www.nationalreview.com/weekend/books/books-nordlinger012701.shtml
By Jay Nordlinger, NR's managing editor 32 Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America, ed. We had always known he was an inveterate writer, and a formidable one. And that is a problem we Reagan champions have: always trying to prove that our man -- undeniably a politician and leader of great skill -- was an intellectual force as well. This has become an exhausting, sometimes pathetic mission. The strength of Reagan's mind has long been obvious to anyone who has given the man two seconds' thought; To them, Reagan will always be, if not quite a boob, a lightweight all the same -- a lucky innocent, who stumbled onto some success as president. About that cache of documents: Not long ago, a scholar from Carnegie Mellon, Kiron K. Skinner, was poking around Reagan's private papers for a study of the Cold War. And among those papers she found a treasure-trove of manuscripts -- true manuscripts, which is to say, documents written by hand. These were radio addresses that Reagan had given between the years 1975 and 1979 (after he left the governorship of California and before he became president of the United States). There were almost 700 of them, and they showed Reagan in something close to his fullness. Together with the Hoover Institution's Martin and Annelise Anderson -- veteran Reaganauts -- Skinner assembled the manuscripts into this present, extraordinary volume: Reagan, In His Own Hand. He was a pamphleteer, an arguer, a persuader, a propagandist, at times an evangelist -- restless and relentless. He was a shy, remote man, as we all know, but he had what must have been a compulsion to take the public by the arm and say, "See? He seemed not only to like to write, but to need to do so. He wrote from childhood, and he always wrote well -- solidly and often stylishly. Over nine decades, he wrote thousands of letters, including 276 to a pen pal who was president of a Reagan (movie) fan club. He wrote for his school newspapers, he wrote a sports column for the Des Moines Dispatch, he wrote speeches and statements as a union leader, he wrote as a corporate spokesman, he wrote as a political candidate, he wrote as a governor and as a president -- he never stopped, at least until the day in 1994 when he wrote a stunning, heartbreaking letter to his fellow Americans, explaining why he had to withdraw from public life. Constant, well-chosen, in the end, world-changing words. The mid-'70s radio addresses were five minutes long, and they were to be delivered five days a week. Along with his newspaper column (which, unlike the radio speeches, was largely ghosted), they were Reagan's principal means of keeping in touch with the public between campaigns. The editors reproduce the manuscripts exactly as they are, with crossings-out and additions and marginal notes and misspellings and mispunctuation and instructions to the typist -- everything. Now, I myself do not see the point of retaining misspellings and mispunctuation. Anyone can appreciate the drive for authenticity, but these oddities are distracting, and contribute little. Also, Reagan did not intend for the public to see his scribbles; The spelling and punctuation, in my view, should have been regularized, if only as a courtesy to the author. For these addresses, Reagan wrote to a precise length, and he did so with no evident struggle -- his revisions are relatively few (and they are almost invariably improvements). He took a break from the broadcasts to wage his 1976 campaign against President Ford for the Republican nomination. And he never lost the bug to communicate by radio: As president, he instituted a weekly radio address, a practice copied by his successors. They are gutsy and gentle, meek and bold, indignant and relaxed. They have a little poetry, and a lot of prose (Reagan was addicted to facts and figures, and to logic; They are utterly natural, never contrived (professional showman though Reagan may have been). They always respect the dignity and intelligence of the audience. They show a basic sympathy for people -- especially for those bent under tyranny -- and they show a love of life. And they show a strange, almost unbelievable patriotism. The broadcasts bring to mind Paul Harvey, and Rush Limbaugh, and Milton Friedman's old Free to Choose series. One nice thing about them is that they provide a walk down Memory Lane, issues-wise: oil, the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, Namibia! Reagan would write about anything and everything, drawing from a variety of sources (and not only Human Events). It seems that nothing failed to engage his attention, large or small. How about this speech by Eugene Rostow, or this column by James Burnham, or this memoir from this new dissident, Bukovsky? And if the Soviets could lie so flagrantly about the Katyn Forest -- history matters immensely -- could they be trusted on anything? In October 1975, for example, he considered the Russian wheat deal, a complicated, hotly debated question. We can see the train of his thought as he considers every angle -- the economic, the strategic, and the moral. We see in these radio addresses that his project, fundamentally, was moral. And then there is that patriotism, a patriotism that seems to make the country new again: "Every once in a while, all of us native-born Americans should make it a point to have a conversation with one who is an American by choice. They have a perspective on this country we can never have. Readers may take particular delight in a robust defense of the Electoral College, made in April 1977, after Vice President Mondale proposed eliminating it. With the patience and precision of a fine civics teacher, Reagan makes the case for republican government. In a purely popular referendum, he notes, "a half-dozen rural states could show a majority for one candidate and be outvoted by one big industrial state opting for his opponent. For me, the trait that shines most brightly through these pages is goodness -- a core, manifest goodness. Here is one marginal note -- or, rather, message -- I especially love: It is from Reagan to his typist. And then there is his first address after the 1976 presidential campaign. The Holly wood diary, the correspondence, the slashing, expertly crafted political speeches -- all are remarkable. But if I could single out just one item, from the entire volume, it would be a 1971 letter -- very long -- written to the editor of a student publication at Eureka College, Reagan's alma mater. The paper has obviously denounced Reagan as a Neanderthal and foe of academic freedom, incapable of understanding the current generation. So the governor of California takes the time to explain himself and to teach these students something about philosophy, and freedom, and history. Life was a very grim business, but somehow we managed to keep a sense of humor, which I have difficulty finding, at least on our Calif. You have every right to ask the reason behind the mores & customs of what we refer to as civilization. You have no right & it makes no sense to reject the wisdom of the ages simply because it is rooted in the past. And he not only pauses to compose this weighty letter -- which must be the most significant document ever to reach that humble publication -- but realizes that the punk editor may deep-six it! How did it happen that Reagan -- endowed with so great, and so obvious, a mental gift -- was ever regarded as a simpleton? In a foreword to this book, George Shultz writes, "I could tell dozens of stories about specific times when Ronald Reagan displayed detailed knowledge about policy issues, and when he took decisive action based on that knowledge -- without the benefit of someone whispering in his ear or sliding a note into his hand. But when excerpts from the book appeared in the The New York Times Magazine, I got a marveling phone call from an old friend, reared in the liberal Democratic (and Reagan-hating, or at least-belittling) faith. Whatever else the collection does, it proves that Reagan, in addition to the many other things he was, was a writer. As president in particular, he would have many top-flight speechw...
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