Posted on 11/12/2015, 9:38:46 PM by xzins
A hundred years from now, when future historians are rooting around the monumental life and times of Ronald Reagan, they will begin with his two auto biographies, Where’s The Rest of Me? and An American Life.
They will then move on to Lou Cannon’s five excellent books covering various aspects of Ronald Reagan’s life. Then, they will turn to the books edited by Marty and Annelise Anderson and Kiron Skinner, A Life In Letters and In His Own Hand, two wonderfully long books of chosen letters of the Gipper. They also wrote a book of Reagan’s radio broadcasts, also important.
Other important books will include those by Stephen Hayward, Paul Kengor, Ed Meese, Nancy Reagan and, if I am lucky, my books on Reagan.
But they will never, ever pick up or waste time with Bill O’Reilly’s new error strewn book, Killing Reagan. Fortunately, many who were alive and who worked for Reagan and many historians have stepped forward to denounce the book as “garbage,†as Reagan’s favorite national security advisor, Dick Allen called it.
I go out of my way to say that Dick was Reagan’s favorite national security advisor because O’Reilly ridiculously called Al Haig his favorite. If he was such a favorite, then why did Reagan fire him shortly into the first term? Haig was there as a sop to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. He was their cat’s-paw and to get them on Reagan’s side publically as he rejected Nixonian détente with the Soviets.
The day Haig left, Reagan derisively wrote in his diaries, “The only disagreement we had was who was president.†Never ever did Reagan express anything approaching a kinship with Haig.
It’s not just one error of fact. There are literally dozens of errors, made up stories, canards, prevarications in Killing Reagan. He writes that Reagan spent his days watching soap operas. Really? History shows otherwise, including ushering in the most sweeping tax reform in 30 years in his second term and spending hours going toe to toe with Gorbachev, bringing about the first real reduction in nuclear arms since the beginning of the Cold War. And there were big speeches, big ideas, big campaigns, big legislation, big debates, all in his supposedly befuddled second term.
When future historians are researching Reagan, they will go to the National Archives at the Reagan Library and Foundation in Simi Valley, Calif., where the papers of Ed Meese and Mike Deaver and others are. They will go to the Hoover Institute where the papers of Peter Hannaford and others are stored. They will go to the Reagan Ranch where other papers, including those of his fan club, are kept. They will find in each a bright and erudite and sophisticated man, all through his presidency. They will find no records of Reagan watching soap operas all day, nor records of Nancy Reagan running the White House or foreign policy, or acting as her husband’s gatekeeper.
Others, so far, who have denounced the O’Reilly book include the estimable historians Skinner, Hayward and Kengor. So, too, has Ed Meese, Reagan’s closest aide and friend from Sacramento to Washington; John Heubusch, head of the Reagan Library and Foundation; Frank Donatelli, Reagan’s White House Political Director and longtime campaign strategist; Allen, Reagan’s National Security Advisor; A.B. Culvahouse, Reagan White House Counsel; and, of course, George Will, who knew Ronald and Nancy Reagan as well as any conservative columnist and better than most, save the legendary Bill Buckley.
Thus, we have these historians and Reagan experts all arrayed against the O’Reilly book. But that’s not enough. (He also lifted heavily and mistakenly from my books including falsely claiming that Nancy Reagan knew about the purloined Carter briefing books in the fall of 1980, or that Stu Spencer told me he thought that Reagan thought Jimmy Carter was a “little shit,†but not that he called Carter that, as O’Reilly falsely claims.
But I digress.
So far, not one of the thousands of Reagan White House aides has come forward to corroborate O’Reilly’s retelling of history. If O’Reilly was even close to the truth, wouldn’t there be just one staffer to come forward and support Killing Reagan?
So, who you going to believe? Bill O’Reilly or the lying eyes of 1,000 people who worked up close and personal with the Gipper?
If Bill O’Reilly wrote the facts of Ronald Reagan, wouldn’t he be invited to speak at the Reagan Library, or the Reagan Ranch, or Eureka College, or the Hoover Institute, or the Buckley Center at Yale? He hasn’t and he won’t. The silence is deafening.
Reagan biographers and historians are often asked about this or that, and they find themselves fixing history, often. Washingtonian Magazine recently mistakenly wrote that Reagan himself moved the inaugural platform from the East Façade of the Capitol to the West in 1981 when in fact the decision had been made months earlier by Senator Mark Hatfield, to save money and to accommodate more people. Reagan, in this instance, was simply the lucky beneficiary of Hatfield’s decision.
But we find ourselves cleaning up bigger messes, too. Like O’Reilly’s book. George Will wrote that O’Reilly has “made a mess of history.â€
And how.
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Craig Shirley is a Reagan biographer, having written four books on the Gipper including his newest, Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan.
The rejection of O’Reilly’s book “Killing Reagan” appears to be universal from those who actually knew and worked for the man.
For my part, I remember what I saw, and the old man did not have anyone controlling his voice in those debates. He was pretty nimble, as I recall. And he went on to bury his opposition in the elections.
If that was an impaired Reagan, then imagine what else he would have accomplished if fully functioning. China probably would have surrendered, and the democrat party would have disbanded.
O’Reilly is a populist and the number 1 RATINGS whore in the MSM. I despised him when I turned him off for the last time a dozen years ago. I worked for Reagan, and he was personable in public, but tough as nails if you crossed him, or tried to marginalize his proposals. Ole Bob Dole found this out the hard way, as did others.
O’Reilly’s ghost writer really screwed this one up, eh?
He was my commander in chief during part of my many years in the Army. So, in that sense, I worked for him, too. My eyes dripped when he left. We never had another like him, nor before. He was a beloved president, by those of us in the military.
Back in the day, when George Will was the ONLY conservative voice on any major network, and that only for a few minutes a week, I never missed him. Since then, the conservative movement has passed him by.
But his memory of Reagan isn’t analysis, it’s first hand. It’s like O’Reilly arguing with someone about the true identity of their own great-uncle.
He should have just shut up.
Moreover, he should have stuck with people who’d been dead a while and really had been killed.
Me too! He was the first president I voted for. It was during his admin that I got my first job. As someone who works for the DOD I totally agree with you.
” My eyes dripped when he left.”
Mine too. Reagan had a profound respect for our military.
He hated to lose even one soldier.
“... he went on to bury his opposition in the elections, and later the US commercial fishing Industry ...
I was months away from going to an assignment at Ft Campbell, home of the Screaming Eagles, when the Sinai Peace Keeping force returning from Egypt to Ft Campbell went down in Gander, Newfoundland with all on the plane killed.
I recall watching the president speak on TV, I saw him walk among the grieving families and soldiers, and I saw huge shoulders for them to lean on.
I’ll never forget that. I was SO proud of that man!
Just one tidbit from my ongoing Reagan bio: I interviewed his secretary of Commerce Bill Verity, who himself was not a spring chicken when he took the job. Verity was astonished at Reagan’s energy, saying they had cabinet meetings every morning at 8 . . . AFTER Reagan had already had his national security briefing. Verity said Reagan had unbelievable energy, and he even asked him his secret. “Bee pollen,” the Gipper answered.
Big ships
Think I’ll go get some bee pollen. :>)
Didn’t work for me. I tried it after he said that. Reagan is one of those people with uncanny amounts of energy. As a student, the amount of stuff he did (football team, drama club, busing tables for his tuition, class president, on and on) wears me out just reading about it.
He was a true leader. He wanted freedom and opportunity for all of us. He was the antithesis of an elitist. He was what Norman Rockwell painted.
O’Reilly is a pompous egoistical blowhard.
A great book is “Reagan in His Own Hand”.
Did you know that Ronald Reagan was one of the first people in America to wear contact lenses? When he gave speeches he used notes on index cards. Before a speech he would pop out one contact so he could read off the cards with one eye and look at the audience with the other.
Reagan was a real American. Someday the current POTUS will leave this great Earth. There will not be people standing on the side of the road for miles as his hearse passes by like there was for the Gipper.
What I’m not sure is why Bill O’Reilly wrote this book. I think he wants to increase his audience on the left by tearing down our most admired President. It seems like Fox News is making a change to the left after building up their audience with conservatives. I guess they think conservatives don’t have anywhere else to go, but we have the Internet, at least for now.
I watched a dvr of the O’Reilly/Will confrontation. My one concession to O’Reilly is, if Will had told some Fox bigwig that he’d talk to O’Reilly before his piece was published in the Washington Post, and it seems reasonable to think Will was asked to do just that, then I can see O’Reilly’s upset at being blind-sided by a member of his own company. It seems entirely reasonable to me that these people in the same company are expected to keep other informed, and especially if it’s as cutting and critical as Will’s article was of O’Reilly. I can see why O’Reilly was upset.
However, that doesn’t mean that O’Reilly’s book is good history. Evidently, it is not. And that is not just something I’m parroting. It is the consensus of every former associate of Reagan who is yet living. I read Ed Meece’s article and it, too, was scathing.
O’Reilly should have stuck with long-time dead people.
And his ability to speak and to paint EMOTIONS with words was unequaled. I do not believe a deficient human being could have done that. As a pastor, I speak a lot, obviously. I think I know when someone knows what he’s doing in that area. Reagan was a master’s master.
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