The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and His Legacy.

Maranto, Robert

The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and His Legacy. Edited by Paul Kengor and Peter Schweizer. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. 238 pp.

In the Washington, DC of the 1970s, conventional wisdom dictated the inevitability of detente with the Soviet Union, high inflation, an ever-growing public sector, American economic decline, and a "no win presidency," to use Paul Light's apt phrase (The President's Agenda, 1999, 6). By the mid-1990s, the economy and presidency had come back, whereas inflation, traditional welfare, and the Soviet Union had all more or less gone away. In The Reagan Presidency, conservative academics Paul Kengor and Peter Schweizer have commissioned a set of thoughtful, readable, but oddly incomplete papers collectively making a strong case that Ronald Reagan's leadership played a key role in these transformations. Once derided as an "amiable dunce" (Clark Clifford), an "innocent at home" (Garry Wills), or a warmonger (too many to mention), Reagan's stock has risen in the years since his presidency. As the editors note, polls of (typically liberal) presidency scholars now rank Reagan among the more successful presidents.

The Reagan Presidency starts with Michael Nelson's argument that impressive electoral victories, leadership skill, and timely ideas combined to make Reagan "the twentieth century's fourth president of achievement and its first conservative one" (p. 12). Nelson fails to note the degree to which Reagan's immediate successor, George H. W. Bush, rejected Reaganism and successor Bill Clinton embraced welfare reform and reinventing government. Still, Nelson is mainly on target and offers the only theory-driven effort in an essentially historical volume.

Andrew Busch follows with a data-rich treatment of Reaganomics. Busch explains the ideological genesis of Reagan's views, including his pre-Keynesian college major in economics. President Reagan cut and simplified taxes, advanced deregulation, created IRAs, somewhat slowed the growth in domestic spending, and bravely backed the Federal Reserve Board's war on inflation. By the end of the Reagan years, "the question was no longer being asked whether capitalism could survive" (p. 37). Busch acknowledges trade and budget deficits, but refutes charges that administration policies substantially undermined environmental protection, worker safety, and economic equity.

Three of the middle chapters cover various aspects of presidential leadership. Surveying the rhetorical presidency, Wynton Hall portrays Reagan less as orchestrated by his "handlers" than as orchestrating them. Reagan developed his values-based message over decades in church, as a corporate spokesman, and in campaigns, but readily accepted new techniques such as focus groups. Similarly, Gary L. Gregg II presents an insightful, if somewhat unfocused, essay that describes how Reagan tackled the perennial presidential challenge of appearing "dignified and yet humble; powerful and yet republican" (p. 133). Reagan employed "optimistic formulism," restoring the grand ceremony of the office while showing informal ruggedness at such venues as his California ranch. In a provocative and well-researched effort, Matthew Sitman explains why then-Governor Reagan signed a liberal abortion bill.

Two institutional chapters show how the administration brought more coherence to policy making. Mitch Sollenberger, Jack Rossotti, and Mark Rozell cogently explain how the administration centralized the judicial selection process in the White House, at least during the first term. The authors also might have explored the longer-term policy impacts of the judges Reagan appointed. In a fine chapter, Shirley Anne Warshaw summarizes how the administration took charge of executive branch policy making by selecting ideologically compatible personnel and through such structures as cabinet councils.

Four important chapters tackle Reagan's Cold War initiatives, arguably his signature success. Paul Kengor details an area of scholarly neglect: how Reagan's religious convictions led him to oppose communism. Elizabeth Spalding distinguishes Reaganism from Wilsonism and captures the degree to which Reagan's bold strategy defied conventional wisdom. She might have acknowledged as well the role of Mikhail Gorbachev, however. To his credit, Reagan realized before many of his contemporaries that this was a different kind of Soviet leader. Two essays in distinct ways explore the singular failure of the administration, the Iran-Contra scandal. Jeff Chidester and Stephen Knott take an operational perspective in chronicling the battle between members of Congress and Reagan CIA Director William Casey. The authors maintain that too much congressional oversight ultimately left intelligence agencies "slouching toward 9/11" (p. 221). Ryan Barilleaux and Christopher Kelley focus more narrowly on the legal antecedents to and issues of Iran-Contra. Both accounts correctly paint the scandal as part of the longer struggle inherent in the constitutional making of foreign policy.

The Reagan Presidency leaves much out. It says little about federalism, environmental policy, welfare reform, family policy, lobbying Congress, the role of Nancy Reagan, and how support for and reaction to President Reagan changed parties and interest groups. It also seems odd to have four chapters touching on defense and only one on economics. Some chapters, particularly those on abortion and religion, arguably go too far in casting Reagan as a moralist seeking justice rather than a politician looking for winning coalitions, even when the evidence offered (and some not included) could support the latter interpretation. Indeed, this is a problem of the volume generally: the authors magnify Reagan's decency and steadiness while minimizing his flexibility and deviousness. The latter qualities, after all, are part of any successful president. Moreover, chapters on defense, leadership, and religion all intermingle without rhyme or reason. More coherent framing would have strengthened the book.

Despite these flaws, The Reagan Presidency offers a smart, readable defense of the fortieth president that is more scholarship than hagiography. For those of us who wrote and taught in the 1980s, this book is a trip down memory lane. Scholars will find these essays thought provoking, and general readers and undergraduates seeking an overview of the Reagan years would do well to start here.

--Robert Maranto

Villanova University