All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Peter Robinson ·
Jan 18 at 10:12am
Apropos of nothing in particular, in a Hoover Institution hallway the other day economist Allan Meltzer and I found ourselves chatting about Ronald Reagan. (Under President Reagan, Prof. Meltzer served on the Council of Economic Advisors--as he had twenty years earlier under President Kennedy.)
Prof. Meltzer summed up President Reagan in as neat a formulation as I had ever heard:
Ronald Reagan had two characteristics that are very unusual in presidents.
The first was that he knew exactly who he was. The second was that he didn't want to be anybody else.
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Jul '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Peter Robinson
I have to say, those characteristics aren't just unusual amongst presidents. If only more people were like him.
Jun '10
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
He also didn't expect others to want the same things he wanted, and therefore he did his best to let others decide for themselves what happiness is.
Jul '10
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Peter, the man spent a good portion of his life being someone else. An entire acting career. Got it completely out of his system! Who'd have thought acting to be a serious qualification for a substantive President.
Nov '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
In keeping with this, and complementary to it, was the sign they say he kept on his desk that said, as I recall, "It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."
I'm guessing that isn't exactly the sign Obama has on his desk...
Jun '10
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Obama's is: "It's amazing the grief you can avoid if you don't care who gets the blame."
Jun '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
In leadership training, we learn that our strengths, when taken to an extreme, can become weaknesses.
I think our current president possesses both of these attributes as well, but at such an extreme level that they have become not merely weaknesses, but dangerous weaknesses. And "exactly who he is" is a change-the-world redistributionist.
Also, I believe the Gipper had one more attribute that made these first two so endearing -- he didn't take himself too seriously. No one will ever say that about the current Transformer in Chief.
May '10
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
I know that I'll sound like Ron Radosh here, but having read up on Reagan's early career fighting communists in Hollywood, I'm amazed and what a tough hombre he was, and amazed at how little the general public knows about it. It is a crime, crime, crime that Hollywood hasn't made a sympathetic biopic of Reagan's days in Hollywood. That would be a spellbinding story (but many plaster saints would be shattered in the process).
Which leads me to another two Reagan characteristics that are also very rare together, and rare in Presidents: a healthy live-and-let-live attitude combined with a complete lack of shyness about inserting himself into the arena of public debate and action. He was the perfect blend of Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt.
Mar '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
May '10
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Myself, I'm familiar with. Greek, not so much.
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
It means "Know thyself." There. I've just exhausted the limits of my ancient Greek.
Apr '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
He also knew he was a sinner, not a saint, that his Redeemer Liveth and that holding to an ideal for America which by God's grace was possible was better than orchestrating, by force, a Utopia that was not nor could ever be.
Thanks, as always, for sharing Peter.
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Fredösphere: I know that I'll sound like Ron Radosh here, but having read up on Reagan's early career fighting communists in Hollywood, I'm amazed and what a tough hombre he was, and amazed at how little the general public knows about it. It is a crime, crime, crime that Hollywood hasn't made a sympathetic biopic of Reagan's days in Hollywood. That would be a spellbinding story (but many plaster saints would be shattered in the process).
Which leads me to another two Reagan characteristics that are also very rare together, and rare in Presidents: a healthy live-and-let-live attitude combined with a complete lack of shyness about inserting himself into the arena of public debate and action. He was the perfect blend of Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt. · Jan 18 at 10:53am
Beautifully put. And you're right. As Ron understands, you can't understand Reagan until you understand the fight against the Communists in Hollywood. Reagan possessed real courage--both moral and physical. A tough hombre indeed.
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Exactly! As G.K. Chesterton wrote, "Satan fell through force of gravity." Reagan possessed gravitas, but he was never self-serious or grave. The man was the master of the light touch.
Sep '10
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Peter is too modest to say it but his own book on Reagan is the best one you can buy if you want to get to know what made Reagan, well, Reagan.
Nov '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
I couldn't agree more on that one.
Can I add that this man was a goldmine of excellent quotes?
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
Nobody else used wit and humor as well as he did to make his point.
Mar '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Myself, I'm familiar with. Greek, not so much.
Thankfully in our time we have our own Oracle at Delphi (and translator!) in Google (okay, perhaps oracle is too strong a word....) to help us with such conundrums. Although, some elegant things often get missed in translation: it is worthy of our attention that the first word of the entire Iliad is the Greek word for 'wrath'.
But I quoted the Greek to point to something in Reagan himself, and the way those who recall his best qualities tend to remember him: there is an ineffable timelessness about certain aspects of his character, even though we cannot understand him without understanding the whole of our own time. The combination of characteristics that Prof. Meltzer attributed to him are rare indeed, and most especially in a political man.
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Peter Robinson
Exactly! As G.K. Chesterton wrote, "Satan fell through force of gravity." Reagan possessed gravitas, but he was never self-serious or grave. The man was the master of the light touch. · Jan 18 at 11:06am
That is one of my favorites. "Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice, It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally, but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity."
May '10
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Peter Robinson
Fredösphere: Which leads me to another two Reagan characteristics that are also very rare together, and rare in Presidents: a healthy live-and-let-live attitude combined with a complete lack of shyness about inserting himself into the arena of public debate and action. He was the perfect blend of Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt. · Jan 18 at 10:53am
Beautifully put. And you're right. As Ron understands, you can't understand Reagan until you understand the fight against the Communists in Hollywood. Reagan possessed real courage--both moral and physical. A tough hombre indeed. · Jan 18 at 11:04am
Thanks Peter. It suddenly occurs to me that Obama is the exact opposite: no theoretical boundaries on his intrusion into the lives of others, yet a weird laziness when it comes to the exertions that kind of omnipresent, omnicompetent paternalism implies.
Mar '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
So what your saying is Reagan never saw himself as Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, or even Franklin D. Roosevelt, hmmm--weird? In the last presidential election we had two men trying to convince us that one was Abe Lincoln and the other Teddy Roosevelt. And today everyone wants us to think they are Reagan, well, except for the guy who thinks he's Churchill or was it Alexander. Oh I almost forgot, now our president wants us to think of him as TR. I wonder who G.K Chesterton thought he was?
May '11
Re: All You Need to Know About Ronald Reagan
Fredösphere:
He was the perfect blend of Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt. · Jan 18 at 10:53am
As compared to todays candidates, who are the perfect blend of Calvin and Hobbes.