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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: halfscot who wrote (8132)	2/23/1998 6:13:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

WSJ Review & Outlook February 23, 1998 Revising Reagan Cynicism about politics has become a 1990s epidemic. For anyone seeking an antidote, we recommend turning their TV sets on Monday night and Tuesday to a remarkable PBS documentary about the life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan. The program is as startling for its source as for its content. PBS rarely treated the Gipper well while in office, yet this four-hour-plus saga offers a refreshingly subtle and complex view of the man and his legacy. Even more intriguing, "Reagan" relies for much of its insight on official Reagan biographer Edmund Morris. Mr. Morris, author of a majestic biography of the young Teddy Roosevelt, was given extraordinary access to the Reagan White House for much of his second term. His balanced analysis suggests that this program might just signal a new appreciation for our 40th President, maybe even among honest liberals. For years the liberal establishment view toward Reagan has been condescension: He was an amiable but dim actor who saw life as a movie script. In this view, the Gipper was rescued from his benighted ideology only by deficit spending, a good staff and Mikhail Gorbachev. In "Reagan," however, we are told by series host and Truman biographer David McCullough that the Gipper "was no celluloid contrivance." In particular, the program gives him credit for crafting, and then carrying out against ferocious opposition, a plan to win the Cold War. It sees SDI, his defense buildup and the deployment of INF missiles in Europe as part of a strategy to put maximum stress on a regime that Mr. Reagan thought more vulnerable than nearly everyone else. And lo, he was right. Mr. Morris even argues that it was Ronald Reagan who made Mikhail Gorbachev possible. By the mid-1980s, the old-line Soviet leaders had come to see Mr. Reagan as a formidable adversary. So Yuri Andropov began grooming the young Gorbachev as someone who could reform and revitalize their failing system. But reform, as we now know, was the beginning of the Soviet end. Unfortunately, "Reagan" is far more conventional in its economics. It blames the 1982 recession on tax cuts without mentioning the tight money required to break inflation. And it simultaneously blames the Gipper for failing to control spending but also for spending "cuts" that somehow created homelessness. More credibly, the program hits Mr. Reagan for his lack of loyalty to aides and for his emotional detachment, even from his own children. Perhaps the Gipper is destined for better reviews now because of his contrast with the White House's current occupant. Both have a gift for communicating. But as Mr. McCullough notes, Mr. Reagan "demonstrated the value of fixed objectives in combination with extraordinary charm." He believed in a few big themes and stuck to them. President Clinton applies his awesome charm mainly to tactical political advantage. It's also amusing, at this distance, to see Mr. Reagan tormented by even the single deception of having lied about trading arms for hostages with Iran. "Reagan" reminds us that this one episode was thought a great betrayal at the time. But it looks trivial compared with the culture of spin and stonewall that has dominated the Clinton years. The show makes clear that Mr. Reagan's beliefs were rooted in a deep idealism -- something missing now too. Politics for him was above all a moral cause, not the mere pursuit of power. He took polls but wasn't ruled by them. Today's Republicans and Democrats could both learn from his example. interactive2.wsj.com Roger Morris was on the staff of the National Security Council under President Lyndon B. Johnson.