Towering he wasn’t

HE was a “truly great American”, a “towering figure” of our age.

And so on and so forth from Lady Thatcher, Michael Howard, George W and all who scurried to bury Ronald Reagan in an oleaginous ocean of tribute. How deep is that ocean? It’s amazing how fast your feet touch rocky bottom.Reagan, for the moment, has a particular niche in American folklore.He came after poor careworn Jimmy Carter; he was sunshine after rain.He made deft jokes and read an autocue better than any president before or since.He smiled and aw-shucked easily, a man for picket fences and pecan pie, a Frank Capra hero picnicking on the White House lawn.The good times rolled through his eight years of power.And – oh yes! – he was that strong guy who “won” the cold war.Is this enough for towering greatness? Aw shucks! It barely stands straight, let alone tall.There was one hero of Ronnie’s two terms, one really strong fellow who held everything together:but his name was Jim Baker, the brilliant political manager and mate of Vice President George Bush, who became chief of staff when a crisis of competence threatened everything, when Donald Regan bailed out and the Oval Office turned pear-shaped.James A Baker III was, for a while, the best president America never had; and Ronnie, upstairs snoozing or watching TV, was a passenger riding his luck.There is no point, simply no point, in turning Ronald Reagan into some mythic master now that he’s gone.I travelled campaign trails with him and laughed at his jokes.He pressed flesh and political buttons better than most.He was Hollywood on a smalltown visit.Maybe, post-Carter, the US psyche did need bathing in such balm for a while.But the reputation which flows from there is hokum squared.A champion of individual freedom? See how Reagan, the boss of the Screen Actors Guild, kept his head well down when McCarthy started firing poisonous darts.An ideal family man? Only if you like your families dysfunctional (and your Christianity stillborn again).A man of action? When the going got rough in Beirut then (to use the jargon) he cut and ran.A warrior? Only if you reckon invading Grenada was tougher than a friendly against Iceland.A wizard of detail? He didn’t understand Iran-contra from start to finish:a non-plotter who couldn’t follow the plot.Wasn’t he, though, a true ideologue of the conservative way? That was a rubbish claim even Mrs T found hard to make with a straight face.Ronald Reagan’s sunlit years of prosperity were built from the straw of ballooning deficits.Live now, let old George Bush pay later.He believed in tax cuts, but not hard choices.There was no pain to his gain, no structural reform, no reality of change to be battled through.He let others pick up his tabs.And as for “winning” that last war but two, the cold one before drugs and terrorism… did Reagan, piling cruise missiles into Europe, dreaming star satellite dreams of zapping bad hats, truly win anything? Didn’t he just watch the Soviet Union self-destruct on his watch? Was Reagan around for the Prague spring which told the first story of an empire’s disintegration? Did he choose the moribund gerontocracy of Brezhnev and Chernenko? The plain fact, which nobody discerned, is that everything the west said about unsustainable economic systems and ramshackle bureaucracies was right:the plain fact was that Soviet hegemony couldn’t last – and the “war” was mostly one of mutual incomprehension.Give Ronnie credit for not dropping the ball near the basket, but don’t make him FDR in the process.No, the towering lesson of Reagan’s tenure was rather different.It was about what the job amounted to and how you needed to do it.Since the Warren Harding and Coolidge disasters 30 or more years ago, America had expected and wanted more:a Roosevelt to be revered, a Truman to be sustained, an Ike of experience and Kennedy filled with hope, a cute LBJ and clever (if tricky) Dicky.Some of those choices went well and some were lousy, but the hurdle of effort and expertise was set ever higher.Could the system keep on producing? And then, ambling out of Sacramento as his 70s neared, came Ronnie and Nancy in matching check shirts.Their record may, on examination, have been scratched and fuzzy, their friends too fat and nest-feathered for comfort.But they talked the talk, seemed to walk the walk, and made the White House manageable again.You didn’t need to engage brain if you could hire it for the duration.You didn’t need to be bright or brilliant.Aw, shucks! They made George W possible.- The GuardianHow deep is that ocean? It’s amazing how fast your feet touch rocky bottom.Reagan, for the moment, has a particular niche in American folklore.He came after poor careworn Jimmy Carter; he was sunshine after rain.He made deft jokes and read an autocue better than any president before or since.He smiled and aw-shucked easily, a man for picket fences and pecan pie, a Frank Capra hero picnicking on the White House lawn.The good times rolled through his eight years of power.And – oh yes! – he was that strong guy who “won” the cold war.Is this enough for towering greatness? Aw shucks! It barely stands straight, let alone tall.There was one hero of Ronnie’s two terms, one really strong fellow who held everything together:but his name was Jim Baker, the brilliant political manager and mate of Vice President George Bush, who became chief of staff when a crisis of competence threatened everything, when Donald Regan bailed out and the Oval Office turned pear-shaped.James A Baker III was, for a while, the best president America never had; and Ronnie, upstairs snoozing or watching TV, was a passenger riding his luck.There is no point, simply no point, in turning Ronald Reagan into some mythic master now that he’s gone.I travelled campaign trails with him and laughed at his jokes.He pressed flesh and political buttons better than most.He was Hollywood on a smalltown visit.Maybe, post-Carter, the US psyche did need bathing in such balm for a while.But the reputation which flows from there is hokum squared.A champion of individual freedom? See how Reagan, the boss of the Screen Actors Guild, kept his head well down when McCarthy started firing poisonous darts.An ideal family man? Only if you like your families dysfunctional (and your Christianity stillborn again).A man of action? When the going got rough in Beirut then (to use the jargon) he cut and ran.A warrior? Only if you reckon invading Grenada was tougher than a friendly against Iceland.A wizard of detail? He didn’t understand Iran-contra from start to finish:a non-plotter who couldn’t follow the plot.Wasn’t he, though, a true ideologue of the conservative way? That was a rubbish claim even Mrs T found hard to make with a straight face.Ronald Reagan’s sunlit years of prosperity were built from the straw of ballooning deficits.Live now, let old George Bush pay later.He believed in tax cuts, but not hard choices.There was no pain to his gain, no structural reform, no reality of change to be battled through.He let others pick up his tabs.And as for “winning” that last war but two, the cold one before drugs and terrorism… did Reagan, piling cruise missiles into Europe, dreaming star satellite dreams of zapping bad hats, truly win anything? Didn’t he just watch the Soviet Union self-destruct on his watch? Was Reagan around for the Prague spring which told the first story of an empire’s disintegration? Did he choose the moribund gerontocracy of Brezhnev and Chernenko? The plain fact, which nobody discerned, is that everything the west said about unsustainable economic systems and ramshackle bureaucracies was right:the plain fact was that Soviet hegemony couldn’t last – and the “war” was mostly one of mutual incomprehension.Give Ronnie credit for not dropping the ball near the basket, but don’t make him FDR in the process.No, the towering lesson of Reagan’s tenure was rather different.It was about what the job amounted to and how you needed to do it.Since the Warren Harding and Coolidge disasters 30 or more years ago, America had expected and wanted more:a Roosevelt to be revered, a Truman to be sustained, an Ike of experience and Kennedy filled with hope, a cute LBJ and clever (if tricky) Dicky.Some of those choices went well and some were lousy, but the hurdle of effort and expertise was set ever higher.Could the system keep on producing? And then, ambling out of Sacramento as his 70s neared, came Ronnie and Nancy in matching check shirts.Their record may, on examination, have been scratched and fuzzy, their friends too fat and nest-feathered for comfort.But they talked the talk, seemed to walk the walk, and made the White House manageable again.You didn’t need to engage brain if you could hire it for the duration.You didn’t need to be bright or brilliant.Aw, shucks! They made George W possible.- The Guardian