John Thompson an an historian and a retired teacher in Oklahoma. Here he reviews Max Boot’s new book, Reagan. He wrote this review for this blog.

He writes:

In 2018, Max Boot recounted “his extraordinary journey from lifelong Republican to vehement Trump opponent.” Although Boot once idolized Ronald Reagan, his Reagan: His Life and Legend tells the story how Reagan planted the seeds of “Trumpism.” Boot concluded that “Reagan was both more ideological and more pragmatic than most people realize–or that I realized before starting this book project more than a decade ago.” But, even when retelling Reagan’s success stories, such as working with Gorbachev, Boot exposes his weaknesses, such as those that could have led to nuclear war.

Boot starts with the way Reagan’s rhetoric and falsehoods led to Trumpism. For instance, his advertising for General Electric led to a “convergence of conservatism in the 1950s.” Boot recalls a number of Reagan’s statements that were “all false,” and how they helped “inure the Republican Party to ‘fake news.’” 

First, Reagan’s false mythology about preventing a communist takeover of Hollywood contributed to his political rise, as he “avoided becoming tarred with the excesses of McCarthyism,” even though he “served as an FBI informant and an arbiter of the blacklist.”

Moreover, Reagan called John F. Kennedy a “fellow traveler.” He also said America was adopting “temporary totalitarian measures” such as social services and federal regulation, and “we have ten years … to win or lose –by 1970 the world will be all slave or all free.”

But, Boot adds that the press wouldn’t call him out for lying, supposedly because he was sincere in believing his falsehoods. As his spokesman, Larry Speakes, said with a shrug, when asked about Reagan’s repeated lies, “If you tell the same story five times, it’s true.”

Similarly, Reagan’s allies remained silent about what they really believed about him. After visiting Reagan in the White House, Margaret Thatcher “pointed to her head and said, “There’s nothing there.”  Thatcher later criticized his war in Grenada, saying, “The Americans are worse than the Soviets.” President Nixon called Reagan a “man of limited mental capacity” and Henry Kissinger said he was “a pretty decent guy” with “negligible” brains.

Reagan said similar things about his allies, for instance, he defended Nixon’s staff that drove Watergate because they were “not criminals at heart.”

However, Reagan’s spin and lies also had more disgusting components, which were not adequately exposed. When he launched his 1980 presidential campaign in Neshoba County, where the band played “Dixie,” his aide acknowledged that, in every election, “race played a role.” There is evidence that, privately, Reagan “shared the rightwing view of (Martin Luther) King as a dangerous subversive.” And, as Tom Wicker, the New York Times journalist, said, Reagan moved racial politics “from a lack of interest in fighting racial discrimination to an active promotion of it.”  

And when opposing the anti-apartheid movement, Reagan said that South Africa had already “eliminated the segregation we once had in our own country.”

By the end of his campaign, Reagan’s advisers used President Carter’s stolen debate briefing books to prepare him for his famous victory, using the words, “There you go again.” But Boot concludes, “What has gotten lost – both at the time and subsequently was that Carter was right on the facts and Reagan was wrong”

Then, in regard to efforts to prevent an “October Surprise,” Boot concludes that “credible evidence” later emerged that his campaign reached out to delay a hostage release.

Boot explains that when Reagan took office, plenty of his staff were incompetent and/or wanted to dismantle government. He also had adult conservatives in the room who sometimes succeeded in convincing Reagan to back away from the most outrageous policy proposals. Even so, “Few if any presidents have ever been so totally isolated even from their most senior cabinet members.”  

In his first pivotal policy battle, over cutting taxes for the rich to reduce rampant inflation and unemployment, Reagan lacked curiosity and knowledge about economic facts. He once asked Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker, who took the lead in fighting inflation, “Why do we need the Federal Reserve?”

After his detailed account of the ignorance Reagan showed when passing his economic plan, Boot concluded that his administration “reached its high water mark in 1981 with its massive Economic Recovery Tax Act.” 

But, “Now the nation would have to reckon with its consequences.”

Those consequences included inflation over 9%, and unemployment over 10%; the loss of 1.9 million jobs; a 45% cut in school lunch funding; 45% of jobless persons not receiving unemployment insurance; a 1983 budget deficit of $200 billion; and shrinking the middle class, increasing profits for the rich, and increasing suffering for the poor. Long-term effects included an increase in the death gap between lower and higher income persons of 570%; and by 2020, an inequality gap was wider that those of almost any developed nation.

The same pattern held for Reagan’s foreign affairs decision-making. Boot explained that Reagan apparently believed that he ordered the invasion of Grenada (which was based on falsehoods) because “he had acted as an instrument of God.” Reagan also quoted a U.S. pilot who noted that Grenada produced nutmeg, an ingredient in eggnog. The “Russians were trying to steal Christmas,” the pilot insisted. “We stopped them.” 

And, according to Boot, Reagan’s opposition to Cuba could have gone nuclear. Secretary of State Al Haig said about Cuba, “Just give me the word and I’ll turn that f____ island into a parking lot.” But, fortunately, some of his aides settled Reagan down.

And the same behaviors, when Reagan ratcheted up Cold War paranoia, “could have resulted in a nuclear war that neither side wanted.” During his years-long negotiations with Gorbachev, Reagan was sometimes restrained by his professional staff, but sometimes not. And often his absurd beliefs kept reappearing. 

Mostly due to Gorbachev’s efforts, an arms reduction treaty was eventually passed. But Boot reminds us that in 1986, “Reagan and Gorbachev nearly agreed to a ten-year plan for total nuclear disarmament, but Reagan wouldn’t abide limits on U.S. outer-space defenses.” Because Reagan had faith in that missile defense system, which other participants knew was impossible and dangerous, he “scotched the deal with Gorbachev over them.” So, now “the United States and Russia collectively possess more than ten thousand nuclear warheads. And, despite Trump’s promises to build ‘a great Iron Dome over our country,’ satellite defenses against nuclear attacks remain unviable.”

By the way, Reagan’s few sources included the 1939 movie “Confessions of a Nazi Spy,” and, perhaps, a movie he was in, “Murder in the Air” (1940). 

And Reagan’s baseless beliefs also drove his commitments to mass murderers in Central American. He supported the “psychopath” in El Salvador behind the assassination of Bishop Oscar Romero because he was a favorite of the racist Sen. Jesse Helms.

Reagan’s support for the Contras grew out of a plan to “1. Take the War to Nicaragua. 2. Start killing Cubans.” 

And this post doesn’t have room to recount the downing of two airlines, costing 579 lives, during chaos spread by the Reagan administration. Neither is there time to appropriately cover the punch line he told over an open microphone,   “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Even before Reagan’s dementia took control, his mental acuity was in severe decline, and he apparently forgot that he was briefed on the arms for hostages deal with Iran. Boot reports, in 1987, the Iran/Contras investigations’ “harsh conclusions” were that Reagan knew about the arms for hostages deal, but it wasn’t proven that he knew about the funding of the contras;  “Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh concluded that Reagan had known about the diversion of funds, … but he could never prove it.” 

Even so, the Reagan spin on the investigation was that it was “the lynching that failed”

During this time when Reagan was increasingly disoriented, his administration was burdened by the Housing and Urban Development ( HUD) scandal; the banking and the savings and loans collapses which were due to his deregulation; and the AIDS epidemic, which Reagan ignored, even though his administration did not. Boot then concluded, “It is damning with faint praise to say that Reagan’s record on AIDS was not as bad as it could have been.”

I believe, the same could be said in terms of most, if not all, of Reagan’s “successes.” 

Boot’s conclusions include: 

While Reagan exaggerated the credit he deserved for the economic recovery, he ducked the blame for the recession.

Even if he read more than Trump and even if “he uttered fewer falsehoods than Trump,” Reagan’s “Often-shocking ignorance of public policy,” and his “repeated false statements” paved the way for Trump. 

Reagan “mishandled a pandemic, just as Trump did”

Like Trump, Reagan “catered to white bigotry.”

Reagan “empowered Christian Nationalism” and a “growing white backlash”

Reagan “helped hollow out the middle class, thereby creating the conditions for Trump’s populist movement.” 

But, there is more to worry about. Trump’s first term was similar to Reagan’s two terms, in that Trump’s aides sometimes managed to thwart or redirect his ambitions. A second Trump term would likely be more dangerous, and with fewer or no reasonable aides to settle him down.