The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

Books in Review

(Page 2 of 2)

Hayward is somewhat critical of Reagan for taking what he says is so long to formulate a policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. But we know from Martin Anderson's Reagan's Secret War and Peter Schweitzer's several books that Reagan chaired almost every meeting of the National Security Council in 1981, during which time a policy of containment plus was debated and agreed upon. It was then set down in a national security decision directive, NSDD-32, by NSC staffer (and Harvard historian) Richard Pipes in early 1982-barely one year after Reagan took office.

In Hayward's now fast-paced narrative, 1983 emerges as the most significant year of the Reagan presidency because both the Cold War and the U.S. economy reached turning points. This was the year that Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" -- inspiring cheers by dissidents in the Gulag and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain -- and launched his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). It was also the year when the economy began to kick into high gear as a result of the Reagan tax cuts.

THE LAST THIRD of The Age of Reagan properly deals with the Reagan-Gorbachev summits, meetings that worried conservatives always suspicious of Communist motives and confused liberals who could not believe Reagan when he said he wanted to eliminate all nuclear weapons. For the president, the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was truly mad. The controversial summits produced the INF Treaty, which eliminated an entire category of nuclear missiles and signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

In Hayward's opinion, the Iran-contra scandal "nearly snuffed out the lamp on top of Reagan's shining city on a hill." He faults Reagan for dealing with a terrorist government to secure the release of American hostages but absolves the president of any part in the diversion of funds to the Contras in Nicaragua.

At the end of 1987, following the "triple whammy" of Iran-Contra, the failed Bork nomination to the Supreme Court, and the stock market crash, the liberal media were dusting off their headlines about "the stench of failure at the White House." Even some conservatives joined the chorus of dismay, unable to comprehend the import of the arms control agreement signed by Reagan and Gorbachev. One conservative who understood what was transpiring was the veteran Cold Warrior Brian Crozier, who in August 1988 described a "gigantic funeral service" for Communism that was being conducted by the Soviet Communist Party.

The American people evinced their desire for the continuation of the Age of Reagan by giving him "a third term" in the person of his vice president, George H. W. Bush. Further proof of Reagan's lasting influence was the election of a Republican House in 1994 -- which some observers called Reagan's "third landslide." There was also the enduring conservative philosophy of the Republican Party and the 1996 welfare reform, which incorporated the principles Governor Reagan had advocated in the early 1970s.

The Age of Reagan is a brilliant history marked by superb writing and prodigious research (66 pages of endnotes). But it ends on an uncertain note, quoting Midge Decter that "there was no Reagan Revolution" and Gary McDowell that Reagan did far less than he hoped and promised but "a hell of a lot more than people thought he would."

Reaganauts would have preferred Margaret Thatcher's summation that Reagan "won the Cold War without firing a shot" and presidential historian Stephen Ambrose's comment that "Reagan will be remembered as the president who reversed the decades-old flow of power to Washington."

As good as The Age of Reagan is -- and it's very good -- we are still waiting for the definitive history of the Reagan presidency.