An American Life - Ronald Reagan

Though it may seem an odd choice for this summer's reading, President Ronald Reagan's autobiography  -- Am American Life -- contrasts nicely with the chaotic fracas that is US election year 2016. Written in 1990, only two years after he left office, the overall book -- which is 748 pages, though I read it on Kindle -- especially with respect to his profound challenges as a child and a young man, grips the soul and amazes the mind. But it also leaves the reader with a melancholy sense of emptiness, a desolate feeling of dejection and longing. It was sad to regularly look up from the Kindle, stare off into space and remember that those incredible political days are long over. Reagan's near destruction of liberalism seems like a century ago.
Parts of the early section of the book are a nostalgic, peaceful read. They echo times that harken back to a harsher but somehow less complicated era, the one that included Reagan's hardscrabble childhood in rural Illinois and Chicago. Born in 1911, he begins his life in Tampico, Galesburg, Dixon and a string of other small towns, where his alcoholic, dreamer father Jack held a series of jobs -- usually selling shoes -- and where he and his older brother Neil changed schools constantly.
    Despite the poverty and addiction in the household, they grew up relatively happy and healthy, largely due to the incredible wisdom, kindness and devotion of their mother Nelle. Though the brothers knew there were problems in the house, though they heard their parents' loud fights through walls, though Jack went away sometimes for days without warning -- or, vice versa, Nelle and the kids had to sometimes leave the house quickly and spend several days at one of her siblings' places -- despite all that misery, Nelle knew to never directly burden her young boys with adult problems. Because of her -- and their father's not infrequent periods of sobriety -- Ronald and Neil largely felt normal, happy and secure.
    Reagan was 11 years old when he learned about his father's specific illness from his mother.      Decades before "alcoholism is a disease" was common knowledge, Nelle -- without the help of a single Al-Anon meeting -- sat her sons down and explained: "Jack had a sickness that he couldn't control.... She said he fought it but sometimes lost control and we shouldn't love him any less because of it because it was something he couldn't control. If he ever embarrassed us, she said we should remember how kind and loving he was when he wasn't affected by drink."
    Though sheltered, Reagan was still deeply affected by his father's drinking. His earliest serious love, Margaret, whom he met at church and hoped to someday marry, almost broke up with him when he explained that his drunken father was a good person who was sick and couldn't help himself. Never having heard such nonsense, Margaret got upset and nearly dumped him.
     He described how, as a boy, he once had to drag his drunk, unconscious father into the house from the porch. He'd thought about stepping over him and going straight to bed, but he couldn't. "When I tried to wake him he just snored -- loud enough, I suspected, for the whole neighborhood to hear him. I grabbed a piece of his overcoat, pulled it and dragged him into the house, then put him to bed and never mentioned the incident to my mother."
     Reagan confessed he struggled his whole life with insecurities he believed were the result of growing up beside his father's alcoholism, which caused his family to move so much, and him to have to continually make different new friends. Even as president, as cheerful and gracious as he was to every person he met, as close as he ultimately became to many people -- including Canadian First Couple Brian and Mila Mulroney -- he claimed in the book that he always held back part of himself, for safety.
     Both Democrats, Jack and Nelle were also both Christian, he a mostly non-practicing Catholic and she an active member of the Disciples of Christ. Despite widespread racial segregation at the time, the Reagan parents were both passionately anti-racist, and drummed into their children's heads that skin colour, among other traits, was irrelevant when judging character. Nelle pushed her children to bring home their black playmates for visits and meals. Nelle was exceedingly kind-hearted, and never stopped doing good deeds for the needy, sick or bereaved. Where Jack could be harsh and cynical, she never stopped seeing the best in people. Clearly, her sunny nature rubbed off on her youngest son.
    Reagan's core beliefs in families as the bedrock of America -- and America as the greatest nation on earth in which families could flourish -- were learned in childhood.

                        I grew up learning how the love and common sense of purpose
                        that unites families is one of the most powerful glues on earth and
                        that it can help them overcome the greatest of adversities. I learned
                        that hard  work is an essential part of life -- that by and large you
                        don't get something for nothing -- and that America was a place that
                        offered unlimited opportunity to those who did work hard. I learned
                        to admire risk-takers and entrepreneurs, be they farmers of small mer-
                        chants, who went to work and took risks to build something for them-
                        selves and their children, pushing at the boundaries of their lives to
                        make them better.

In high school Reagan acquired and nurtured the talents that would advance his careers in Hollywood, Sacramento and Washington. At Dixon High, where he graduated in 1928, he played in the football and basketball leagues, headed the student council as president and he took part in school plays. A strong swimmer all his life, he worked as a lifeguard at Dixon's Lowell Park for six years, reportedly saving 77 people from drowning in the dangerous Rock River.
    Enrolling at Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois, as an economics major, Reagan was not the best grade earner. He had a "C" average by graduation in 1932. But he had dreamed for years of attending Eureka, where Margaret went, and he made it through financially, barely, by begging, borrowing and dish washing. He loved the small town atmosphere that a school of 250 students naturally had. It forced extra-curricular activities on everyone, which Reagan relished. Maybe his grades were low because he was so busy between classes. He played football under a coach he was sure didn't like him; he swam on the school team; he acted in plays of the drama club; he debated in the debate club; he wrote for the college paper; he  edited the school yearbook; and he was president of the student council. How could he have had time for studies? But he loved every minute of his years at Eureka, especially when his older brother later joined him, at a lower college year.
    It was at Eureka where he got his first taste of how great it feels to make a resounding speech. Students were angry over Depression cutbacks, and Reagan excited the crowd with his supportive statements. He was overwhelmed by the thrill he experienced after stimulating the listeners. After the strike, the college president resigned, almost certainly at least partly as a result of Reagan's leadership. After college, Reagan continued to struggle. Ambitious but floundering for a career in the midst of the Depression, he agonized about his future, and his father's failures. He tried radio sports announcing before he got into acting, two more fascinating and positive parts of his life.
     Interestingly, more than a few critics have denounced An American Life for its lack of  historical value. But it must be asked: how can the details of the youthful struggles -- in his own words -- not be of historic importance when we're talking about an extremely impressive political leader, probably the greatest US president of the 20th century? Why are the circumstances that made a genuine world leader not considered crucial for historians? If not so much now, certainly in 200 years?
     The book goes on to describe his life as a Hollywood B movie actor, as a twice-elected president of the screen actors' guild -- where he worked hard to root out Hollywood communists -- as the mouthpiece for General Electric Theatre, as a cheerleader for Barry Goldwater, and of course as Governor of California. At some point he switched parties from Democrat to Republican. He is virtually silent about his failed first marriage and magnanimously quiet about problems with his adult children, a testament to his discretion and graciousness regarding private experiences, especially those which, if discussed, could potentially be hurtful to others. Nor does he focus excessively on the extreme verbal abuse he received from the media and liberals in general.
      Funny, for me, the stories during his years as president -- about Reagonomics, about supply-side economics, about firing the entire workforce of striking air traffic controllers, etc. -- are not the most interesting parts of the book, maybe because we've read about these events and issues countless times over the years by other writers. His relationship with Nancy, with whom he had unbelievably few arguments, makes for engaging reading. A few parts of the book are boring or seem forced. For example, his take on the Middle East and Israel sounds artificial and hollow, and his endless descriptions of his ground-breaking dealings around the high stakes international nuclear arms talks are tedious. His personal relationships with successive Soviet leaders (as they kept dying) are less than fascinating, but his closeness to Mikhail Gorbachev is reminiscent of the hope that President Reagan brought the world.
      To move off topic for a minute, to focus on a glaring contrast to the Reagan years, the current president's more recent mission of hope has brought no end of national and world crises: Ten trillion dollars added to the national debt; 700 billion dollars being taken out of Medicare for Obamacare; the rise of ISIS, which may very well have been prevented had Obama stayed longer in Iraq; Syria's civil war, now in its fifth year; the Iran deal, which gives the terrorist state 150 billion dollars for -- wink, wink -- peaceful uses of nuclear power; race relations in America knocked back 50 years; welfare, disability payments and use of food stamps at an all time high; sky high unemployment; blocking Keystone; and on and on and on. (This incomplete and brief overview of Obama's mess was created with the help of a few writers and websites, including Townhall's John Hawkins.)
     To finish this review, I can't let the moment pass without mentioning two points. One is that Reagan history has been mangled and revised, to the point that "liberals suddenly love [him]," says American Enterprise Institute Fellow Steven Hayward, writing in a riveting 2011 cover story for Commentary. "They have taken to celebrating certain virtues they claim Reagan possessed -- virtues they believe are absent from the conservative body politic today -- while looking back with nostalgia at the supposed civility of the political struggles of the 1980s." He adds: President Obama's appropriation of Reagan's persona, which has been expansive, "was and is disingenuous on every level."
    Second, just about every false accusation, scandalous recrimination and defamatory denunciation being launched against 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was hurled at Reagan during his presidential tries. The specific negative comments, exaggerations and outright lies differ between 1980 and 2016, but the finely tuned liberal practice of vilifying certain powerful or potentially powerful Republicans is in high gear now, and it was in high gear then. Thirty-six years apart, the two left wing campaigns are identical in tone, intensity, hatred level and goals. It is true that Trump is certainly not Reagan, and Trump's detractors additionally include too many conservatives. But to say Reagan did not bring out the worst fear mongers of world destruction is simply to forget, or revise, history.
    Overall, An America Life is one of those feel good conservative American treatises, uncomplicated in outlook and attitude, full of gung ho Yankee patriotism and oozing that infectious cheerfulness Reagan was famous for.

As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.