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Reagan's America: Innocents at Home

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COvering much of the same ground as Edmund Morris in his authorized biography, "Dutch," Garry Wills' "Reagan's America: Innocents at Home" is a much more successful look at the institutions and country that shaped the 40th President.

With his usual incisive analysis and beautiful use of the English language, Wills does what Morris found impossible: the discovery of Reagan's soul.

To Wills, Reagan is the logical product of the American heartland and of the institutions of the heartland: community service (he was a lifeguard first), small town media (he was a Des Moines, IA, radio announcer). Reagan is also shaped by the institutions of coastal America that are marketed to the heartland: movies and big business (when Reagan made the final turn toward conservatism, he was the national spokesman for General Electric). Finally, Reagan is also the product of a dysfunctional family, with some of the same logical results: a withholding from others, a love of the abstract and of fantasy.

At the end of Wills' study, the reader gains a clear impression of the forces that created Ronald Reagan and bonded him to the American people. It is true that Reagan, as Morris argues, is enigmatic. But he is not impossible to begin to understand. Wills is the essential guide to the Reagan who was fully formed long before he reached the White House.

I have read many books by Gary Wills, and this is one of his best. It is an astonishing work of history and cultural analysis, impressive in the breadth of his learning and the depth of his insight. Mr. Wills writes knowledgeably and skillfully about a wealth of topics: the America of Mark Twain ... religious fundamentalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ... the Great Depression ... history of Hollywood, including labor politics ... California politics ... the John Birch Society ... Cold War strategy, nuclear deterrance, and the "Star Wars" defense system ... relations with Latin America, the World Court, and the United Nations ... "supply-side economics," the Laffer Curve, and Reagonomics ... and much, much more, all to create the context in which to understand Reagan's success and his appeal to his constituencies.

Uncritical Reagan enthusiasts will not be happy with the way Wills dissects the contradictions inherent in Reagan the politician, but Wills's analysis is cogent and persuasive. Wills discusses at length the gap between word and deed in Reagan's career. Of Reagan as Governor of California, Wills writes: "Thus, the candidate who had run against big spenders quickly became the governor who asked for and got the highest tax raise in the history of California (or any other state)...." And of Reagan's first term as President, Wills writes: "In 1982, unemployment rose to 10.7 percent, higher than it had been since the Great Depression, along with the greatest number of bank failures since 1940. Record bankruptcies and farm closures were occurring.... He added as much to the national debt in those four years as had been accumulated in our national history to that point, so that one of every seven dollars spent by the government in 1985 went to paying interest on the debt." And Wills spends considerable time critiquing the myths of individualism and self-reliance that underlay the Reagan mystique.

Wills is critical of Reagan, but his assessment is never disrespectful or mean-spirited. Wills works hard to understand Reagan in terms of Reagan's own values and in terms of the values of the Americans that supported him. This is a remarkable study of a man and his times, and is well worth reading.

I was astonished to learn that while in high school, Reagan saved the lives of over seventy-five people while working as a lifeguard.

Wills dissects Ronald Reagan's career with a sharp scalpel calling attention to the man's ignorance, naivete and disingenuous story telling, all coexisting with personal charm and an optimistic nature. He ties in Reagan's notion of an innocent past and glorious future with American mythology. Reagan's appeal as the first amiable conservative (W would seem to be the second) stood him in good stead with the public. What were we thinking? This is not a hatchet job but a carefully reasoned and most thoughtful assessment of the man whose fanciful economic policies led the country into deep debt and tragically slowed social progress.

I read the first edition printed in the 1980s. This book is not an evaluation of the Reagan Presidency, but and social historical evaluation of the culture he grew out of and eventually represented. The book would not please some who have attributed icon status to Reagan. But it provides a lot of insight into the man. Wills is a good writer and avoids the traps academics often fall into of writing a scholarly book but not well written. It is the best book on Reagan so far written.

Gary Wills book on Reagan is an even handed portrayal of a great American figure. President Reagan's conservative vision and his strident anti-communist views changed the way America works and changed the way the world looks at us. As a liberal, I often disagreed with his views, his policies and his actions. However, one cannot be an objective viewer of history with giving him his due. He did indeed bring a level of pride and hopefulness about America that had been missing since the early days of the Kennedy presidency. For that, I will be forever grateful to him. Gary Wills book provides a window in to how Ronald Reagan changed from Roosevelt democrat to conservative republican. An excellent book that should belong to anyone's collection of political histories and biographies.

Wills captures both the man and the eras he inhabited in prose that sometimes approaches poetry. There are fascinating historical tidbits, insights a-plenty, funny jokes ("war movies are hell"), and some breathtaking chapter finales. This guy can write.

And he can indict. Wills stalks Reagan (and his real subject, Reagan's America) through each stage of his life, exposing the guilt under the glitter. Wills is a consumate hanging judge here, as in his other treatises on presidents Kennedy and Nixon.

Don't be fooled, however -- it's not Reagan he's hanging.

I read the first edition printed in the 1980s. This book is not an evaluation of the Reagan Presidency, but a social historical evaluation of the culture he grew out of and eventually represented. The book would not please some who have attributed icon status to Reagan. But it provides a lot of insight into the man. Wills is a good writer and avoids the traps academics often fall into of writing a scholarly book but not well written. It is the best book on Reagan so far written.

Those who criticize Wills for "sloppy work" are off base and clearly have an ax to grind. On the other hand, this book is not a "consummate" piece of work, either. The task of writing a Reagan biography is virtually impossible. Edmund Morris tried to do it and wound up with a botched, absurd, fictionalized mess.

Wills doesn't pretend that this book is a biography. It's actually an essay in book-length form (41 short chapters, perhaps a botched attempt at writing 40 chapters to match Reagan's status as 40th president) meditating on specific episodes from Reagan's life, particularly his childhood, adolescence, and initial career as sportscaster, movie star, and Screen Actors Guild president, and the relation of Reagan's life and self-image, and his construction of that image, with the perceptions of America, particularly in connection with the mythmaking of Americans -- their propensity to willfully forget the reality of the American past in order to build a version of the past that serves as a comforting and communal illusion in a time of unprecedented chaos and change. Reagan, Wills explains, is the perfect emblem of that illusion: "The power of his appeal is the great joint confession that we cannot live with our real past, that we not only prefer but need a substitute."

Wills' book is not the hatchet job that some make it out to be. He clearly has a respect for Reagan's story, his communicating magic, and his ability as a public figure to unite the American people behind a common purpose, even if that purpose is largely mythical. Nor is the book the testimony to sainthood that many of Reagan's admirers would want. It is clearly critical of Reagan's forgetfulness, his willingness to simplify, his urge to blur distinctions and to make up details of his own life and of American history out of thin air.

It is for the most part a balanced book, although it does not, unfortunately, do any justice to the man's time as President, which is the most significant part of Reagan's legacy. The book was published in 1987, but it really ends with the war against Grenada in 1983, saying virtually nothing about Reagan's presidency and life beyond that point other than a very brief mention of the 1984 campaign and several (too many) mentions of the movie "Back to the Future" (at one point Wills confuses the movie's date of release, saying that Reagan mentioned it in his 1982 State of the Union address; the movie was released in 1985). Wills also touches on some events of Reagan's first term, but only sketchily.

Anyone expecting this to be a thorough treatment of Reagan's presidency will be severely disappointed. However, it has a great deal of value as an exposition of the reasons why Reagan was a success, or was perceived as a success, as a president. Its final two chapters, two essays on the relation of Reagan to America and its relation to him, are breathtaking.

Anyone who knows the work of Gary Wills can vouch for the fact that he does not fit neatly on a left-right or liberal-conservative spectrum, especially not on the left or liberal side of that spectrum. It therefore makes it even more interesting and persuasive how Wills picks apart Reagan, the American people, and the relationship between them. Reagan hagiographers like D'Souza and Deaver can sing love songs to Reagan from here to eternity--it won't erase the very basic facts and arguments Wills marshalls so well. Looking back now it is more clear than ever that Reagan's America was defined by greed, self-satisfied individualism, sanctimony, hypocrisy, and ignorance (not to mention the crippling national debt we've had ever since). My three favorite tidbits about Reagan and his hypocrisy: 1) Reagan was well-known for being hawkish in his use of military force and full of praise for our fighting men and women, past and present. Going along with that, he suggested repeatedly that he had been in World War II. The reality was that he made some MOVIES about the war in Hollywood but never enlisted and never served, even though he was younger than, and didn't have any more dependents than, countless other men who enlisted and served. 2) Reagan was also well-known for being a devout religious man, one who helped graft the Christian Right on to the Republican Party. The reality was that from all accounts Reagan rarely spoke of God in private, prayed, or went to church. And 3) Reagan spoke often of the importance of morality, family stability, and personal responsibility--some of the credos of American conservatism and the Republican Party. Again, the reality bore little resemblance to this image; Reagan left and then divorced his first wife, and then in the years to come was so cold and distant to his children from that marriage and the next that they regularly felt alienated and estranged (this according to the children themselves)[on this subject see also Bob Dole, Bob Barr, Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, Rudy Giuliani, Rush Limbaugh, etc.]. Read this book and learn--rarely for the better, often for the worse, Ronald Reagan was quintessentially American...

I consider myself a conservative, and I found this book very helpful in understanding my conservative "roots." A warts and all look at a man misunderstood by both sides. Conservatives with an open mind take note, 2 of the 3 negative reviews here are from people who think the LA Times is a socialist paper (read: anything not right wing is socialist), and to not like Reagan is to be against tax cuts.