Reagan myth can obscure Reagan the man
A generation after he left the White House, the nation's 40th president is held in higher esteem now than when he was in office. Still, the popular image of "The Gipper" overlooks a more complicated presidency — and person.
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD
The Associated Press
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Ronald Reagan's name is enshrined on an airport, an aircraft carrier, belt buckles and highways. His likeness appears on drink coasters, statues and talking dolls.
Conservatives make the pilgrimage to his presidential library in Simi Valley, a showcase of all things Reagan. Presidential candidates debate there, hoping to be dubbed heir to the Reagan legacy. Even President Obama invokes his name.
A generation after he left the White House, the nation's 40th president is held in higher esteem now than when he was in office. Still, the popular image of "The Gipper" overlooks a more complicated presidency — and person.
Do Americans, less than a decade after his death, have a clear idea of who he was?
"No," says historian Kevin Starr.
How did a former radio announcer, middling actor and union leader in Hollywood become a titanic figure in American history?
Even with his reputation as the Great Communicator, "there remains something opaque, something ... even mysterious in Ronald Reagan," Starr says.
Long a Republican hero, Reagan was praised for his role ending the Cold War, kick-starting an ailing economy and coaxing Americans out of a collective funk. At turns revered on the right and reviled on the left in his 1980s heyday, Reagan is ranked among the most admired presidents by Americans.
But the Reagan myth can obscure Reagan the man.
The president's younger son, Ron, 52, says he sometimes doesn't recognize the pop-culture version of his father, the man held up as a patriarch of Republican politics. And he thinks attempts to idolize his father, known for his modesty, miss the point.
"When we are electing presidents we are electing human beings and all human beings have flaws," Reagan said.
In his recently published book, "My Father at 100," Reagan describes his father as "warm yet remote" and "easy to love yet hard to know."
"You may think you know Ronald Reagan, or at least the 90 percent or so that was so long and frequently on public display," he writes. "However, even to those of us who were closest to him, that hidden 10 percent remains a considerable mystery."
Perhaps not surprising for a former actor, Reagan is often remembered for his best lines: "Trust, but verify," his warning about Soviet relations; "Our enemy is no longer Red Coats, but red ink" and other jeremiads about big government and spending; and references to the "shining city upon a hill," which recalls a 17th-century sermon.
But Reagan is sometimes misunderstood, adopted for causes or ideas that don't dovetail neatly with his record in office.
He is seen as an apostle of lower taxes, but he supported what was then the largest tax increase in California history when he served as governor, from 1967 to 1975.
Cutting deals with Democratic leaders in Congress, he slashed and raised taxes during his White House days.
The debt held by the public climbed on his watch: from $712 billion in 1980 to $2 trillion in 1988, and he never presented a balanced budget to Congress during his eight years in office.
Remembered for a massive military buildup, he also proposed abolishing nuclear weapons.
Known for traditional, Christian values, he was divorced and remarried and, according to his son's book, received a D in a college course on Christ's life.
He's often embraced by conservatives who want to see Social Security privatized, yet Reagan blessed a 1982 Social Security commission's blueprint for solvency that generated almost three decades of surpluses.
Conservative bristle at proposals to provide amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, but a 1986 law signed by Reagan established a one-year amnesty program for illegal immigrants who had been in the United States at least four years. An estimated 2.7 million people took advantage.
Talk radio and cable TV are thick with praise for Reagan, yet the president was a pragmatic politician who compromised with Democrats and counted House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, a Democrat, among his friends.
In some cases, "he didn't do exactly what people are crediting him with, particularly on the right," Reagan biographer Lou Cannon says.
Reagan was born Feb. 6, 1911, in tiny Tampico, Ill., and attended Eureka College roughly 100 miles away. He worked in Iowa as a radio broadcaster before relocating to Los Angeles, where he began a career in acting. A one-time Democrat, he changed his registration in 1962.
As Reagan's reputation grew in recent years, it has overshadowed troubled periods of his presidency, including the Iran-contra arms scandal and the fight over the "Star Wars" missile-defense initiative.
For Americans, Reagan as president keeps looking better.
"He's passed on into mythology now," says former Reagan speechwriter and adviser Peter Hannaford, who worked on Reagan's 1976 and 1980 campaigns.
About two years after he left the White House, he logged a 54 percent approval rating, according to the Gallup poll, with 44 percent disapproving. By November 2010, he notched a 74 percent approval rating in a Gallup survey, second only to President Kennedy's 85 percent.
Nearly seven years after his death, much of the fine print of the Reagan story remains in boxes below the hilltop museum. There are 60 million pages of documents, most from his presidency.
Only about one-quarter of those records can be seen today, and it could take 30 years before the trove of material is fully reviewed, organized and made accessible to the public. A team of archivists cleared 1.5 million pages last year for release.
In the meantime, history awaits.
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