Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader

I don't read a lot of biography. I suspect the bottom line reason is because they are a lot of work for me. You see, I love the story behind people's lives,what helped shape them into who they became, what influenced their ideas to form the person who made the choices they made. But I have a basic problem: I get lost in the names.

This affects my reading in all genres, including fiction books with large scripts of people. I remember quite clearly the struggle to continue through the first several chapters in Ted Dekker's Circle Series. I had to consciously choose to keep reading when I hit Chapter 2 and realized I would have to keep track of people in two different worlds. At some point in many books, my mind drops the characters it deems of little consequence. Of course, this sometimes causes problems when these characters sneak up on me several chapters later and I'm furiously trying to remember why I should know them. (I love authors who include character lists with their books!)

And so, in spite of enjoying history and the backstories of people, I subconsciously avoid biographies. So it was with upon the recommendation of two different people that I highly respect that I picked up Dinesh D'Souza's book and trudged my way through it.

Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader did not disappoint me, although I'm confident I've forgotten the names of three-quarters of the people the author mentions. Mr. D'Souza includes enough of Reagan's one liners and humorous stories to keep the reading entertaining while including insights that show he clearly watched and studied the man himself.

Possibly this section from the book sums the former President up the best: "He was a realist who had a low view of human nature; at the same time, he was an optimist who had a high view of human possibility. He was a tolerant man who nevertheless had fixed and unalterable convictions. He was gregarious and liked people, yet he was a loner who seemed happiest by himself." Reagan was clearly a paradox.

Yet as I read the stories the author chose to include, the commentary based on what he knew and the information he received from others, I gained greater respect for him as a man and as President. And I laughed many times at his wit and quips.

If you've ever wanted to know more about Ronald Reagan and understand some of his reasonings and motivations behind decisions he made, this is definitely a book you should consider.

Over 35 scholars and people close to Reagan contributed to this book, including Mikhail Gorbachev himself! Former Reagan advisor Dinesh D'Souza gives us a personal portrait of Ronald Reagan that covers his successes and failures as governor of California and president. D'Souza goes over his experience with governing California, passing tax reform, the Iran-Contra affair, undermining the Soviet Union, and interacting with his cabinet and constituents. I love the detail out into biography and I loved every interview he conducted. Excellent biography.

sad ultra conservative propaganda

Hoo boy, this book was a mixed bag! Half way through, I was sure I was going to give it two stars and open my review with, "The best thing about this book was that it wasn't horrible." But the last two chapters and epilogue were much more in keeping with the spirit of a biography then the early chapters I had been slogging through. Until then, the book didn't even really qualify as a biography. It was more of an apologetic, and apologetics is more suited for religion than politics.

D'Souza is a brilliant polemicist for the New Right, and his arguments cannot simply be waved off. I have done a fair bit of reading on Reagan's economic programs, and although it was painful to read the chapter on that side of Reagan, it was instructive as well. For example, I immediately noticed that when D'Souza writes, "Ed Meese told Reagan that the White house had a verbal assurance from the Democratic leadership on the Hill that for every dollar Reagan would approve in tax increases, Congress would approve three dollars in spending cuts" (p 102), that statement can be perfectly true, although any student of the so-called three-for-one deal knows that Ed Meese was completely mistaken. This required me digging back through my notes to find this passage from The Deficit and the Public Interest: The Search for Responsible Budgeting in the 1980s

In essence, the funny numbers, meant to impress voters and maybe markets, fooled the president. They also fooled Donald Regan and Ed Meese. When eventually somebody (Stockman blames Kemp) told Reagan that Congress did not give him any three-for-one, the president felt betrayed. Believing the administration had been "snookered," "screwed," "hornswoggled" on TEFRA, Reagan, Regan, and Meese became very suspicious of other compromises.

To Stockman, Baker, Darman, and congressional leaders, this sense of betrayal was ludicrous; no one ever said Congress would pass three-for-one. The resolution was clear enough about that. But when Stockman perceived, during the fight to pass TEFRA, that Reagan might have missed the point, there wasn't much the budget director could do. If he tried to clear up the confusion, Reagan might have changed his mind on TEFRA itself. Instead, Stockman let it slide and hoped for the best. He could not have anticipated the endless recriminations that would follow, outlasting him in the administration. In a letter to Reagan on January 16, 1984, for example, Senator [Bob] Dole [Head of Senate Finance Committee] had to write:

"The most frequently voiced objections to packaging new spending cuts and revenue increases together is that Congress would enact the new taxes but renege on the spending cuts. These critics cite as evidence the alleged failure of Congress in 1982 to deliver any of the promised three dollars in spending cuts for each dollar of tax increase. I respectfully submit, Mr. President, that you were not "taken in" by this budget plan."

So I actually learned a valuable tidbit from D'Souza's statement about Meese— that a lot of the smoke being blown around the Reagan administration came from this guy. This is also verified indirectly by comparing D'Souza's statement: "[An overall increase in tax revenues produced by a reduction of overall tax rates] obviously didn't happen, but no prominent supply sider said it would, and neither did the Reagan administration, whose budget projections, available for inspection in public documents, all show an expected loss in revenue due to the tax cuts (p 116)" to Stockman's account. This is a particularly brazen statement on D'Souza's part, because the public documents he is referring to were of course prepared by David Stockman, whom D'Souza calls "an economic genius but a political dunce" who should have been fired for going against Reagan's economic program! Stockman recounts in gory detail in The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed how his budget projections were rejected by the supply siders in Reagan's administration, particularly Ed Meese:

At the end of the dessert, I passed out a stack of thick black binders, each one forty-two pages long. Groans around the table— another Stockman paper flood …

For the purposes of the August 3 briefing, I had continued to assume an early, powerful supply-side expansion— 5 percent real GNP growth. Nevertheless, page 20 should have been an eye opener. It showed that even with a forecast more compatible with the monetary policy actually in effect, the deficit would rise to $81 billion in 1983— and reach $112 billion by 1986.

When I had finished with this part of the briefing, I turned to look at the President. He looked . . . not very well, and it had nothing to do with his health. That was when he said I seemed to be agreeing with Tip O'Neill. Ed Meese jumped in, as he usually did when he saw that his boss was discomfited and at a loss.

"What about the revenue feedback from the tax bill?" he asked. "You haven't taken account of that in these scary numbers." His tone was slightly annoyed.

Meese was referring, of course, to the Laffer curve. The whole California gang (my emphasis) had taken it literally (and primitively). The way they talked, they seemed to expect that once the supply-side tax cut was in effect, additional revenue would start to fall, manna-like, from the heavens.

Since January, I had been explaining that there is no literal Laffer curve. "Higher real GNP and employment growth will not increase projected revenue by a dime," I reiterated. "Remember, we're putting the squeeze on inflation at the same time. That will bring down the growth rate of money GNP and federal revenue. The budget benefit of the cobined anti-inflation and tax cut program comes entirely on the spending side. We get lower outlays for unemplyment-related programs and indexed entitlements. But there is no revenue feedback. What you see is all we've got."

I had repeated this little lecture until I was blue in the face. But they never stopped asking about the magical Laffer curve. So, confident that the question would come up again in the face of my dire warnings about deficits, I had prepared a special tab in the new briefing book showing why there was no Laffer curve when you were trying to cure a high-inflation, low-growth economy.

As I looked around the table, it was evident that I had accomplished . . . nothing. Those who already understood (Anderson, Darman, and Weidenbaum) nodded their heads. The others were puzzled, bored, or annoyed.

OK so having said my peace about economics, I have to confess I am not that familiar with the issues surrounding Reagan's foreign policy. My general feeling here is that Reagan did better, and D'Sousa is on more solid ground in defending his hero. What I found to be true gold here were the endnotes, which alerted me to a lot of new material I was unaware of, and which is must read.

Summing it all up, although I find D'Souza a completely annoying New Righter who can only seem to see things in terms of conservative/liberal, hawk/dove, and those who love Reagan or hate him, he is a fine writer and a (mostly) logical thinker who is instructive to read.

According to my high school and university US history textbooks, Regan was an actor who expanded the national debt tremendously and happened to be president during the fall of the Soviet Union.

This book clearly explains what Regan actually accomplished. It also lists the major criticism of his presidency, and addresses the merits or (more often) the falseness of each. It also analyzes his leadership skills and style and what made him successful. There is much to be learned not only from what he did, but how he did it.

Regan was an incredible man, who influenced the world for good in significant ways. Common history textbooks try to rob him of his greatness by avoiding the major issues of his presidency. This book tells what really happened.

The author should invest in a more extensive editing process (and better editor!).

Not the best Reagan biography, but I like Dinesh D'Souza

A fine biography, written from both personal observations and dozens of interviews with (and study of writings by) others who lived and worked with Ronald Reagan during his adult life. It is thoughtful, specific, and fair. Unfortunately, it is already dated in 2023, for the author seemed more optimistic in 1997 for the endurance of President Reagan’s visionary policies than seems to have happened.

Nevertheless, the book stands as a documented reference for a man of impressive character, one with a rare capacity to lead others to “do the right thing.” As usual for such a person, he attracted critics, some vicious. But his purpose was always bigger than himself, he never gave up, and his achievements during his lifetime—both for his own beloved country and for the world beyond—were greater than any the critics dreamed of.

He had a habit of deflecting both criticism and praise with humor, thereby calming emotions and inspiring charity. His sincerity was consistent. His guidance was inconspicuous, as when he addressed an audience of veterans of WWII at the 40th anniversary of D-Day by saying, “These are the boys of Point du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs.” The author writes that President Reagan lacked obeisance to those we assign to the “intellectual” class, but he always admired work done by the “common folk who performed uncommon feats,” especially such as soldiers, firefighters, police.

Perhaps the man was always extraordinary by carrying within a moral courage that was not allowed to leak to his sleeve, so that others might recognize it. At any rate, Dinesh D’Souza did mankind another favor by probing as deeply as he was able to describe America’s fortieth president.