Hagiographers Under Every Rock Says Publishers Weekly - Road to the Middle Class

EVERY ONE of us has their obsession. We just like to interpret the world to fit our prejudices. The problem is when we let things get a little out of hand, as Reagan biographer Paul Kengor complains:

Though one would never know this from reading Publishers Weekly, the fact is that Ronald Reagan is now consistently rated among the most successful presidents in all of American history—even by liberals who comprise academia and media.

Even those of us conservatives who came late to Reagan, say in mid 1980, realize that there was a lot more there that we realized. Reagan was an actor, and he let us see what he wanted us to see. In retrospect that was not much.

Reagan was a man who had done quite a bit of reading. But he never felt the need to tell us that. Reagan was a man who had done quite a bit of thinking. But he never felt the need to impress us with his learning.

Reagan was quite happy for everyone to think him an “amiable dunce,” in Clark Clifford’s immortal phrase. And because wise man Clifford thought that many liberals thought that too. And many liberal writers echoed the idea.

Frances Fitzgerald’s blistering, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War, was reviewed glowingly by Publishers Weekly as a “painstakingly detailed study.” The book portrays Reagan as, indeed, way out there in the blue.

Only Reagan wasn’t way out there. His policies, foreign and domestic, especially after the jumble of Iraq, look astonishingly precise and focused. He did stand fast while the Federal Reserve painfully squeezed inflation out of the economy. He did lower tax rates and start a 25 year boom. He did increase defense spending and twirl the Soviet Union into confusion.

This is not way out there in the blue. This is political genius of a very high order.

It is such a pity that the anonymous reviewers at Publishers Weekly still don’t get it.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.