President Reagan: The Role Of A Lifetime
by Lou Cannon
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lou CannonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-04
ISBN: 1891620916
Number of pages: 920
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Book Reviews of President Reagan: The Role Of A Lifetime
Book Review: A win for the Gipper and his admirers
Summary: 5 Stars
If you wanted one man to write a book on the Reagan presidency, it would have to be Lou Cannon. Cannon, who covered the Gipper as a journalist for nearly three decades, doesn't disappoint his audience. His book is not an exploration into Ronald Reagan the man. Rather, it is a thorough and lucid trip through the Reagan administration. You'll relive the highlights of the 1980s, including the budget battles of 1981, the invasion of Grenada, and the INF Treaty with the Soviet Union. You'll also be confronted with some of the shortcomings of the Reagan presidency, inlcuding the Iran-Contra affair and the annual budget deficits. Cannon is somewhat detached from Reagan, which can be a positive attribute in a biographer, but the author is too reluctant to embrace his subject. His reporting of the Reagan presidency is first-class but his analysis of the 1980s is too negative. Biographers like to present their subjects as complex characters who do both good and bad things. And indeed, Reagan is no exception. But the balance of information in Cannon's book, whether he realizes it or not, supports the assertion that Reagan was one of our greatest presidencies. Most important was Reagan's instrumental role in peacefully eradicating communism from the earth. He indeed had a vital partnership with Mikhail Gorbachev in this task. Conservatives and liberals do themselves a disservice when they give one man all the credit at the expense of the other. The truth is that both men were crucial to one of the brightest and significant events of the century. Cannon makes this point well. Cannon is a little more reluctant to give Reagan credit for the economic recovery of the 1980s. Budget-wise, this may be a fair judgement. Indeed, Reaganomics turned out to be a false promise. Tax rates in 1989 were the same as in 1981 and government spending was much, much higher. But Reagan deserves credit for holding the line against a Democratic Congress at odds with his vision. Reaganomics was more successful in fighting inflation, where the president gave crucial support to the Federal Reserve in its efforts to restore monetary sanity, and also in defending free trade against protectionists and laying the groundwork for both NAFTA and GATT. Cannon puts too much emphasis on the Iran-Contra affair, which history has denigrated to less than a footnote, but his analysis of U.S. involvement in Lebanon is important and sobering. The overall perspective, however, is a bright one. No man did more to replenish America's confidence and unity, after two decades of despair and disunity, than Ronald Wilson Reagan. A true patriot, Reagan was proud to be an American. His service as president made it possible for millions of citizens to share his faith. After reading Cannon's opus, you'll understand why.
Summary of President Reagan: The Role Of A Lifetime
Hailed by the New Yorker as "a superlative study of a president and his presidency," Lou Cannon's President Reagan remains the definitive account of our most significant presidency in the last fifty years. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the first actor to be elected president, turned in the performance of a lifetime. But that performance concealed the complexities of the man, baffling most who came in contact with him. Who was the man behind the makeup? Only Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan through his political career, can tell us. The keenest Reagan-watcher of them all, he has been the only author to reveal the nature of a man both shrewd and oblivious. Based on hundreds of interviews with the president, the First Lady, and hundreds of the administration's major figures, President Reagan takes us behind the scenes of the Oval Office. Cannon leads us through all of Reagan's roles, from the affable cowboy to the self-styled family man; from the politician who denounced big government to the president who created the largest peace-time deficit; from the statesman who reviled the Soviet government to the Great Communicator who helped end the cold war.
This is possibly the single best book available on the Reagan presidency. Lou Cannon began reporting on Ronald Reagan as a journalist when Reagan first ran for governor of California in 1966, and then covered him again in Washington after his 1980 presidential election. In short, there is probably no man or woman who has spent more years writing about the Gipper than Cannon. The result is a magisterial account of Reagan's two terms in the White House. Cannon is broadly sympathetic to his subject, but also coolly detached. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime pulled off the remarkable feat of winning praise from both Reagan's admirers and detractors when it was first published in 1991. This reissued edition, which includes a new preface describing Reagan's postpresidential descent into the abyss of Alzheimer's disease, must now be considered the standard text on the subject--especially in light of the controversy surrounding the book that aspired to Cannon's mantle, Edmund Morris's quasi biography Dutch.
Cannon's book is full of wise analysis and sound observation. He explains Reagan's success convincingly: "Optimism was not a trivial or peripheral quality. It was the essential ingredient of an approach to life.... [Reagan] had a knack of converting others to his optimism, almost as if he drew upon some private reservoir of self-esteem. People who listened to Reagan tended to feel good about him and better about themselves." Though the book bursts with detail, it's never so cumbersome that it bogs down Cannon's narrative. And these pages give only cursory attention to Reagan's life before the White House; this is more a biography of President Reagan than of Ronald Reagan. Conservatives who are defensive about Reagan's legacy may bristle at certain points; Cannon's portrait is not always a flattering one. Yet it's a compelling biography of a compelling man's most important years. It's possible to imagine that a fuller biography of Reagan will be written some day. Right now, however, this is the best there is--and it's very, very good. --John J. Miller
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