By
MARILYN BERGER
Ronald Wilson Reagan, a former film star who
became
To a nation hungry for a hero, a nation battered by
Vietnam, damaged by Watergate and humiliated by the taking of hostages in Iran,
Ronald Reagan held out the promise of a return to greatness, the promise that
America would "stand tall" again.
President Bush, who was in
Mr. Bush said that under Mr. Reagan, "
Mr. Reagan lived longer than any other
In 1994, he touched the hearts of Americans again
when, in a hand-written letter, he let it be known he was suffering from the
illness. "I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my
life," Mr. Reagan wrote. "I know that for
Last month, Nancy Reagan, the former first lady, said
that his mental condition had worsened considerably. "Ronnie's long
journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach
him," she said.
When he first entered the White House, he was a vigorous
69-year-old Republican who called
He managed to project the optimism of
But late in 1986, halfway through his second term, Mr.
Reagan and his administration were plunged into disarray by an effort to deal
too rashly with the same kind of hostage crisis that he had accused former
President JimmyCarter [sic.] of handling too gingerly.
Contrary to official policy, Mr. Reagan's subordinates
sold arms to
The deception and disdain for the law invited
comparisons to Watergate, undermined Mr. Reagan's credibility and severely
weakened his powers of persuasion with Congress. Scrutiny of his appointees
increased; Supreme Court nominees were rejected or withdrawn; and more of his
aides were charged with ethics violations than in any other administration.
But until the Iran-contra affair,
Mr. Reagan enjoyed tremendous popularity. He used that popularity and a
consummate political skill to push many of his major programs through Congress.
And despite the affair, he crowned his two terms with a nuclear arms agreement
with the
It was Mr. Reagan's good fortune that during his time
in office the
Michael R. Beschloss, the presidential historian, said
he believed that the cold war had ended more quickly under Mr. Reagan than it
would have had his opponent, Mr. Carter, been re-elected in 1980.
"With Reagan," Mr. Beschloss said, "the
Soviets could no longer con themselves into thinking they would prevail in the
cold war because the American people had lost their will and strength and lost
their taste for confronting Soviet aggression. They were sufficiently convinced
that Reagan meant business."
The Soviet economy, he said, was beginning to flag and
Mr. Gorbachev was selected and "charged with improving the economy and
making the best deal he could with the West."
Mr. Reagan, meanwhile, was able to climb the rocky road
back from the Iran-contra scandal so successfully that he handed over the
office to another Republican, George Bush, who had been his loyal vice
president for eight years.
He won the hearts of Americans all over again in 1994
when, in a handwritten letter, he let it be known that he was suffering from
Alzheimer's disease.
"I now begin the journey that will lead me into
the sunset of my life," Mr. Reagan wrote in a poignant note that once
again displayed his characteristic patriotism and optimism. "I know that
for
For some time after the disclosure of the illness, Mr.
Reagan continued to go to his office in
`
If the rise and fall and rise again of Ronald Reagan
reads like the script of a made-for-television movie, the "Great Communicator"
was indeed a made-for-television president. Seventy-seven years old at the end
of his presidency, he never lost his boyish charm or his ability to look
Americans in the eye and make them feel good about themselves. "
Critics and supporters alike found it paradoxical that
Mr. Reagan, who campaigned against government for most of his political life,
was the man who restored popular faith in the presidency and the American government.
The 40th president was a combination of ideologue and pragmatist who could
compromise and still appear to be a man of unbending principle.
His resilience and good humor after he was struck by
an assailant's bullet in 1981 reinforced the public's affection for him.
Gliding gracefully across the national stage with his boy-next-door good looks
and his lopsided grin, he managed to escape blame for political disasters for
which any other president would have been excoriated. If the federal deficit
almost tripled in his presidency, if 241 marines he sent to
His
His extraordinary ability to communicate served him
well until the Iran-contra affair. That is when his reluctance to deal with
governmental processes, his habit of delegating authority and his failure to
concern himself with facts, figures and details first became known to people
outside his official family. Then a different image emerged: that of a passive
president who reigned but did not rule.
From the first moment of a political career that
spanned more than two decades, Mr. Reagan was a crusader, trying to correct
what he saw as the governmental excesses that began with the New Deal. He
preached the gospel of self-reliance. "Government is not the
solution," he said over and over. "Government is the problem."
Against Mr. Carter's politics of sacrifice and
retrenchment, Mr. Reagan offered an
Mr. Reagan did not change course. The
A `Huck Finn Idyll'
Those beliefs were a heritage of his prairie small-town
beginnings. He was born at home in an apartment above a story in
Ronald Reagan was later to describe his father as a
hearty Irish Roman Catholic who was restless, ambitious and an alcoholic. His
mother, Nelle Wilson Reagan, was a gentle Scotch-Irish Protestant who passed on
to her children her religious faith and her interest in amateur theater.
The family was poor, but Mr. Reagan wrote in his first
autobiography, "Where's the Rest of Me?" (Duell, Sloan, Pearce,
1965), that he had never been troubled by any sense of need. He liked to
remember his boyhood as "a rare Huck Finn idyll," and he developed a
sunny nature and an irrepressible optimism.
He and his older brother, Neil, moved with their
parents from one small
Despite extreme nearsightedness (later corrected with
contact lenses), he played football at
His name first appeared on the front page of a
newspaper on Aug. 3, 1928, when he was cited for his 25th rescue as a lifeguard
at
He had an unsophisticated, unpretentious manner that
stamped him as a product of his youth in the heartland. Throughout his long
public career in the movies, on television and in politics, he never lost the
shy tilt of the head and the puckish grin so favored by
He left
With the nation mired in the Depression, the
21-year-old graduate had few prospects. It was 1932, and with little notion of
what he wanted to do, he returned to
When the football season ended, Mr. Reagan was out of
work again. But two months later, WOC hired him as a staff announcer for $100 a
month. He learned how to read a script, rehearsing commercials until they sounded
spontaneous. It was a talent he would use to great effect later in life.
Soon he was transferred to WOC's sister station, WHO
in
His commentary became an exercise of imagination; he
never saw any of the games he described so vividly. Instead, he recreated them
from telegraphic reports from
Birth of the Gipper
In 1937, on a spring training trip with the Chicago
Cubs, Mr. Reagan took an airplane to Catalina Island, off the coast of
His first role was made to order for him. He played a
radio news reporter in "Love Is on the Air," the first of many
"good guy" parts. From the B pictures that
He had parts in major movies with Bette Davis,
Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore and a chimp named
Bonzo. Then, in 1941, he starred in "King's Row," which Mr. Reagan
always called his finest picture.
He played the role of a small-town playboy whose legs
are amputated by a sadistic doctor. Awaking from surgery, he cries out in
anguish, "Where's the rest of me?" That line became the title of the
campaign autobiography he wrote with Richard G. Hubler before his race for
governor of
Flights of Imagination
He made 50 movies, a number of them about World War II.
"The Hasty Heart," in 1950, took him overseas for the first and only
time until he went into politics. In the war, poor eyesight had kept him from
the front, and he spent his years in the Army making training films. But in his
autobiography he wrote of wanting nothing more after the war than a good rest
and time with his wife, the actress Jane Wyman; in fact, they had both been in
His flights of imagination remained equally vivid when
he went to the White House. In 1983 he told Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of
"For Ronald Reagan, the world of legend and myth
is a real world," said Patrick J. Buchanan, a longtime political ally who
was Mr. Reagan's director of White House communications. "He visits it
regularly, and he's a happy man there."
Stormy Times for a Union Leader
Mr. Reagan had married Miss Wyman in 1940. They had a daughter,
Maureen, and adopted a son, Michael. Miss Wyman divorced him in 1948, after Mr.
Reagan had become active in the Screen Actors Guild. Miss Wyman told the court
that although she did not share his interest in the guild, Mr. Reagan insisted
that she attend meetings. Finally, she said, "there was nothing in common
between us, nothing to sustain our marriage."
He was stunned by the divorce and often said his life
did not become whole again until 1952, when he married Nancy Davis. An actress
who was the daughter of a prominent
Mr. Reagan never became a major star, but he continued
to make movies and threw himself into the work of the guild. He was elected its
president and re-elected five times, through some of the stormiest years in the
history of the film industry. Mr. Reagan led his union's intercession in a
jurisdictional struggle between two movie unions, one dominated by gangsters,
the other accused of being led by Communists.
When he was called before the House Un-American
Activities Committee in 1947 to testify about Communist influence in the movie
industry, Mr. Reagan refused to name names before the committee. But the
historian Garry Wills said the Federal Bureau of Investigation file on Mr.
Reagan that was later released disclosed that he had named people in secret.
In those years Mr. Reagan was a Democrat and, as he
later put it in his autobiography, "a near-hopeless hemophiliac
liberal." In 1950 he actively supported Helen Gahagan Douglas, the liberal
Democrat who was defeated by Richard M. Nixon in a
But behind the scenes, as president of the guild, he
worked closely with the Motion Picture Industry Council to weed out Communist
influence in
In 1952 the Music Corporation of
For G.E., Country, and Goldwater
During his years on General Electric Theater, Mr.
Reagan became the company spokesman, visiting G.E. plants around the country to
give speeches and bolster employee morale. Hundreds of times a year he
delivered a speech warning of a growing tide of government control and wasteful
government programs. He was apparently so convincing that he convinced himself.
In 1962 he changed his party registration to
Republican from Democratic, and two years later, with a polished version of the
General Electric speech, Mr. Reagan burst onto the national political scene in
a fund-raising appearance for Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential
candidate. Here is how Lou Cannon described the event in his biography "Reagan"
(Putnam, 1982):
"On Oct. 27, 1964, a washed-up 53-year-old movie
actor named Ronald Reagan made a speech on national television on behalf of a
Republican presidential candidate who had no chance to be elected. ... Most of
Reagan's address was standard, anti-government boilerplate larded with
emotional denunciations of Communism and a celebration of individual freedom.
His statistics were sweeping and in some cases dubious. His best lines were
cribbed from Franklin Roosevelt, and he quoted from nearly everybody else as
well."
Mr. Cannon said the oratorical effort turned out to be
the biggest moment in the Goldwater campaign, raising a million dollars.
Within a few months a group of wealthy Californians --
Holmes Tuttle, A. C. Rubel and Henry Salvatori -- formed a committee, Friends
of Ronald Reagan, to initiate his 1966 candidacy for Governor.
After Mr. Reagan defeated the incumbent, Edmund G.
(Pat) Brown, by almost a million votes, his friends underwrote the most
expensive inaugural celebration in
Moving Beyond
In
Mr. Reagan signed a succession of tax increases to
erase the state's deficit. Mr. Reagan, who was later to oppose legalized
abortion, signed a bill that essentially permitted abortion on demand. In his
two terms, the budget more than doubled and the number of state employees grew
by 34,000.
Mr. Reagan, who had been re-elected in 1970, decided
not to seek a third term. In early 1975, nearing his 64th birthday, he left
In 1968 he briefly ran in the presidential primaries
as the Republican to the right of Mr. Nixon. Eight years later he nearly
wrested the nomination from the incumbent, Gerald R. Ford.
In the early months of the 1980 campaign, Mr. Reagan
made television appearances and sought to stay above the battle, acting as if
the nomination was his. But George Bush won the
On July 16, 1980, in
In his acceptance speech, Mr. Reagan called on
Americans to "recapture our destiny," attacking what he called the
Democratic legacy: "a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an
energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity."
The 1980 Campaign
Most opinion polls showed a close race to the end. The
nation was in the grip of crises foreign and domestic. For all its military
strength, it was powerless to liberate 52 Americans held hostage by
Mr. Reagan criticized the Carter administration for
its policies abroad -- the Panama Canal treaties, the second strategic arms
limitation agreement, the response to the Soviet invasion of
He also said that Mr. Carter had created an economic
disaster that threatened the ethical and financial foundations of American
family life.
Mr. Reagan promised that if elected he would cut
federal tax rates 30 percent over three years, reduce government spending and
hiring, eliminate gift and estate taxes and balance the budget by 1984. He said
the government should turn welfare and other social programs back to the states.
He urged a constitutional amendment to prohibit abortion and opposed government
financing of abortions for poor women. He called for a return of God to the
classroom and prayer in the schools. He spoke against limitations on buying and
owning firearms.
A week before the election Mr. Reagan and Mr. Carter
faced each other in a 90-minute televised debate in
And when Mr. Carter went on the attack, Mr. Reagan
replied in a faintly exasperated tone with another oft-quoted line: "There
you go again."
Two days before the election,
A White House Change of Style
He delegated authority to his staff. Associates said
he left details to his subordinates and tended to rely on 3-by-5 index cards
that they gave him for information he needed at meetings. He paced himself, got
a good night's sleep and took afternoon naps when he could.
Mr. Reagan kept light office hours and went to the
presidential retreat at
With the arrival of the Reagans, the capital became
suffused with a new elegance and glamour absent in the Carter years.
In forming his administration, Mr. Reagan went against
accepted political wisdom when he selected a Republican moderate, James A.
Baker 3rd, as his chief of staff. Mr. Baker had been the campaign manager for
Mr. Bush in the Republican primaries and had been on the Reagan team for only
six months.
But others had been with Mr. Reagan since the early
days in
Mr. Reagan's cabinet appointments, however, were a
reflection of the Republican establishment. Among his choices were Alexander M.
Haig Jr., a retired Army general, for secretary of state; Caspar W. Weinberger,
secretary of defense; Malcolm Baldrige, secretary of commerce; Raymond J.
Donovan, secretary of labor, and Richard S. Schweiker, secretary of health and
human services.
Mr. Reagan sought to perpetuate his philosophy through
his appointments to the federal judiciary. By the time he left office he had
appointed nearly half the sitting judges, judges who will be issuing decisions
well into the 21st century.
He appointed three justices to the Supreme Court. He
had no difficulty with his appointments of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as the
first woman on the High Court in 1981 and Justice Antonin Scalia in 1986,
though his elevation of William H. Rehnquist to chief justice that year
provoked some opposition in Congress.
Bur a year later, after the Republicans lost control
of the Senate, he lost his first fight over a Supreme Court appointment when he
nominated Judge Robert H. Bork. His next appointment, Judge Douglas H.
Ginsburg, withdrew his name after it was disclosed that he had smoked marijuana
when he was a law professor. Mr. Reagan succeeded in his third attempt; Judge
Anthony M. Kennedy was confirmed in February 1988.
Mounting Ethics Troubles
Before the end of Mr. Reagan's first term, more than a
dozen officials in his administration faced charges of improper financial dealings,
some minor, some major. There was cause to investigate some of Mr. Reagan's
closest friends and advisers, including Lyn Nofziger, Mr. Deaver and Mr. Meese.
When top Justice Department officials resigned in
March 1988, criticizing Mr. Meese's ethics and his handling of the Iran-contra
investigation, there were widespread calls for the attorney general's
resignation. The Senate Democratic leader, Robert C. Byrd of
Mr. Deaver remained an adviser even after he left the
White House in 1985. He was convicted in 1987 of lying under oath to a federal
grand jury and to a Congressional subcommittee about using his influence with
the president to enhance his lobbying activities after leaving the White House.
In September 1988, Mr. Deaver was given a suspended three-year prison sentence,
placed on probation and fined $100,000.
`I Forgot to Duck'
On the afternoon of March 30, 1981, the president, in
office only two months, was leaving a
"Honey, I forgot to duck," he was reported
to have told Mrs. Reagan when she arrived at the hospital. He was about to be
taken into surgery to arrest a life-threatening loss of blood; he was in severe
pain, but his sense of humor was reported to be intact.
A jury found Mr. Hinckley not guilty by reason of
insanity, and he was sent to a
Mr. Reagan recovered his vitality with remarkable
speed. Less than a month after the shooting, he addressed a joint meeting of
Congress to urge passage of his economic program.
He made an equally quick recovery from surgery four
years later. On July 12, 1985, he entered
The president bounced back from three other operations
-- two in 1985 and one in 1987 -- to remove cancerous skin lesions from his
nose. His recovery from prostate surgery in 1987 was not as speedy. During his
recuperation, which coincided with the unfolding of the Iran-contra affair, Mr.
Reagan made few public appearances.
Reaganomics I: Big Changes
Two weeks after he took office, on Feb 5, 1981, Mr.
Reagan delivered a speech from the Oval Office. "I regret to say that
we're in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression," he declared.
With inflation raging, growth flagging and interest rates soaring, he said,
"it's time to try something different, and that's what we're going to do."
What he proposed came to be called the Reagan
revolution. Almost overnight it transformed the national debate over domestic
policy. From the beginning of the New Deal, the question had been what federal
programs to expand. Under Mr. Reagan the question became what programs to cut.
"Feeding more dollars to government is like
feeding a stray pup," he told the National Association of Manufacturers.
"It just follows you home and sits on your doorstep asking for more."
Mr. Beschloss, the historian, said: "Because Mr.
Reagan was a wonderful communicator, he was able to make the case for less
government and for moving power away from
Reaganomics, as his economic program became known, was
based on the theory that a cut in taxes would stimulate economic growth,
generating higher revenues and making the deficit disappear. In the 1980
Republican primaries Mr. Bush called this supply-side plan "voodoo
economics." And Mr. Reagan's own director of the budget, David A.
Stockman, suggested that the president was simply proposing a repackaging of
economics intended to favor the rich, whose gains would ultimately trickle down
through the rest of the economy.
Despite widespread criticism of the idea, Mr. Reagan
was able to sell the program to Congress, both a tax cut and a $28 billion
increase in the military budget.
Reaganomics II: Deficits
The administration had to fight harder to cut federal
spending programs created to help the needy, but it had some notable successes.
CETA, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, under which more than
300,000 of the poor were employed in 1980 and 1981, was eliminated. Eligibility
standards were tightened for food stamps and Aid to Families with Dependent
Children. Medicaid rolls were reduced, and limits were put on Medicare
payments.
In the first years of the Reagan administration, when
unemployment was rising, insurance for workers who lost their jobs because of
foreign competition was scaled back. Middle-income college students became
ineligible for government-backed loans and more than a million people lost
their food stamps. In 1981, the Department of Agriculture proposed that ketchup
be considered a vegetable in calculating the nutritional values of school
lunches. The suggestion caused such an uproar that the rule was never
instituted.
When Social Security disability benefits were cut off
for 500,000 people, the federal courts restored payments to 200,000, but the
cuts furthered the perception that the administration was heartless.
Despite the many budget cuts, the deficit kept
growing. After he left government, Mr. Stockman wrote a book, "The Triumph
of Politics" (Harper & Row), in which he described how, on behalf of
Mr. Reagan's programs, he had exaggerated the administration's success in
reducing spending and minimized the projected deficit. He said he invented the
"rosy scenario," making optimistic assumptions about future growth,
inflation and interest rates.
"If the Securities and Exchange Commission had
jurisdiction over the White House," Mr. Stockman wrote, "we might
have all had time for a course in remedial economics at Allenwood
penitentiary."
Within six years the deficit more than doubled, from
$79 billion in Mr. Reagan's first year in office to $173 billion. In the 1987
fiscal year it dropped back to $150.4 billion but edged up again in 1988.
Still, Mr. Reagan repeatedly refused to consider tax
increases. "I don't want to hear any more talk about taxes," Mr.
Stockman quoted him as saying. "The problem is deficit spending."
He repeatedly called for a constitutional amendment to
require that the budget be balanced, and for the authority to veto individual
items in budgets passed by Congress.
But by the middle of 1982, with a recession continuing
and deficit projections soaring, Mr. Reagan grudgingly agreed to a $98.6
billion increase in excise and other taxes. But he refused to call them taxes,
insisting on the term "revenue enhancers."
Reaganomics III: Boom and Crash
After the 1981-82 recession, Mr. Reagan presided over
the longest economic expansion in history, one that saw the creation of 16
million jobs. By his seventh year in office the stock market was reaching an
all-time high. Inflation had dropped and the prime interest rate was down,
partly a result of the collapse of oil prices and partly from the policies of
the Federal Reserve.
But Mr. Reagan got the credit, just as he had gotten
the blame for the recession and the deficit. Economists noted that foreign
capital pouring into the country had shielded the deficit, but warned that it
would be only a matter of time before that buffer disappeared.
Mr. Reagan also got much of the credit for the 1986
overhaul of the federal tax code, hammered together by a bipartisan coalition
in Congress. The changes, among the most sweeping ever, reduced the rates for
most taxpayers and curbed or eliminated many exemptions that enabled people to
shelter income from taxation.
"Had Reagan not moved up front, it would have
gone nowhere," said the economist Alan Greenspan, whom Mr. Reagan later
named to head the Federal Reserve. "He was the first president to succeed
in doing it."
On Oct. 16, 1987, The Wall Street Journal reported
that the economy was one of the bright spots in a Reagan administration that
was increasingly paralyzed by its Iran-contra troubles. Then, on Oct. 19, the
stock market suffered the most severe single-day decline up to that point in
history, dropping 508 points.
The market meltdown highlighted the administration's
failure to deal with the budget and trade deficits and the failure of
supply-side economics to encourage investment and productivity. Economists'
warnings that the administration was mortgaging the country's future were
finally heeded, and the president and Congress agreed to a deficit-reduction
package.
Reaganomics IV: Balance Sheet
Unemployment declined, but more people were living
below the poverty line, and the homeless became a national concern. When Mr.
Reagan was asked about the problem in 1984, he replied that some needy people
might be "homeless by choice."
Economists vary widely in their assessment of Mr.
Reagan's record.
"We know for a fact that Reagan has and will have
a more profound effect on the American economy than any president in the
post-World War II period," Mr. Greenspan said in an interview before his appointment
to the Federal Reserve. "The problem is that it is not exactly clear
whether the very strong pluses or strong minuses will prevail."
On the plus side, Mr. Greenspan said, Mr. Reagan
"instituted an extraordinary change in tax policy." And he said Mr.
Reagan had been responsible "for a fairly pronounced slowing" in the
growth of social benefit programs. On the minus side, Mr. Greenspan cited the
"extraordinary budget deficits which have occurred as a consequence of the
original tax proposals."
Prof. James Tobin, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at
"He tried to squeeze ambitious growth of defense
spending into a budget he was simultaneously depriving of tax revenues,"
Professor Tobin said. "Legislators of both parties, most of whom knew
better, deserve a share of the blame for their supine surrender to the
president's program."
Domestic Policy: Changing Rules
When Mr. Reagan accepted the Republican nomination for
re-election in summer 1984 in
On Nov. 8, Mr. Reagan scored one of the biggest
victories in American political history, winning 525 electoral votes to Mr.
Mondale's 13. At the beginning of his second term, he said the nation "was
poised for greatness." Then, with a line that sounded like an echo from
his first national political speech in 1964, he said, "We must never again
abuse the trust of working men and women by spending their earnings on a futile
chase after the spiraling demands of a bloated federal establishment."
The effort to reduce the size of that establishment
was a constant of the Reagan presidency. His campaign pledge to reduce
government policing of business was most effectively redeemed in the
broadcasting and energy industries. Banking was another major area of
deregulation, The disastrous consequences of which were to become clear after
Mr. Reagan left office in the savings and loan scandals that could cost the
nation hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration were curbed by budget cuts and by the appointment of
conservative administrators who were often accused of opposing the missions of
the agencies they headed.
To put an end to what he called the "adversary
relationship" between government and business, Mr. Reagan's Justice
Department reined in its antitrust division. In a move that environmentalists
said was intended to aid timber, oil and mining companies, the Interior
Department removed thousands of acres of public lands from the protected
category.
Although there were efforts to reduce farm price
supports, federal spending on this program rose, reaching an all-time high in
1986. Still, a worldwide surplus of grain caused prices to plummet, and there
were more farm foreclosures in the Reagan years than at any time since the
Depression.
The Reagan administration also sought to shift
government activities to the private sector, a move that would automatically
result in a cut in government spending. In 1986, for example, the
administration persuaded Congress to authorize the sale of Conrail, the federal
corporation that ran much of the rail freight system.
Mr. Reagan's opposition to governmental interference
in the private sector made him a strong advocate of free trade with foreign countries.
But he pressured Japanese manufacturers to accept a voluntary quota on
automobile exports and gave some trade protection to steel, textiles and
motorcycles. In the first year of Mr. Reagan's second term, the
Civil Rights Entrenchment
The Reagan administration also challenged the
longstanding view that the government should aggressively protect civil rights.
The budget for the Civil Rights Commission, the agency that monitors federal
civil rights activities, was cut. The civil rights division in the Justice
Department led an attack on court-ordered measures to correct discrimination,
based on the administration's opposition to quotas as discriminatory against
whites. But the courts repeatedly upheld affirmative action in the workplace,
saying it helped overcome past discrimination against minorities.
The administration's actions provoked bitter criticism
from civil rights advocates. Jack Greenberg, who served for many years as counsel
for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said Mr. Reagan had
"showed a clear hostility to civil rights aspirations."
Foreign Policy: New Doctrines
No sooner had Mr. Reagan taken the oath of office at
noon on Jan. 20, 1981, than the 52 American hostages who had been held in Iran
since Nov. 4, 1979, were released in accordance with an agreement that
President Carter had completed only hours before. The timing of the release led
to questions about whether Mr. Reagan or his staff had struck a private deal
with the Iranians.
Although Mr. Reagan said little about
"Our reluctance for conflict should not be
misjudged as a failure of will," he said. "When action is required to
preserve our national security, we will act."
Halfway into his first year in office, Mr. Reagan made
good on his promise of swift retaliation against terrorists and the country he
accused of supporting them. On Aug. 19, 1981, American planes shot down two
Libyan jets over the
Five years later, in April 1986, Mr. Reagan ordered
the bombing of
In 1985 Mr. Reagan sent F-14 fighters to intercept an
Egyptian plane carrying four Palestinian terrorists and forced it to land in
The "Reagan Doctrine" was the name given to
the administration's policy of supporting forces fighting Soviet-backed
governments in
In keeping with this doctrine, the administration
persistently supported the contras fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government
of
In October 1983, Mr. Reagan sent American forces to
Frustration and Statesmanship
Until the Iran-contra scandal, Mr. Reagan's most
searing setback in foreign affairs came in fall 1983. Over the objections of
some top advisers, he had dispatched a force of marines to
In 1987, after the Iran-contra scandal became public
knowledge, there was more misfortune when Mr. Reagan ordered American warships to
the Persian Gulf to protect Kuwaiti tankers under attack by
Calamity befell the plan when 37 American sailors were
killed by a missile fired from an Iraqi plane at the American frigate Stark. A
year later, the Navy warship
In 1984, on a 10-day trip to Europe, Mr. Reagan toured
the beaches of
A year later, a trip to
Mr. Reagan was not a strategic thinker, his own aides
said; he thought in terms of anecdotes, not analysis. His knowledge of
international developments was considered thin, and those who met with him said
his participation in discussions was usually limited to what his staff had provided
him on the 3-by-5 cards.
In his biography of Mr. Reagan, Mr. Cannon noted the
President's tendency to misspeak: "He did not know enough. And he did not
know how much he didn't know. Because of Reagan's knowledge gaps, his
presidential news conferences became adventures into the uncharted regions of
his mind."
Iran-Contra Affair: Zeal and Denial
By late 1986, the president had become obsessed by the
hostages being held in
Publicly, Mr. Reagan had condemned
When the secret operation was first reported, Mr.
Reagan denied that it existed. On Nov. 13, 1986, het [sic.] said, "In spite
of the wildly speculative and false reports about arms for hostages, we did
not, repeat, did not trade arms or anything else for hostages." But almost
four months later, he ruefully referred to that remark in a speech to the
nation. "My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true,"
he said, "but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
The facts and evidence were presented in the report of
a commission led by former
After Mr. Reagan's Alzheimer's became known, questions
were raised as to whether he had already started to have memory lapses when he
was president, especially in the Iran-contra affair. He had often said he would
step down if he felt his capabilities had been reduced and had expressed
concern that his mother's Alzheimer's might have been passed on to him. Doctors
did not rule out that a subdural hematoma resulting from a fall from a horse in
1989, after he left the White House, might have also affected his memory.
The 1987 report of the Tower commission noted:
"The president did pretty well...for the better part of five years. And
then all of a sudden the style and the consequences failed him." The
report said Mr. Reagan's staff not only failed to make up for his deficiencies
but also took advantage of his inattention. Mr. Reagan liked to say that in his
years in the White House he lived over the store. But the Tower commission said
in effect that nobody was minding the store.
‘This Happened on My Watch’
On March 4, 1987, a week after the Tower report was
issued, Mr. Reagan appeared on television, looking healthy and alert, to
deliver what was seen at the time as the most important speech of his presidency.
To demonstrate that he was back in charge, he outlined actions to correct the
flaws in the way his White House had operated. As chief of staff he appointed
former Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. of
Accepting the sharp criticism of the Tower commission
report, Mr. Reagan said that what had started as a strategic opening to
Yet even after Mr. Poindexter and Mr. North were
indicted on charges of conspiracy, theft and fraud in the affair in 1988, Mr.
Reagan declared that he still believed that Mr. North was a hero and that his
former aides were not guilty. He said, "I just have to believe that
they're going to be found innocent, because I don't think they were guilty of
any wrongdoing or any crime."
On Mar 4, 1989, Mr. North, who had left the Marines,
was found guilty of three felonies, including destroying and falsifying
official documents, and acquitted of nine other charges. On July 15 he was
fined $150,000, placed on probation for two years and ordered to perform 1,200
hours of community service. On Sept. 16, 1991, a federal judge dismissed all
charges against Mr. North. Prosecutors said they would not be able to show that
the trial had not been affected by televised Congressional testimony that Mr.
North had given under immunity.
For the same reason a divided federal appeals court on
Nov. 15, 1990, threw out five felony convictions of Mr. Poindexter. In June
1990, Mr. Poindexter had become the first person in the Iran-contra affair to
receive a jail term, and the highest White House official since Watergate
sentenced to a prison term for illegal acts committed in office.
Mr. Reagan was not brought to court, but he faced the
judgment of history. The historian C. Vann Woodward said in an interview that
he knew of "nothing comparable with this magnitude of irresponsibility and
incompetence."
Mr. Woodward observed: "This is not simply the self-serving
of a politician who was using illegal methods. This involved the country's
policy and its foreign relations and reputation."
Long Struggle, on Arms Control
Mr. Reagan had sought a place in history as a
president who dealt forcefully with terrorists and took vigorous action to
rescue Americans taken hostage anywhere in the world. Perhaps even more than
the president, it was said, Nancy Reagan was concerned that the Iran-contra
scandal would damage her husband's place in history. She pressed for an arms
agreement with the
But distrust of the
Chances for an arms agreement seemed slim. In his
first term, Mr. Reagan was less concerned with arms control than with an arms
buildup to counter Soviet military power. In 1979, as a candidate, he had
opposed ratification of the strategic arms limitation agreement, saying it
strongly favored the Soviets. (Although that agreement never came to a vote in
the Senate, his administration continued to observe its terms until late 1986,
when the United States exceeded the limits.)
In 1981 Mr. Reagan said SALT had not brought any arms
reductions, and, proposing a new beginning, called for "Strategic Arms
Reduction Talks," with the felicitous acronym Start.
He had promised in his 1980 campaign that his top
strategic priority would be to close "the window of vulnerability"
through which he believed the
Some analysts believe that buildup, along with military
exercises and reconnaissance that were seen from the Soviet perspective as
provocative, may have strengthened Soviet hawks and actually delayed efforts by
Mr. Gorbachev to bring reform to the
`Star Wars' and a Breakthrough
On March 23, 1983, Mr. Reagan announced plans for a
system of exotic, space-based defenses that would make nuclear weapons impotent
and obsolete. Former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger said the program,
the Strategic Defense Initiative, which came to be called "Star
Wars," was nothing but "a collection of technical experiments and
distant hopes." But the president, Mr. Schlesinger said, treated it
"as if it were already a reality."
Nevertheless, minutes of Politburo meetings that have
come to light, show that Mr. Gorbachev was, in the words of a Russian scholar,
"obsessed" by the proposal, which he feared would lead to a new and
more dangerous round in the arms race. Some Russian scholars say it was this
fear, even more than the cost, that concerned the Soviet leader, because his
scientists had assured him they could meet the threat at 10 percent of what it
would cost the
Indeed, Mr. Gorbachev had come to recognize that he
would have to find new sources of revenue as his country's economy declined,
and a cut in the arms budget was a prime candidate.
Just when it began to look as if Mr. Reagan would be
the first president in two decades to fail to get any arms agreement with the
Soviets, it was announced that he and Mr. Gorbachev would meet in Reykjavik,
Iceland, on Oct. 11 and 12, 1986.
There, Mr. Reagan proposed the elimination of all ballistic
missiles by 1996. Mr. Gorbachev, not to be outdone, proposed the elimination of
all strategic nuclear weapons, a proposal that, to the consternation of his
aides, Mr. Reagan accepted. Mr. Reagan had found in Mr. Gorbachev a Communist
he could deal with, and the tenor of the United States-Soviet relationship in
his second term differed markedly from his first years in office.
In February 1987, two days after the Tower commission
issued its report on the Iran-contra affair, Mr. Gorbachev announced the Soviet
Union's willingness to sign "without delay" an agreement to eliminate
Soviet and American medium-range missiles in
For Mr. Reagan, the Soviet proposal provided an
opportunity for a foreign policy breakthrough when he appeared immobilized by
the Iran-contra scandal. The intermediate-range nuclear force, or I.N.F.,
treaty was signed the next December.
"The importance of this treaty transcends
numbers," Mr. Reagan said at the signing ceremony in the White House.
"We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim Davorey no
provorey -- Trust, but verify.` [sic.]
Mr. Reagan's attitude toward the
"My personal impression of Mr. Gorbachev is that
he is a serious man seeking serious reform," the president said in 1988.
"We look to this trend to continue. We must do all that we can to assist
it."
But along the way he urged the new Soviet leader to
move farther, faster. On June 12, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gate in
Like a modern-day Joshua at the battle of
Time and the Man
The former House speaker, Thomas P. O'Neill Jr.,
Democrat of Massachusetts, said of Mr. Reagan: "Most of the time he was an
actor reading lines who didn't understand his own programs. I hate to say it
about such an agreeable man, but it was sinful that Ronald Reagan ever became
president."
Mr. O'Neill, who served in much of Mr. Reagan's
tenure, said he had "known every president since Harry Truman and there's
no question in my mind that Ronald Reagan was the worst." But, he added,
"he would have made a hell of a king."
But, in the view of Kenneth Lynn, professor of history
at the
Professor Lynn said in an interview: "He
fulfilled a restorative function we desperately needed. His belief that we can
come out of our travail with a renewed strength, his ebullience, his optimism
and his lack of guilt in his personal life and in
Paul Johnson, the historian and journalist, gives Mr.
Reagan credit for more than symbolic accomplishment. "Reagan's rearmament
program, accompanied as it was by a resurgence in the
"Thus," he continued, "the concept of
perestroika was born, not merely of internal shame and exasperation at empty
shops and shabby conditions, but of an external recognition that their chief
ideological competitor, under Reagan's leadership, was far more formidable and
durable than they supposed."
But to many other historians and political scientists,
Mr. Reagan's accomplishments will not secure his place among great American
presidents.
Thomas Cronin, the McHugh Professor of American
Institutions at
Mr. Cronin credited Mr. Reagan with enhancing national
security with the I.N.F. treaty but asked: "Did he expand opportunities
for all Americans regardless of race, gender or income bracket? It's my view
Reagan has not enlarged the equity factor nor the educational opportunities for
most Americans."
And the Reagan presidency was lacking in moral
leadership, he said, an essential quality for greatness. "He was too late,
too little and too lame when it came to human rights abuses at home and
abroad," Professor Cronin said. "He was not willing to be a
leader."
Moments after the inauguration of George Bush as the
nation's 41st President, Mr. Reagan returned to
Not a man given to introspection, he nevertheless
wrote his autobiography with the help of a former journalist, Robert Lindsey, a
narrative of his life and his presidency as he remembered it.
There followed a round of television interviews in
which he promoted the sale of his book. Barbara Walters asked him how he
thought history would remember him.
"Well," Mr. Reagan replied, "I hope
it'll remember me on the basis that when I took office, I felt very strongly
that our government had grown too officious and imposing too much on the
private sector in our society, and that I wanted to see if the American people
couldn't get back that pride, and that patriotism, that confidence, that they
had in our system. And I think they have."