Customer Reviews

Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
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This book explores the underside of the Reagan Presidency. The surprise is not that Reagan was not in control of underlings like Oliver North, but that he was so out of touch that incoming Chief of Staff Howard Baker actually considered whether the constitutional provision for removing an incapacitated President might have to be invoked! Mayer and McManus write with the sharp eye of crack investigative reporters. While the results may not be as compelling as "All the President's Men," they still present an unsettling account of what goes on in the corridors of power.

This oddly titled book is actually the best and most incisive work you can read on the Iran-Contra Affair.
The book describes in detail how Reagan set broad ideological guidelines, and expected those who worked under him to carry out the details and not bring him problems.
Did Reagan know that Bill Casey and North were funneling money to the Contras and lying to Congress? As the book details, there is no substantive evidence that he knew this.
However, it is clear that Reagan orchestrated the illegal sale and transfer of weapons to Iran in exchange for hostage releases. The quid pro quo was discussed in any number of cabinet meetings including Reagan, Bush, Weinberger, Regan, and others.
Does this make them all guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors?
It certainly does.

I sell used books and just happened to come across this. I'm straining to remember it (I'd be really surprised if it hadn't caused some ripples, as it came out in '88 when RR was still in office) but I just have no recollection. I'm a Democrat who was sort of undergoing a gradual process of reevaluating Reagan in a more positive light. Nevermind! The book makes a very strong indictment of RR as a decent enough fellow who was grossly incompetent as a President. My impression is that the authors are fairly moderate:a guy from the LA Times and a gal from the Wall St. Journal;neither are liberal papers. The used copies are way cheaper than they deserve to be (I'm keeping mine). Pulitzer Prize material IMO. Read it!

What a wonderful book this turned out to be. I was expecting a far more biased attack on the Reagan administration overall, instead the authors provided a well researched and written history of the last term of Reagan's presidency. The authors spent the vast majority of their time talking over the Iran - Contra issue and they did a good job of it. There is a wealth of details that really take you through the whole event from idea generation through execution to cover up. I also liked the details of how the staff did or did not get along, I have read some memoirs of some of the staff and they did not give me the full picture unlike this book. This book brought it all together.

My biggest surprise was how out of it Reagan seamed to be. I have always heard the positive about Reagan was that he stuck to his agenda, but after reading the book you see that at times he did not or he flat out ran out of agenda items. A good case that style wins over substance in American politics. The only knock I have on the book would be that the ending was a bit rushed. The authors could have spent more time on the last two years and how the investigation shook out to give a more complete picture. This is the reason I did not give the book 5 stars. Overall it is a great book that I would recommend to anyone interested in the time period, the Reagan presidency or the Iran / Contra issue.

Forgive an outsider commenting on US politics(if you can!!).Reagan was always popular in the USA, whereas in Western Europe he was almost universally regarded as a senile old buffer.After reading this,US readers will think again about the European perspective.
Mayer and McManus,who wrote for those deranged left-wing papers the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal,paint a picture of someone cut off from reality and capable of believing anything.So,sending arms to Iran in exchange for hostages was not an arms-for-hostages deal.Diverting Iranian money to the Contras in Nicaragua(banned under US law)was all fine and dandy.
Then there are Poindexter and North,who subcontracted US foriegn policy and did what they wished,quoting "The President" as their carte blanche to do just about anything.
I ended up feeling sorry for Ronnie-his patent incapacity for the job,the fools and knaves who surrounded him and exploited his popularity for their own ends,and what we know now to be early signs of Altzhiemer's make this quite a touching depiction,even if extremely critical of Ronnie's politics and policies.Well worth a read,but you'll have to get a secondhand copy.

Although this is a well researched book which contains much hearsay and a great deal of authoritative evidence regarding the Iran arms sales and the "Iran Contra Affair," I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. On the one hand, the book appears to be convincing. On the other hand it comes across as decidedly one dimensional, particularly when one considers that there was a lot more going on in the world at that time than the hostage crisis. The authors also demonstrated a consistent bias throughout the book by throwing in unnecessary descriptors seemingly intended to prejudice their readers. Why was it, for example, that the culprits in this book always seemed to meet in their palatial offices, with their fine furniture and beautiful views, while non-culprits simply met somewhere? Were the authors that intent on making their point?

What did I like best about this book? Two Things. First, it is the first book that I have seen that fully explains the lengths to which Donald Regan went in his efforts to isolate and control the president, thereby, setting himself up as a defacto Prime Minister. His actions in this regard would seem to go a long way toward explaining how and why Reagan became so enmeshed in the arms sales to Iran and, later, in the "Iran Contra Affair," without knowing much about either one. If, as stated many times, Reagan's operating philosophy was: You know my policies, "bring me solutions not problems," he might easily have concluded that the things which reached his desk truly reflected the best thinking of his Cabinet members, the National Security Council (NSC), the State Department, and the CIA, et al. If so, why not go along with it? Don Regan obviously did both the president and the country a great disservice.

The second thing I liked about the book was the meticulous manner in which the authors traced the complex and devious actions of Colonel Oliver North and Admiral Poindexter throughout the Iran arms sales and their diversion of funds to the Contras. This is a difficult story to tell and one that is hard to follow. But they did it well. As you read it, you'll likely be amazed, as I was, that anyone could try so hard but could, seemingly, be so stupid. Their actions reminded me of that old Chinese proverb: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Poindexter and North seemed to think it was "Fool me ten or fifteen times, shame on me."

What did I like least about the book? I didn't like the subtle bias which ran throughout the book, as noted above, and I particularly didn't like and the "Epilogue" (pgs. 386-394). The Epilogue gave me the impression that the authors had spent so much time trying to develop their thesis that President Reagan had been "unmade," that by the time the book was published events had passed them by. They tried to salvage their position by slightly altering history and ignoring Reagan's greatest achievements. For example, they claimed that Robert Bork's not being confirmed by the U.S. Senate was an illustration of how weak the president had become. But, as the Old Timer used to tell Fibber McGee, "'tain't the way I heard it, McGee." Had they never heard the saying, "Borked," which has now become part of the everyday vernacular? Or, did they believe, as that brilliant legal scholar Senator Ted Kennedy so famously said, that, "the evidence doesn't matter, what's important is the seriousness of the charge."

What really bothered me most, however, was that they so easily sloughed over the greatest achievements of Ronald Reagan's presidency -- easing tensions with the Soviet Union, eliminating the nuclear threat which had hung over the world for almost forty years, and hastening the demise of the USSR.

Looking back at this late date with something of a historical perspective, one might easily conclude that Ronald Reagan was poorly served in many ways and that he had his faults, but his presidency certainly wasn't "unmade," as the authors claim. If so, why would President Reagan be so highly regarded to this very day? Why would he be ranked in a recent internet opinion poll as one of America's three greatest presidents? And why would virtually all Republican presidential candidates identify with him and many seek to carry his banner? Perhaps America needs more "unmade" presidents like Ronald Reagan.