The Gipper as Diarist
New York Times
Anyone hungering for historical disclosure and nuance in Ronald Reagan’s presidential diaries will have to settle for a prosaic and amiably unrevealing drone in the daily ruminations of the private Reagan. There’s a wisp of tidy news headline reader that summons Reagan the heartland radio announcer. And a tone of that’s-the-way-life-goes utterances worthy of the “Our Town” stage manager, whom the actor Reagan could intuitively play. “A haircut & then over to the Soviet embassy to sign the grief book,” the Great Communicator notes of the passing of Konstantin Chernenko as Kremlin ruler.
What is striking is the contrast with Reagan’s public power as the nation’s galvanized wordsmith. The orator who skewered the Soviet Union as “the evil empire” wonders to himself in private about why the Kremlin is so fearful of being attacked. “We ought to tell them no one here has any intention of doing anything like that.” As if sensing history watching, the diarist has the air of some safely disengaged citizen while jotting down his absolutely post-facto discovery of his close aides’ Iran-contra scheming. “This may call for resignations.”
There’s the stuff of “Father Knows Best” — the Reagan son Ron’s demands to be rid of pesky Secret Service protectors. “In fact he’s on a hit list,” Dad calmly notes. There’s sitcom premise in Prince Charles’s being poignantly mystified by an Oval Office cup of tea containing, of all things, a tea bag. The diarist channels Mark Twain in dining as the guest of Communist China’s leaders. “We heeded Dick Nixon’s advice & didn’t ask what things they were — we just swallowed them.”
What to make of all this?
(Continued here.)
Anyone hungering for historical disclosure and nuance in Ronald Reagan’s presidential diaries will have to settle for a prosaic and amiably unrevealing drone in the daily ruminations of the private Reagan. There’s a wisp of tidy news headline reader that summons Reagan the heartland radio announcer. And a tone of that’s-the-way-life-goes utterances worthy of the “Our Town” stage manager, whom the actor Reagan could intuitively play. “A haircut & then over to the Soviet embassy to sign the grief book,” the Great Communicator notes of the passing of Konstantin Chernenko as Kremlin ruler.
What is striking is the contrast with Reagan’s public power as the nation’s galvanized wordsmith. The orator who skewered the Soviet Union as “the evil empire” wonders to himself in private about why the Kremlin is so fearful of being attacked. “We ought to tell them no one here has any intention of doing anything like that.” As if sensing history watching, the diarist has the air of some safely disengaged citizen while jotting down his absolutely post-facto discovery of his close aides’ Iran-contra scheming. “This may call for resignations.”
There’s the stuff of “Father Knows Best” — the Reagan son Ron’s demands to be rid of pesky Secret Service protectors. “In fact he’s on a hit list,” Dad calmly notes. There’s sitcom premise in Prince Charles’s being poignantly mystified by an Oval Office cup of tea containing, of all things, a tea bag. The diarist channels Mark Twain in dining as the guest of Communist China’s leaders. “We heeded Dick Nixon’s advice & didn’t ask what things they were — we just swallowed them.”
What to make of all this?
(Continued here.)
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