Thursday, February 4, 2010

Review: The Age of Reagan, Vol II



“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” It was Ronald Reagan’s most famous line, but his advisors didn’t want him to say it. He wrangled over the line with his senior aides, the State Department, and the National Security Council even as he flew on Air Force One to West Berlin. Now that the Berlin Wall is gone, the line memorialized forever, and Reagan celebrated for his role in ending the Cold War, many of the same advisors claim they were for the line all along—or even wrote it.

Steven F. Hayward calls the Berlin Wall speech “a perfect microcosm” of Reagan’s political career, highlighting two important things about Reagan. The first is Reagan’s insight and imagination—the way he thought about issues on a large scale. The second is the extent to which Reagan had to battle against “the conventional reflexes of much of his own party and staff” as well as the Democrats and adversarial media.

Hayward examines both aspects of Reagan’s statecraft, focusing on the second, in the long-awaited second volume of his definitive Reagan biography. While it stands alone as a history of Reagan’s presidency, The Age of Reagan (Vol. II): The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980 - 1989 takes up where Volume I, The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980, leaves off—Reagan’s first Presidential election.

Several books focus on Reagan’s foreign policy, but Hayward devotes equal effort to Reagan’s domestic policy. Hayward’s thesis, which sets his book in a class apart from other biographies, is that “there was a seamless quality to Reagan’s domestic policy outlook and his Cold War grand strategy” because Reagan embodied as a statesman Abraham Lincoln’s concept that all nations have a “central idea” from which all minor thoughts radiate. Reagan’s central idea was “that unlimited government is inimical to liberty, certainly in its vicious forms such as Communism or socialism, but also in its supposedly benign forms, such as bureaucracy.” Or, as Reagan himself put it more succinctly, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

Hayward recognizes that the story of Reagan’s domestic policy lacks the personal drama of fighting the Cold war against the Evil Empire. As Hayward quips, “Reagan never stood in front of the Federal Trade Commission or the Environmental Protection Agency and said, ‘Mr. Regulator, tear down this rule!’” But Hayward does a good job of making the domestic side interesting. He is a deft writer with a light touch and he effectively uses primary source materials such as contemporary headlines and Reagan’s own recently published White House diaries.

Hayward’s other strength is his ability to break down complicated matters into simple facts with enough detail for full comprehension, but without bogging down the main narrative. For example, his cogent explanations of the economics behind Reagan’s tax reductions, the convoluted politics making a tangled mess of our Central American policies, nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets, and the Iran-Contra affair are a helpful background for understanding the significance of these events and Reagan’s role in them.

Although the book is titled The Conservative Counterrevolution, Hayward shies away from concluding that Reagan’s realignment of American politics rose to the status of a “revolution” sufficient to counter the liberal revolution of the early Twentieth Century that culminated in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. He admits that the idea of a “Reagan Revolution” is still an open question for those on both the right and the left.

However, Hayward argues, Reagan’s transformation of the Republican Party in his own image was an enormous, and enormously difficult, achievement in its own right. Reagan had other domestic achievements as well: he managed to slow the rate of government growth; he shifted attitudes about taxation so that reducing tax rates became widely accepted as a legitimate goal; he energized the marketplace of ideas by abolishing the Fairness Doctrine, which hobbled radio and TV commentators; and he initiated a “series of noisy open debates” on constitutional-level ideas about the nature and role of government.

Hayward finds this last point most significant. The Constitution and principles of the Founding Fathers were central to Reagan’s political rhetoric. For example, Hayward notes that Reagan mentions the Constitution ten times in his memoirs—ten times more than his four predecessors, Carter, Ford, Nixon, and Johnson, combined. Even as the Iran-Contra scandal was sapping the strength from the Reagan administration in its last days, Reagan fought for passage of five constitutional reforms packaged as the Economic Bill of Rights. These reforms included a federal spending limit, a line-item veto, a balanced budget amendment, prohibitions on wage and price controls, and a super-majority requirement for tax increases—issues still being debated today.

Hayward is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, so it is no surprise that he approaches his subject from the right. Reagan fans will no doubt enjoy it more than Reagan detractors. But Hayward’s work is definitely biography, not hagiography. The Age of Reagan deserves a spot on any serious historian’s book shelf.

NOTES
First published on The Internet Review of Books in December 2009.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Review: One Fat Englishman



Roger Micheldene is One Fat Englishman. An obese publisher on an extended business trip to America, Micheldene (or Mitch Dean as one gauche American insists on calling him) spends his time eating and drinking prodigiously, attempting to bed every woman he meets, and pompously mocking Americans’ intellectual pretensions and taste in cigars.

There is very little in the way of plot. Lots of things happen, but to not much purpose. The point seems to be to compare and contrast American and British sensibilities, as displayed in a mid-60’s, second-tier academic culture. The pleasure lies in Kingsley Amis’s curmudgeonly wit, in passages such as:
To be sure about nonsense he had to be able to classify it, assign it to a family tree of liberal nonsense, humanist-humanitarian nonsense, academic nonsense, Protestant nonsense, Freudian nonsense and so on. Macher’s nonsense stopped before he could get deep enough into it.
Or his dipsomaniacal observations, such as:
Not caring what one drank unfortunately did not guarantee not caring what one had drunk.
Fans will eat it up. Amis neophytes should start with Lucky Jim.

NOTE

This is one of the books I read for the 2010 Typically British Challenge.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or other Amis books listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Teaser Tuesday Two-fer

"It's easy to get the feeling that you know the language just because when you order a beer they don't bring you oysters," Paul said.  But after seeing a movie about a clown who cried through his laughter, or laughed through his tears -- we  couldn't tell which -- even Paul felt discombobulated.
-- My Life in France by Julia Child
"Discombobulated"! 
I love this book. It's like listening to your best friend tell you a really good story.



"Elsie," he said, "you ought to start sewing a quilt for your bridal bed."
Elsie Hoover turned around fast at the oven with a peach pie on a tin plate held out in her hands.
--Eden Springs by Laura Kasischke
Uh oh. Looks like the guru of the creepy Michigan cult has his eye on a new girl.
Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.



Monday, February 1, 2010

Challenge: Typically British Reading Challenge


FINISHED!

This challenge paired perfectly with my Battle of the Prizes Challenge -- British Version -- as well as my reading preferences. Which is why I finished it first of all my 2010 challenges.

The challenge was to read "typically British" novels by British authors in 2010.  There are different levels of participation.  Since I typically read typically British novels, I signed up at the "Cream Crackered" level to read eight qualifying novels.

This challenge was a lot of fun and I look forward to participating next year if Book Chick City hosts it again. I hope she does!

FINISHED BOOKS AND REVIEWS

One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis (reviewed here)

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (finished, not reviewed)

The New Confessions by William Boyd (reviewed here)

Three Loves by A. J. Cronin (reviewed here)

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (reviewed here)

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (reviewed here)

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis by Kinglsey Amis (reviewed here);

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (reviewed here)

LIKELY CANDIDATES
(MAYBE NEXT YEAR)


The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

Bolt by Dick Francis

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

NOTES

Last updated on June 23, 2010.

Mailbox Monday

 

Oh no! For the first time since I started participating in Mailbox Monday, no books came into my house last week. Not a one. My mailbox is empty.


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