Reagan: His Life and Legend

Ronald Reagan embodied an ideologically unmoored but effective blend of hard-line conservatism and pragmatism, according to this sprawling biography. Washington Post columnist Boot (The Road Not Taken) traces Reagan’s journey from movie star and New Deal liberal to staunch right-winger who extolled capitalism, anathematized big government, and clothed ugly prejudices—he privately called Africans “monkeys”—in a sunny, charismatic persona. But his extremism, Boot notes, coexisted with practical flexibility; for example, when his signature tax cuts ballooned government budget deficits, he backtracked and accepted new taxes, and he pursued negotiations with the Soviet Union even as he was calling it “an evil empire.” Boot strongly criticizes Reagan’s moral failings, including his habitual resort to racist dog whistles, the inequity of his economic policies, and his support for murderous right-wing dictatorships in Latin America. But he’s also alive to Reagan’s political strengths, which included cutting deals (he oversaw groundbreaking nuclear arms reduction treaties with the Soviets) and communicating an appealing, if simplistic, political vision. Boot’s effort to paint Reagan as basically a moderate at heart—or at least in practice, by way of balancing his excesses against his moments of judiciousness—leaves the man himself somewhat inscrutable, casting him instead as an avatar of American democracy’s complicated mix of earnest dogma and muddled consensus. It makes for an unusually middle-of-the-road and not very revealing portrait. (Sept.)