Reagan's America

Rating:
Summary: Best authority on Reagan's early life
Review: COvering much of the same ground as Edmund Morris in his authorized biography, "Dutch," Garry Wills' "Reagan's America: Innocents at Home" is a much more successful look at the institutions and country that shaped the 40th President.

With his usual incisive analysis and beautiful use of the English language, Wills does what Morris found impossible: the discovery of Reagan's soul.

To Wills, Reagan is the logical product of the American heartland and of the institutions of the heartland: community service (he was a lifeguard first), small town media (he was a Des Moines, IA, radio announcer). Reagan is also shaped by the institutions of coastal America that are marketed to the heartland: movies and big business (when Reagan made the final turn toward conservatism, he was the national spokesman for General Electric). Finally, Reagan is also the product of a dysfunctional family, with some of the same logical results: a withholding from others, a love of the abstract and of fantasy.

At the end of Wills' study, the reader gains a clear impression of the forces that created Ronald Reagan and bonded him to the American people. It is true that Reagan, as Morris argues, is enigmatic. But he is not impossible to begin to understand. Wills is the essential guide to the Reagan who was fully formed long before he reached the White House.

Rating:
Summary: Good writing, bad book.
Review: Mr. Wills is a smart writer who starts his book off comparing what he believes is Mark Twain's America to that of Ronald Reagan's childhood. Wills, in fact, spends a lot of time on Twain's America. The point of this time spent on Twain is to exposed, according to Wills, the imaginary America of Reagan's childhood with that of America plagued with labor and racial strife. Anyone who has spend time reading Twain's Huck Finn knows that the book is a dark portrait of America life, and is not idyllic at all. Although Wills writes well of this period, he doesn't quite pull the trick off, or explain how the memories of childhood can not be happy ones when the outside world may not be so happy. This is a failure of this book. Wills often acts like a hanging Judge stalking someone he obviously despises, yet grudgingly admires. Marshalling his facts to suit himself, he continually points out what he considers flaws in Reagan's character. In doing so, he leaves the readers with a number of false impressions. The most obvious and blatant impression is that Mr. Reagan never enlisted and never served in the Military during World War.

The reality is that three months after Pearl Harbor, Ronald Reagan received a letter from the War Department telling him to report to Fort Mason in San Francisco. He reported to Col. Philip T. Booker and served first as a liaison officer loading convoys. Because Ronald Reagan had terribly poor eyesight, the Military confined him non-combat roles. Later Col. Booker informed Reagan that he had been transferred to Army Air Force Intelligence in Los Angeles. His commanding officer was Gen. Hap Arnold. There he was assigned to make Army Air Force training films and documentaries, and given the rank of second lieutenant. He eventually wound up as adjutant and personal officer for his unit. One of his jobs was to prepare classified films about the progress of the war to be shown to members of the general staff in Washington. Some of these films included Nazi films about their Death Camps. Reagan was eventually promoted to the rank of Captain. From 1942 to 1947, Reagan made only three films for Hollywood. All were made in 1943. The most famous was This is the Army. Many members of the cast of this movie were members of the Armed Services. Reagan himself is listed in it as Lt. Ronald Reagan. Boxer Joe Louis who is also in the film is listed in the cast as Sgt. Joe Louis. You can find the complete cast list at http://imdb.com/title/tt0036430/fullcredits . There you will find listed, at least, 21 members of the Armed Services with roles in this film. This film was made with the co-operation of the Armed Services. Warner Brothers gave all the profits, estimated to be around $10 million, to the Army Emergency Relief. Stallion Road was the first picture Reagan made after the War.

Thousands of people served the War Effort in War World 2. Not everyone enlisted. Thousands served in the U.S. Merchant Marines. Their service was important to the War Effort, so was that of those men and woman who worked in the factories that manufactured the tools that those fighting the war needed in order to win. Their efforts should not be denigrated because they were not on the front fighting the enemy. Their service was as necessary as anyone's. Not everyone is fit for combat roles. Ronald Reagan was one of those but he did serve and was a proud member of the U.S. Army.

Why Mr. Wills wants to leave the reader with this provable and false impression one can only guess, but in the name of fairness, one should give someone credit where it is due, and this Mr. Wills fails to do. Another false impression, Mr. Wills leaves the reader with is that Mr. Reagan was not a man of faith. Recently there have been a number of books showing otherwise, as well has Ronald Prescott Reagan's moving tribute to his father's faith at his funeral.

For these reasons and many, others this is a bad book.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable treatment of the meaning of Reagan the man
Review: Those who criticize Wills for "sloppy work" are off base and clearly have an ax to grind. On the other hand, this book is not a "consummate" piece of work, either. The task of writing a Reagan biography is virtually impossible. Edmund Morris tried to do it and wound up with a botched, absurd, fictionalized mess.

Wills doesn't pretend that this book is a biography. It's actually an essay in book-length form (41 short chapters, perhaps a botched attempt at writing 40 chapters to match Reagan's status as 40th president) meditating on specific episodes from Reagan's life, particularly his childhood, adolescence, and initial career as sportscaster, movie star, and Screen Actors Guild president, and the relation of Reagan's life and self-image, and his construction of that image, with the perceptions of America, particularly in connection with the mythmaking of Americans -- their propensity to willfully forget the reality of the American past in order to build a version of the past that serves as a comforting and communal illusion in a time of unprecedented chaos and change. Reagan, Wills explains, is the perfect emblem of that illusion: "The power of his appeal is the great joint confession that we cannot live with our real past, that we not only prefer but need a substitute."

Wills' book is not the hatchet job that some make it out to be. He clearly has a respect for Reagan's story, his communicating magic, and his ability as a public figure to unite the American people behind a common purpose, even if that purpose is largely mythical. Nor is the book the testimony to sainthood that many of Reagan's admirers would want. It is clearly critical of Reagan's forgetfulness, his willingness to simplify, his urge to blur distinctions and to make up details of his own life and of American history out of thin air.

It is for the most part a balanced book, although it does not, unfortunately, do any justice to the man's time as President, which is the most significant part of Reagan's legacy. The book was published in 1987, but it really ends with the war against Grenada in 1983, saying virtually nothing about Reagan's presidency and life beyond that point other than a very brief mention of the 1984 campaign and several (too many) mentions of the movie "Back to the Future" (at one point Wills confuses the movie's date of release, saying that Reagan mentioned it in his 1982 State of the Union address; the movie was released in 1985). Wills also touches on some events of Reagan's first term, but only sketchily.

Anyone expecting this to be a thorough treatment of Reagan's presidency will be severely disappointed. However, it has a great deal of value as an exposition of the reasons why Reagan was a success, or was perceived as a success, as a president. Its final two chapters, two essays on the relation of Reagan to America and its relation to him, are breathtaking.