Book Review: "The Reagan I Knew"

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Two Happy Warriors Were We

By Hunter Baker on 1.7.09 @ 6:08AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/


The Reagan I Knew
By William F. Buckley, Jr.
(Basic Books, 279 pages, $25)


When William F. Buckley died in February 2008, it was widely known that he had been working on a book about Ronald Reagan. He died before completing the task. The unfinished nature of the work is something that should be understood at the onset. It is quite clear that The Reagan I Knew runs short of a great deal of personal reflection by Buckley on the former president. There is simply no question about it.

The good news for readers is that the editorial team made skillful use of Buckley-Reagan correspondence and a series of footnotes to create a highly engrossing reading experience. Indeed, the book may have begun as the narrative story of a relationship with substantial personal reflection, but of necessity it became a successful collection of letters with a solid array of commentary by an author who pre-deceased his project's completion.

Perhaps, first, the thing to note is the surprise the book offers. Though I have been a longtime fan of both Buckley and President Reagan, I had no idea the relationship between Nancy Reagan and Bill Buckley was so substantial. They exchanged many letters in which they talked about Ronald Reagan, their families, and a joking plan to run off together to Casablanca. Buckley seems to have had a great deal of personal affection for the former Nancy Davis.

On the other hand, Buckley's letters to and from Ronald Reagan will add to the corpus of evidence supporting Reagan's intellectual bona fides. They communicated with each other on a friendly and personal basis (with a running joke about Buckley's fictitious appointment as ambassador to Afghanistan), but there is also much friendly disagreement and discussion about policy, personnel, and politics.

What one sees in the letters between the two great icons of 20th-century American conservatism is a conversation between equals. Buckley was not the Machiavellian manipulator liberals might have believed Reagan "the amiable dunce" needed. Instead, he was an ideological soulmate, a debate partner, and occasionally an opponent. These were two men working to the same end, but never shy to differ or to try to convince the other of their own position.

Reagan's letters, in fact, show not the slightest intellectual intimidation before the mighty Ivy League debater Buckley. He was, instead, confident and strong. Reagan is often credited with dispatching Communism to the ash heap of history. This book will likely help dispatch something else to the ash heap, as well, which is the late night sketch comedy image of Reagan as a Forrest Gump-like lucky bumbler.

One of the strongest sections of the book deals with the two men's differences over the fate of the Panama Canal. Buckley thought the United States should allow the Panamanians to control the canal as part of their sovereign territory, while Reagan insisted Americans should retain ownership and control. The conviviality of their debate on the Canal recommends it as a model for conservatives of today, who sometimes seem ready to split and create camps at the slightest provocation. Of course, the Buckley and Reagan of the 1970s were part of a rising movement, not guardians of an exhausted establishment. One moment in their televised debate is worth reproducing here, as it has been elsewhere:

ERVIN (Sam Ervin, the moderator): At this time…the chair will recognize Governor Reagan and give him the privilege of questioning William Buckley.

REAGAN: Well, Bill, my first question is, Why haven't you already rushed across the room here to tell me that you've seen the light? [Laughter and applause.]

BUCKLEY: I'm afraid that if I came any closer to you the force of my illumination would blind you. [Laughter and applause.]

The disagreement was real, but not a threat to the friendship. Buckley credited Reagan's position on the Panama Canal treaty with helping him attain the presidency. During the rest of their lives together, the two men joked about their different positions. Buckley recalled driving up the Reagan driveway one evening for dinner to find a series of signs arranged Burma Shave style (in sequence) for his benefit. They read, "WE BUILT IT. WE PAID FOR IT. IT'S OURS."

The Reagan I Knew is successful on several levels. For the reader who wants to relive the glory days of American conservatism, the material is here. Reagan's rise goes from being improbable in Buckley's eyes to seeming almost inevitable. It is also a wonderful thing to experience Reagan's personality through his communications with Buckley. Based on what has often been said of Reagan, one doesn't expect to find any close friends outside of his wife, Nancy. But here is Buckley, giving us the historical evidence of their warm friendship and inter-family ties. Buckley knew Reagan. The man he knew was warm, funny, a dedicated student and practitioner of American politics and public policy, and a born leader capable of brushing discouragements to the side.

In addition, we are reminded of Reagan's steadfastness. He expresses his determination to stay the course while pursuing a revolutionary economic policy designed to revitalize the American economy. When Buckley indicates his concern about strategy, Reagan gently reassures him and reasserts what he intends to do. In hindsight, we see that Reagan's determination and commitment paid off. He got what he wanted, radically cutting marginal tax rates and closing loopholes. The same dynamic applies to his foreign policy with the Soviets. He got what he wanted and did what he said he could do, even when everyone around him, even Buckley at times, was skeptical.

In the end, the reader is left glad that we had men like these during the times when we had them. At National Review's 30th anniversary in 1985, Buckley offered the final remarks in tribute to President Reagan. The entire world still stood on the precipice of nuclear confrontation. Rather than bemoan the times he lived in, Buckley voiced his thanks that he had lived his sixty years as a free man in a free country and his hope that their sons would be able to do the same. I can't speak for the sons of these great men. Both speak for themselves. But I do know that a great many of us are, as he hoped, "grateful that, at the threatened nightfall, the blood of their fathers ran strong.

Letter to the Editor

topics:Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, William F. Buckley, Jr.


books arts & manners

Bill and Ron

STEVEN F. HAYWARD
http://www.nationalreview.com/
December 29, 2008

There are layers of bittersweet melancholia in Bill Buckley’s memoir of his 30-year friendship with Ronald Reagan. The Reagan I Knew is Buckley’s final book; indeed, he was working on the finishing touches the day he died in February. The memory of Reagan, and especially the élan of ascendant conservatism in the 1970s and 1980s that Buckley’s memoir rekindles, burns hotter now that conservatives find themselves in the political wilderness again. And there are finally the sentimental qualities of both men — the talent for happiness and friendship along with a leavening of wit and a fitting sense of self-deprecation — that are exceedingly rare among great men in public life today.

The Reagan I Knew is equal parts memoir and a collection of the personal letters that passed between Buckley and both Nancy and Ronald Reagan starting in 1965. In fact the first communiqué came from Nancy, a thank-you note for a Christmas plant Bill had sent. One startling aspect of their friendship is that Buckley seemed to have been as close personally to Nancy as to Ronald, and perhaps closer given Ronald’s famous reserve. Had Kitty Kelley seen any of the letters between Buckley and Nancy, she would no doubt have twisted their playful expressions of affection into a tawdry tale in her execrable biography of Nancy. “Longing to see you,” Buckley wrote in one typical chatty missive, most of which were concluded with a running joke about meeting Nancy in Casablanca. Nancy could be equally affectionate in her replies: “I thought you had dropped out of my life completely!” she wrote Bill after a ten-month hiatus in contact in 1969. “I won’t mention the months and months you’ve neglected me terribly and the awful effect this can have on a girl.” The depth of their affection was not unnoticed by Ronald Reagan; he ended one letter to Bill: “Nancy sends her best (though she used a different word).”

While Buckley’s memoir is silent on the Reagans’ marriage and the frequently repeated theme of Reagan’s supposed personal remoteness, he does lift the curtain on a few intimate details of the Reagans’ family life, chiefly the difficulties with their two younger children. Buckley laments the atheism of Ron Reagan and the politics of Patti, even as he displays his typical generosity by celebrating their talents and personalities. (Included are a few letters from Buckley to a teenage Patti, praising her poetry.) Buckley offers a mild reproach of the Reagans’ parenting: “The withdrawal, by Ron Jr., of any interest in spiritual life illuminates a study of him as well as of his parents. . . . What efforts were made — if any — to acquaint the boy with the historical and philosophical role of God in history?” The Reagans enlisted Buckley to the role of surrogate parent in one crucial matter: Ron Jr.’s decision to drop out of Yale to pursue a career as a ballet dancer. When the effort at dissuading Ron from his rash decision failed, Ronald Reagan cut off all financial support for his son: “Ronald Reagan was as determined to subject his son to poverty as Ron Jr. was to live in it.”

Then there was the “endless matter” of Patti, “an unsilenced and evidently unsilenceable liberal.” Throughout the 1980s Patti seemed determined to exploit every opportunity to repudiate her father’s politics and embarrass her mother, culminating in an appearance in Playboy. The reader winces when Buckley records a tearful Nancy telling him, “I love my children, but I don’t always like them.”

The political connection between the two men is the dominant attraction of the book, however, and while Buckley’s memoir is spare in its interpretation of Reagan, his retrospective account does contain a few revisions and revelations about his perception of Reagan. Buckley first met him in 1961, before Reagan’s political career had begun in earnest, and like many others Buckley initially underestimated his political potential. But not for long. The book includes a long excerpt from Reagan’s first appearance on Firing Line in 1967, where Reagan displayed thoughtfulness toward governing and a principled grasp of federalism. At this early moment it was clear to any unbiased observer that Reagan was no lightweight.

Buckley writes at the outset that he views himself as having been a “tutor” to Reagan, and recalls that after Reagan won the 1980 election he considered changing his occupational designation in Who’s Who to “ventriloquist.” Although Reagan gave Buckley and National Review some credit for his having become a Republican, there are subtle traces in Reagan’s letters of his independent, self-taught mind. Buckley surely knew this, and it explains why he resisted the obvious temptation to send Reagan a constant stream of thoughts during Reagan’s Oval Office years. (Buckley had the special address code to get letters directly to the president’s desk.) Buckley was content to allow National Review to be the chief vehicle of communication with Reagan on political matters, and only occasionally wrote directly to Reagan about pressing political topics. He recalls some disagreements and anxieties he had about Reagan’s course in the Oval Office, but the pattern of how each man dealt with the other had been established by their most significant disagreement, which Buckley records at length: the Panama Canal treaty of 1977.

This clash illustrates several traits of both men. Reagan showed his resolution and imperviousness to criticism even from a close ally, while Buckley showed his gentleness in opposing his favorite politician. Both displayed their playful sides in the aftermath: Before Buckley arrived for a visit, Reagan put up signs in his driveway, Burma-Shave style, reading: “We Built It . . . We Paid For It . . . It’s Ours!” For the next decade Buckley ended many of his letters to Reagan with a mock warning against giving away the Erie Canal, alternating with a running jest about being Reagan’s ambassador to Afghanistan and directing the anti-Soviet effort there.

Fully appreciating Reagan’s independence of mind, Buckley engaged Reagan selectively and with finesse during his presidency. In the early 1970s Buckley had advised Reagan to come out against détente, and recommended that he consult Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s staff (“the best pool of young men around”), many of whom would later join Reagan’s administration. Yet by 1980 Buckley was a go-between in establishing a détente between Reagan and Henry Kissinger, who had been a major target of Reagan’s attack on détente in 1976.

Buckley fretted to and commiserated with Reagan about personnel appointments, about hanging tough with his economic program during the grinding 1981–82 recession, about David Stockman’s defection, about China policy, about the ruckus over Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery in West Germany in 1985, and about many other topics. Buckley watered down some criticisms of Reagan that appeared in National Review, and on a few occasions suppressed contemplated criticisms, above all assuring Reagan that “no personal criticism, i.e., questioning your motives, will be published.”

In a 1984 letter, Buckley wrote Reagan: “I can’t pretend I swing with all your decisions, but with most of them I do most heartily.” But in the second term Buckley told him he was increasingly worried that the president “seemed to me and to many conservatives to come perilously close to trusting the Soviet Union.” This anxiety crystallized with the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 1987. Buckley joined Kissinger, Richard Nixon, and a large cast of conservatives in opposition to the INF pact. Reagan defended himself stoutly in his private replies to Buckley, leaving Buckley to repair to their friendship and agreeing to disagree. “Damn I wish I could be on your side on that one,” Buckley wrote to Reagan in January 1988. “Haven’t had a significant difference with you since the Panama Canal.”

Recalling this chapter in the Reagan story leads to Buckley’s one significant revelation and revision: the doubt that, had the Soviet Union launched a nuclear attack, Reagan would have ordered a retaliation. Buckley reprints the moving speech he gave at National Review’s 30th-anniversary gala dinner in 1985, with Reagan present, where he explained that the West’s existence depended on our willingness to sacrifice it in an instant if necessary. “Twenty years after saying that, in the presence of the man I was talking about, I changed my mind,” Buckley wrote.

Reagan’s sincere anti-nuclear pacifism is not a new theme among the writers who have studied him, but it is still amazing to contemplate. That Reagan largely concealed his probable dereliction from the pre-programmed duty of Cold War presidents was of a piece with his personal reserve, and must be closely related to his drive for the end of the Cold War by supremely Machiavellian means. It suggests new dimensions of Reagan’s remarkable political character. It would have been good to hear more from Buckley about this tantalizing aspect of the Reagan story, given that the Cold War was the central preoccupation of Buckley’s career.

Despite this revision, the conclusion of Buckley’s 30th-anniversary meditation holds up as strongly today as it did that night in 1985, and serves as a fitting coda for both of our deceased heroes: “I pray that my son, when he is sixty, and your son, when he is sixty, and the sons and daughters of our guests tonight will live in a world from which the great ugliness that has scarred our century has passed. Enjoying their freedom, they will be grateful that, at the threatened nightfall, the blood of their fathers ran strong.”

- Mr. Hayward is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution: 1980-1988, forthcoming in 2009 from Crown Forum.