"Ronald Reagan: The Notes" Offers a New Look at an Old President
Once Imus recovered from the shock of seeing Douglas Brinkley walk in studio, he asked how the presidential historian got hooked up with editing Ronald Reagan: The Notes, a collection of tweet-like memos kept for years by this country’s 40th president.
On the occasion of Reagan’s centennial, his library in Simi Valley, California decided to clean house, and stumbled upon an elaborate collection of note cards, neatly filed in black photo albums. “If he heard you say something he liked, he’d write it down and then would have a file system,” Brinkley said. “So if he was going to talk to a group of police officers, he had his police joke. If he was going to talk to a chamber of commerce, there was that joke.”
The notes are, Brinkley insisted, a fascinating look at how The Great Communicator communicated. “He controlled his own game more than almost any other president I’ve ever encountered,” said Brinkley, who has worked closely with Nancy Reagan throughout the process of editing The Notes, and before that, The Reagan Diaries.
Though Reagan is known for his oratory skills, he was never considered among the brightest presidents, and was once famously called “an amiable dunce.” But Brinkley thinks the record proves otherwise.
“He was much more literate than anyone thought,” Brinkley said. Though Reagan might have “taken a little longer than some people reading a book,” he would extract from it what he needed; put those thoughts on a note card, and use them in his speeches. “It became his arsenal.”
Reagan was also egalitarian to a fault and lacked any sense of elitism, according to Brinkley, who revealed that the only two people Reagan was ever nervous to meet were Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.
As for whether The Notes or The Reagan Diaries will compel historians or members of the news media to reassess Reagan’s legacy, Brinkley was cautious. “To a degree,” he said. While some on the Left “have a view of Reagan, and they won’t change it,” other fair-minded individuals might note that we are, to this day, still living in the age of Reagan.
“From 1981 until today, Reagan is the dominant political figure,” Brinkley said. “Before that we were living in the long shadow of Franklin Roosevelt, from 1932 all the way to 80.”
Since Reagan left office, Brinkley pointed out that much energy has been devoted to rolling back the “Great Society,” an indication of his influence. Factor in his success with the Soviet Union and his timeless sound bytes, and, as Brinkley put it, “He’s become a folklore figure, in a way, as well as a President.”
Brinkley told Imus that Nancy Reagan has only one rule about anybody discussing her late husband: no surmising on what Reagan would have thought, or done, or who he would have chosen as the Republican nominee for President in 2012. “As long as you follow that one rule, she’s been wonderful to work with.”
We suspect Brinkley’s not so bad himself.
-Julie Kanfer
Reader Comments