an intellectual man and that he was often uninterested in the processes of government. In respect to passivity, D’Souza believes that Reagan saved himself for the big decisions and rarely thought of issues that were not core to his vision. This policy of waiting for the big events might have been a good idea but it sometimes did lead to scandal.

A second major topic that causes people to rethink Reagan is his involvement in ending the Cold War. There is a consensus amongst the authors about Reagan’s first term beliefs towards the Soviet Union. What many authors struggle with is how The Cold War, at one of its worst points in 1983, was ended, in whole or in part, by a person who built up the military, proposed radically new weapons, and called its enemy, an “Evil Empire”.

There are four possible explanations for Reagan’s policy change. One possible explanation might be that the international environment had changed so much that it was necessary for the U.S. to modify its policy. This theory seems to be chosen by the most authors. Schaller concludes that the “peace through strength” policy did not have a real effect on the fall of Communism. Instead, the Soviet Union was already nearing collapse and Gorbachev foresaw that he would need Western help to build into a post-modern economy. Reagan is given credit only for responding to the Soviet initiatives. Pemberton adds that Cold War ended because by the late 1980’s the interests of the superpowers coincided, both sides needed each other and were fearful of war.

Edel also agrees with this theory but does give Reagan credit for the INF Treaty.

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This credit is virtually taken away when Reagan is unwilling to trade SDI for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. SDI became an expensive and dangerous dream that worried the Soviet Union and many American over who would fire the first missile.

A second possible explanation is that domestic politics changed the Administration to change their policy. None of the authors that I read choose this theory. A third possible explanation is that the policy changed after administrative changes. Surprisingly, few authors approached this theory, even though many doubted Reagan’s management style, and entertained how well Reagan was controlled.

Her fourth and final possible explanation for the policy change was that it was leader-driven. The author contends that Reagan was the leader of the policy change. Between October 3, 1983 and January 16, 1984, Reagan became more and more fearful that misunderstanding might lead to nuclear annihilation. This fear forced Reagan to completely reverse his beliefs about the Soviet Union and see nuclear weapons as the greatest evil of the modern world.

D’Souza, who would agree with this theory, sees Reagan as the true victor of the Cold War, who foresaw it, planned it, and brought it about. D’Souza disputes the theory supported by Edel, and Schaller in many ways. First, he contends that Gorbachev was trying to save Communism not destroy it. Second, while he does agree that the Soviet Union was in a state of economic crisis there was no signs that Gorbachev would have to reform. Instead, it was Reagan’s his military build-up and SDI weaponry that neutralized the Soviet strategy.

The key to unlocking Reagan’s legacy and current portrayal does not only involve

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topics that are highly debated, but instead must also include topics that the maximum number of authors can share common ground upon.

From my readings, a majority of authors agree that Reaganomics was a failure. Schaller it just a new word for “trickle-down” economics. By cutting taxes, Reagan tried to help the economy by giving people more money. Americans wanted lower taxes, but were not willing to give up any benefits. Pemberton believes that Americans got just what they wanted: reduced taxes, increased the military, and retained the social spending. Morris agrees that the public got what it wanted or at least what Reagan influenced the public into believing. As Reagan took office he pledged to reduce spending and create a balanced budget, instead he increased spending (while reducing revenue) and created an enormous debt. Schaller calls this technique as “borrow and spend”.

Edel blames Reagan for the economic problems of the 1980’s. Reagan was blind to the impact of tax cuts, and naive in promoting military spending over other programs. Reagan used indirect taxes on items such as gas, cigarettes, and liquor to make up on some of his flawed plans. Edel feels that the heaviest burden of the new policies was on those near poverty line while the rich and the corporations benefited.

Cannon believes that Reaganomics had some achievements but many failures. He cites that there were many new jobs and prosperity even though the debt skyrocketed. Cannon thinks that Stockman takes too much credit for the failure. Whatever budget was released, it was a Reagan’s budget. Not only did he never submit a balanced budget, but Reagan also missed an opportunity to drastically reduce spending by saving on social security.

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Stockman, one of the chief proponents of the Reaganomics, blames many people including himself, for the failure of it. One of the major reasons for the failure was that Reagan never fully understood the economic plan named after him. Reagan saw tax cuts as a way to help reduce the financial burden of hard working Americans. He remembered how in his acting days, one actor could only perform in 3 or 4 movies before the 90% tax rate was reached. Through this memory, Reagan concluded that taxes hindered American production. Stockman was okay with Reagan tax plan as long as massive cuts in spending came with it. Cutting social programs might hurt some people in short term but Stockman felt it was necessary to the Revolution. In the end, Stockman believes that Reagan was too political and sentimental to stick to the plan, which led to a massive debt and a massive failure.

In American Economic Policy of the 1980’s, Feldstein finds that Reagan’s economic policies were successful in some ways. For example, non-defense spending had increased to 6% of the GDP by 1980. But this trend was reversed in the Reagan years and fell below 4%.

D’Souza refuses to denounce Reaganomics. Contends that while Reagan proposed the greatest tax cut in history, congress was too busy trying to get re-elected by fighting for social programs instead of trying to save the economy. D’Souza blames the Congress for the deficit. Instead of being a failure, Reaganomics helped produce seven years of uninterrupted growth. The economy was so successful that some of the middle class became rich. But Reagan’s plans would not alleviate those in poverty because the poor don’t work and his plans best help working Americans. D’Souza blames the new

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economy for much of the long-term unemployment. He contends that Reagan did not stand idly by but tried to lift trade barriers to promote the economy and this led to U.S. global economic dominance.

The impressive economic growth rate from 1983-1989 gives Reagan a mixed economic legacy. Almost every historian portrays Reagan’s economic policy as a failure. Yet, as D’Souza points out the Reagan Revolution did have some successes. For example, the lower and middle classes shrunk, while the size of the upper class increased during his administration. The one economic policy that brought the most positive feelings about Reagan was in his attempts to shrink the tax code and uniform the tax rate.

No matter how positive this tax code idea was, it in no way makes up for the massive increases in government debt and trade debt that will always haunt a positive image of Reagan.

One of the darkest parts of Reagan’s portrayal involves the countless scandals and ethics violations which hindered his administration’s record. Many authors blame Reagan’s passive management style for these ethical infractions. Edel concludes that Reagan had an unprecedented number of violations during his administration for two reasons. One reason was because he took successful businessmen, put them in important positions and let them handle it unsupervised. The second reason is because he never fired anyone for ethics violations.

Schaller considers four major scandals during Reagan’s terms which could have been avoided with the right legislation and/or the right integrity by government officials. They are the Wedtech Scandal, The Savings and Loan Scandal, the HUD Scandal, and the Iran-

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Contra Affair. The Wedtech and HUD Scandals were the by-products of Reagan’s tendency to leave departments unsupervised since they were already run by the “best people”. The Savings and Loans Scandal came from a direct attempt by Reagan to minimize regulation and save the Credit Union industry. These three scandals involved greed and extortion but were in no way connected to Reagan.

The most destructive force when attempting to portray a positive image of Reagan is the Iran-Contra Affair. Reagan, unscathed from previous scandals, began to lose his luster, and be distrusted by the American people. There was a national debate over whether or not Reagan was directly involved in trading arms for hostages and using the profits to fund the contras. Not only was trading with terrorists detested by the American public but both actions were explicitly prohibited by congressional legislation.

Many of the authors believe that Reagan fully knew about the arms for hostage trades and the contra funding. Whether detached or not, Edel, Schaller, and more believe that Reagan gave verbal and/or written directives to North, McFarlane and other subordinates to overstep their own authority and the authority of the Executive branch. The first directive was given in 1984, when Reagan told the “NSC staff to hold the contras together ‘body and soul’.” North created a private foundation to divert funds from private and foreign contributors, including the governments of Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, and more. Morris dates the first Iran directive as July 18, 1985, when Reagan was in the hospital 3 days after surgery. When North found out about the profit potential in selling Iran arms, he was eager interested in acquiring more “contrabutions”. D’Souza is the only author to believe that Poindexter and North deflected money without authorization.

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By October and November of 1986, North’s plans started to unravel, and public opinion started to plunge. On November 26, Meese persuaded Reagan to move fast in getting the truth out. Three separate investigations were started to find any wrongdoing (Tower Board, Independent Counsel, and the House and Senate committee investigations). Pemberton feels that the Tower Board saw the “real Reagan”, a man without cue cards or aides. By the second interview Reagan’s memory was tampered with and his recollections, became worthless. At the end of the investigations, almost nothing was pinned on Reagan. Schaller believes that Congress did not accuse him of illegal activities because the feared “popular retribution”.

Throughout his administration, Reagan was considered an ethical and highly moral man. Because of his management style and passivity, many unethical and immoral things occurred behind closed doors in the Reagan White House. Yet for the most part, Reagan was forgiven “so long as nothing surfaced that linked him directly with law breaking”.

From 1981-1989, Ronald Reagan and his administration had many successes and failures. His achievements include improving American morale, seven years of economic growth, and helping to end the Cold War. His failures include Reaganomics, the Iran-Contra Affair, and an administration filled with corruption. In the decade since Reagan has left office, historians have portrayed him very negatively. This should come to no surprise, since to conservatives, Reagan is considered the epitome of their philosophy, while most intellectual scholars and historians tend to have a liberal philosophy. It will be interesting to see if Reagan will still be portrayed negatively in the coming years, or if he will be spoken of more positively, like Eisenhower has been recently.

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