Posted on 12/01/2001 6:04:44 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Peggy Noonan, a professional presidential watcher, has a new book out about President Ronald Reagan that ends up shedding new light on President George W. Bush.
The book is called When Character Was King, and the ace speechwriter's premise is that Ronald Reagan's greatest asset was his Midwestern-Horatio Alger-win-one-for-the-Gipper character. And she's on to something there. While other presidents may have had more schooling or more money or more political muscle, Mr. Reagan's good-guy instincts won him the enduring affections of everyday Americans. In recent rankings, they rate him just behind titans like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
Historians may quarrel with that, but they may miss the point that Americans liked Ronald Reagan as a person, as well as his efforts to rein in federal growth and wind down the Cold War. It is largely Ronnie Reagan the guy that Ms. Noonan writes about, and she does a far better job of capturing his character than Edmund Morris did in his wispy Dutch a few years ago.
As she writes, "I am still searching for an anecdote about Reagan that truly reflects badly on him. When I talk to or read the works of people in politics, entertainment or journalism who didn't admire or agree with him, they will, if they get going, tell you Reagan was lazy, or naive, or a bore. But they never say he was low or unkind or dishonest or untrustworthy. I think his character is the least criticized of any great political leader of the century."
Her access as a former speechwriter helped her find telling gems. She revisited many of her former colleagues to ask if they had detected early signs of the Alzheimer's disease that has debilitated the aging president.
"People here in Manhattan - a lot of people here don't like him - say, 'Just tell me the truth, was he losing it before he left?' Well, I was there, I worked with him on his farewell address, and he was there. He wasn't losing it. Not from what I thought. So I went to people who were around him all the time and said please tell me honestly. And they all said no, he was there, but being so hard of hearing caused some confusion. They say he started to get sick in the early '90s, and it was probably after a fall from his horse that knocked him unconscious. The physical blow accelerated a process that had just begun."
She also interviewed the newly elected President George Bush about his memories of Mr. Reagan from his father's administration and came away with the impression that the 43rd president is a lot like the 33rd president, Harry Truman. She wrote, "Truman had followed a charismatic leader, had seemed too plain and uninteresting to fill a president's shoes and was, his first years in office, at least, a bland public speaker, an uninspiring man. But this plain, uninteresting, colorless man had managed to do pretty much everything right. He rallied his war-tired nation to rebuild Europe, to support the Marshall Plan, to stop Soviet communism in Greece, to wage a war to stop it in Korea. He was a leader. He just didn't seem at the time, early on, to be one. I think in Bush we have a Truman."
Yet many of her quotes about Mr. Reagan call to mind the Texas president: "It is not true, as has often been said, that Reagan wasn't curious. He just wasn't curious about what you'd expect a man like him to be curious about." Likewise, Mr. Reagan escorted a Soviet leader to his modest ranchhouse and liked to use humor to put others at ease: "I think he thought everyone was too serious. I think he realized today's dreadfully somber problem is next week's joke about the hell we went through last week and he figured he'd just speed up the process. ... He was also fun all the time because the constant tragedies and injustices of life while painful were also by definition passing - everything changes, today is setback, tomorrow bounty."
She credits Mr. Bush with having grown quickly into the presidency. "Normally it takes a president two years to get his feet straight, get used to his shoes," adding he has done so under some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.
"One of Bush's gifts is to quickly read a person and a situation and absorb the data around him on many different levels and synthesize it. Like his dad, his tone doesn't always keep up with his brain. One of the reasons he sits quietly and thinks a lot is that he is absorbing everything on five different levels. It all goes into his gut and becomes an intuitive thing. ... His religious faith is in part giving shape to his presidency even as it has given shape to him."
One of the most intriguing anecdotes in her book is about President Bush's first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader told him that he had taken to wearing a cross that his mother had given him and one day had put it down in a house he was visiting. And the house, he said, had burned down. He wanted to tell a worker to go find the cross. Just then, a worker walked over to him and put out his hand and opened it up. And the cross was there. Mr. Putin told Mr. Bush, "It was as if something meant for me to have the cross." President Bush interpreted that to mean that the Russian was saying, "There was a higher power."
It was the beginning of Mr. Bush's sense that he and the Russian leader could establish a personal connection. Was the former KGB leader playing the spiritually sensitive American like a violin? Looking at the rapport the two subsequently demonstrated at Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Ms. Noonan observed, it doesn't seem so.
Like President Reagan, who took a chance on doing business with Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr. Bush's natural instincts and character may turn out to be his strongest assets.
Rena Pederson is editor of The Dallas Morning News editorial page.
My late first wife & I moved heaven and earth to help Mr. Reagan get elected... just recall the Cubans in Angola, the Iranian crisis, the Russians in Afghanistan, 23% interest rates, the Sandanistas and others South of the border.... it was a mess!
It really looked like the world, and America, was falling apart. And Reagan changed so much of that.
Those two men set more people free ( and were nearly killed- literally- for the effort ) than any other two I can think of.
God has blessed me with wealth and success, and I credit Ronald Reagan with fostering and nurturing the climate for my business successes.
Thank God for RR. That being said, GW Bush is no Reagan. Not by a long shot. While I admire W's convictions, honor and compassion, he falls way short of Reagan's beliefs in the American spirit being unencumbered by Government.
Reagan's personal attitude was the secret of his success; and a great attitude towards people and life in general seems to mark George Bush as well.
Her observations about the President are accurate, I believe...they jive perfectly with the opportunities I had to observe him on the campaign trail. After one short conversation I had with him in Des Moines, Iowa, I told others that I thought he was a GREAT listener, i.e., I thought he was truly listening and incorporating the things I was telling him.
The good thing is that he not only listens and incorporates information well, but he then has the executive abilities to take action very, very effectively.
Bush 41 was far more the Country Clubber who didn't hold conservative convictions as much as he strived for concensus politics. That's how we got that awful tax increase that ruined his credibility and his presidency. I think Bush 41's presidency can be summed up in two words: David Souter.
Bush 43 has done well to shed the blue blood heritage and appear as "common folk" and it is why he is trusted far more than his father. Like Reagan, he speaks more conservatively than he governs but he speaks far less conservatively than Reagan. Perhps it is the times that shuns bald-faced Reaganesque conservatism but I wish he'd start talking about Daschle and Gephardt in the same way he talks about Osama and Saddam. We have some "evil doers" right here in Washington and not all of them left when Clinton swiped the furniture. Particularly, it concerns me how little he has campaigned for Republicans as if it will tarnish his peacekeeper image. Fine. Then he should be sending Cheney out to fire up the troops instead of letting them feel like orphans. Bush's popularity may be in the 80% range but he's not doing much heavy lifting for his party. At least Criminal Clinton never forgot about keeping his party happy.
When the media thought they'd put together a hit piece on Ronald Reagan it always turned out he was loved even more by the people. They saw the good in him and all the LIBERAL hate trying to bring him down, couldn't make a dent. I hope George W. is blessed with similar character.
Yes, I realize that many Freepers don't like Lincoln. Nevertheless, I think that in the very long run, those three will be seen as our greatest leaders. FDR was a colossus, presiding over our greatest war and the transformation of our society, but if justice is ever done to our history, he will also be seen as the man who was duped by Communism, presided over and extended our greatest economic depression, and destroyed many of our freedoms by setting a vast imperial bureaucracy over us.
As for Harry Truman, he was a political midget. He has been blown vastly out of proportion by the leftists. He dealt with great events and was fortunate to be served by statesmen and generals whom he inherited from the Second World War.
He's moving the ball down the field and he knows who his enemies are. There's more than one quarter in the game and he wants to win it. (Sorry, the Army-Navy game just started.) BTW, he endorsed Orlando Sanchez, the Houston GOP mayoral candidate in a tight run-off today.
President Reagan adored and respected his wife, and she him. The same is true of President Bush. They truly enjoy each other's company and love and respect each other. They both have that twinkle in their eyes whenever they look at one another. And this comes through to the American people. How can one not feel admiration when looking at them as a couple.
Carry that over, also, to how both President treated the military--with great respect and admiration. That also comes through the camera's eyes. I remember watching President Reagan walking past dozens of our military, all standing at attention. He looked like he couldn't have been prouder walking past these men. Bush does the same thing.
It is their humaneness and strength of character that endears themselves to the people. Neither man has any major character flaw, hubris, from which to demean who they are. And the mistakes they have made, will make, are honest mistakes. Quite different from the intentional deceit practiced by the pig who was sandwiched between these two great men.
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