Oddly enough, James Mann's short bio on the opening page of The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan mentions that "his tennis remains mediocre." Perhaps; but what the author lacks in tennis skills, he compensates in intellectual brilliance. To use the court tennis metaphor, Mann knows how to pick a partner; how to deliver a series of aces; and how to play the game by alternating short volleys and hard baseline shots. His book is as entertaining as a Roland Garros final. The endgame he describes--how Ronald Reagan singlehandedly inflected the course of history by reorienting US's relationship with the Soviet Union--concludes with the referee proclaiming the end of the Cold War: game, set, match. And the winner of the tournament is not the one you would expect, although the two opponents are commended for their fair play and elegant gamesmanship.
James Mann devoted his other books to the US-China relationship and to foreign policy-making at the White House (from The Vulcans to The Obamians). These were interventions into contemporary public debates and pressing political issues, for which the dust of history hasn't yet settled. By contrast, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan is a history book, written after the main character passed away, and based on archival work and oral history recollection. But it is written with the style and alacrity of a media reportage, and it includes many of the skills and techniques that the author used in his previous books. James Mann conducted interviews with more than one hundred key players and witnesses, including former heads of states and White House staff. He did extended fact-checking, requesting some pieces of archival evidence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. And he structured his narrative around symbolic junctures: Nixon's stealth visit to the White House in April 1987; Reagan's consultations with an informal adviser on Russian affairs; the Berlin speech pronounced in front of the Brandenburg Gate; and the summitry that cemented the relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev.
As the author notes, he is "always astonished to discover how interviews produce more information, more detail, and more insight than is on the historical record." It doesn't mean he buys at face value everything his interlocutors recollect from their memory. Testimonies should be taken with a pinch of salt. For instance, former secretary of state George Shultz declared in an interview to the author that he didn't recall opposing to the inclusion of the famous line: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" in the speech that Regan pronounced on June 12, 1987, standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall. In his memoirs, he did not mention the speech at all. The speech nonetheless became an enduring symbol of the Reagan presidency. It captured everything Reagan stood for: his optimism; his belief in the transformational power of freedom; and his unwillingness to accept the permanence of the East-West divide.
The speechwriter of the Berlin speech, who meticulously collected background material and included direct observations and quotes in his draft, similarly testified that State Department officials had warned him to stay away from the subject of the Berlin Wall. In fact, the Berlin embassy's competing draft did include reference to the wall and called it to be destroyed, although not as a direct appeal to the Soviet leader. Reagan famous exhortation to "tear down this wall" was, until the very last moment, the object of an epic struggle within the administration, pitting Reagan's domestic advisers and speechwriters against his foreign policy teams. In the end, history remembered only this single sentence, and completely forgot the "Berlin Initiative" that, in the eyes of the State Department, was the most substantive part of the address.
Allying the skills of the historian with the curiosity of the journalist, James Mann had the simple but powerful idea of checking into Reagan's schedule of meetings in the Oval Office. This is how he measured the influence of an unlikely adviser on Russian affairs, who spoke to the president on more than twenty occasions. Suzanne Massie, a Russian-speaking, fifty-year old woman who wrote sentimental essays about the Russian soul, wasn't part of the foreign policy establishment. But she had the ear of the president, who liked her informal style and who used her for back-channel diplomacy missions. What Massie knew, and CIA experts on the Soviet Union didn't, was how to tell a story. She imparted on him her fascination for a timeless Russia, whose culture and religious traditions were still alive below the Soviet veneer.
As James Mann portrayed him, Reagan was a rebel with a cause. What he rebelled against was the forces and ideas that had made the Cold War seem endless and untractable. He believed in the better angels of our nature, and was willing to bet on the reformist orientation of Gorbachev by offering the breathing space he needed to fend off his opponents. The Cold War, in Reagan's terms, was not primarily a foreign-policy struggle, but a moral one. By contrast, Nixon and Kissinger shared a basic "realpolitik" approach to diplomacy, centered on the national interest and the balance of powers. Die-hard conservatives, for their part, believed in the intrinsic evil of the Soviet system, and warned that Gorbachev represented merely a new face for the same old totalitarian policies. At critical junctures during his second term, Mann shows both the political right and the foreign-policy realists were against Reagan.
The personal element also stands out in this biography. One point is of particular interest to this reviewer: foreign languages. The Great Communicator was a master of the spoken word, but he wasn't known for his fluency in languages other than English. He seemed to hold a particular grudge against French words. Under his leadership, the White House replaced "communiqués" with "agreed statements," and "tête-à-tête meetings" with "one-on-ones". The word "détente", or the policy to seek accommodation with the Soviet, elicited a strong reaction, both because Reagan opposed the notion but also perhaps because he found the French word obscure and conceited. "Détente--isn't that what a farmer has with his turkey--before Thanksgiving?" he concluded a radio fireside chat. His speechwriters somehow shared this anti-gallic bias: under their pen, the phrase "fait accompli" was once turned into a kind of Greek cheese: "feta compli".
German had more favour with the US president. He once greeted the Berlin mayor with the words: "Haben Sie einen Streichholz" (the German for: "Do you have a match?"), a phrase he had learned from a German actress during his days in Hollywood. He burst into laughter when he discovered that the German words for entrance and exit were "Einfahrt" and "Ausfahrt"--this became the source for a series of "fahrt" jokes. His Berlin speech, pronounced in June 12, 1987, was carefully drafted. Reagan avoided repeating Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner," introducing instead an English paraphrase: "Every man is a Berliner." But his speech included several expressions in German: from the word "Wirtschaftswunder," or economic miracle, to the expression "Es gibt nur ein Berlin," and to a reference to a Marlene Dietrich's song: "Ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin."
But perhaps Reagan's most-often used foreign expression was the Russian: "Doveryai no proveryai", meaning: "trust, but verify". He learned it from his informal advisor on Russian affairs, Suzanne Massie, and kept repeating it at every occasion, to Gorbachev's considerable annoyance. Gorbachev got used to Reagan's proclivities and, knowing his evangelical penchants, even served him a quotation from the Bible during their first meeting, which made his interlocutor attempt to appeal for his religious soul--in fact, the Soviet leader was not religious, and was startled when the U.S. president attempted to convince him of the existence of God.
Reagan did not memorize any other Russian phrase, except maybe for the words "glasnost" and "perestroika". But he had a collection of Soviet jokes, which he brought about during informal conversations or even at summit meetings, causing consternation among his aides. Here is a good one: it is the story of the Moscow resident who purchased a car and was told by the salesman that it would be ready on a specific date a quarter century later. "Morning or afternoon?" the customer asked. "Why does it matter for a date so far away?" the salesman wondered. "Because the plumber is coming in the morning." In repeating these old jokes, without glossing over Reagan's political aloofness and immature pranks, James Mann gives a human face to the fortieth president.
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- Mr. A. J. RobinsonReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2017
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Un estudio excelente sobre un presidente muy poco apreciado en España y en Europa.
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