REAGAN In His Own Hand Kiron K. Skinner / Annelise Anderson / Martin Anderson, Editors
The Free Press, New York : 2001
Ronald Reagan's critics - his enemies, frankly - took as an article of faith that the man was a dimwit, and were apparently uninterested in the exercise of reconciling this proposition with the relentless consistency with which he achieved his expressed goals. Goals which by any standard were monumental in dimensions : Hollywood stardom, the Governorship of California and the Presidency of the United States, to name but a few.
This book presents a collection of documents handwritten by Ronald Reagan with his edits, crossings-out and marginal notes preserved in print. Most are short essays delivered as radio talks during the pre-Presidential years, but there are also some letters and some fiction, poetry and college work from his youth. As the foreword by former Secretary of State George P. Shultz makes plain, even those closest to Reagan were gobsmacked by the volume and substance of these writings.
Analysts of the Reagan Presidency will be fascinated and enlightened by the developmental course of his thinking in matters of policy, and by the progressive refinement in its formulation and articulation. His admirers will bask in the warmth and homespun lyricism of his delivery, and deepening insight into his character. Students of political science will marvel as the essence of what is Reaganesque is defined : let the self-appointed geniuses spin their wheels in the bog of infinite, recursive, unproductive nuance while he cuts straight to the chase.
Apprentices in the art and science of communication should pay special attention to his edits- should, in fact, study the value added by his deletions, rewordings, and reformulations. Sometimes the transformations are subtle, sometime quite breathtaking, sometimes both. What a difference a word makes.
Reagan was very Hollywood - before he got to Hollywood, as his schoolboy writings make evident. He was plainly a highly intelligent person, and like Hollywood's, his intelligence was oriented toward productivity. Delivering the goods. I was frequently reminded of the Hollywood screenwriting commandment I'd recently read: if it doesn't move the story forward, ditch it.
Whatever else may be said about Hollywood ( and I'd not necessarily refrain from casting stones themward with the rest of the mob) it most definitely works. It may not be high art, but it sure as hell is craft.
The lesson of Ronald Reagan's life and work may be that politics, too, ought properly be thought of as craft rather than as art. The American Presidency as a movie, rather than as a film. Films are fine things, too, but they bake no gateaux.
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