Just before Christmas, the White House announced the president's reading list, which included The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon - still pretty much the essential book on Reagan's presidency, though I'd probably reccomend Richard Reeves. The choice is presumably a nod to the centennial, to the spirit of bipartisan understanding, and an invitation to compare the two presidencies. Conservatives have read it as an attempt to emulate Reagan. "Mr. Obama," says son Michael, "apparently thinks that if he can learn how to play the role of a Reaganesque president, he can become as successful as my father, Ronald Reagan." Tevi Troy suggests that:
[H]e is looking to a great president for clues as to how he, too, can become a great president. Reagan’s communication skills were of course superb, but his policies had something to do with it as well, and Obama would have to take on some of Reagan’s ideology to learn the full lesson of Reagan.
If Obama wants to learn anything from Reagan, I expect, it is about how to behave around a hostile Congress (and possibly with a fractious Middle East). Both Troy and M. Reagan's comments seem part of a resurgent defence of Reagan's conservative identity, more of which later.
Incidentally, Reagan only released one reading list during his presidency, on the request of the Baltimore Sun. It included a book on Thomas Jefferson, and one which imagined a near-future outbreak of World War - that would get the bloggers tapping nowadays!
Also incidentally, last year Obama announced that he was reading Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. After Reagan read the book, Morris was picked to be his official biographer - no such result for Morris from the Obama White House so far, though it would certainly raise an interesting stink. Morris's thoughts on the announcement here.
I won't catch up on everything I've missed the past couple of months, but I thought this proposal was worth a mention. David Frum, as the voice of a new moderate conservatism (or an old conservatism, divorced from Tea Party radicalism), ecapsulated his postion in his approach to the Reagan Centennial:
To date, the main attempts to honor Reagan in the nation's capital have gone askew. A government office building second in size only to the Pentagon? An airport from which Washingtonians cannot fly to California? These do not seem very appropriate monuments to a president who fought bureaucracy and yearned for home. The other ideas that sometimes circulate in Congress seem equally misplaced: Placing Reagan on the currency or building a giant statue somewhere in Washington. More than most presidents, Reagan would have wanted to be remembered for his ideas, not his image. The right commemoration would honor those.Let me suggest something: A museum in Washington dedicated to the victims of communism.
This idea is just that, unlikely to go beyond an op-ed piece, and I only really raise it because I quite like it. It's also, though, a neat suggestion of how Reagan's memory might be wrested away from bland and blinkered partisan triumphalism in the commemoration this year. The proposal affirms Reagan's conservatism and anti-communism, but aligns him with the national and international history of the Cold War. He would be associated with the bi- and non-partisan American identity of the twentieth century, and with the experiences of a diverse, global multitude. A reflective, educational museum would also avoid the ambiguity and potential drawn-out controversy of a symbolic monument to Reagan on the Mall. Of course, some on the left would raise the question of the victims of anti-communism in Central and South America, South-East Asia and Africa, but such questions might be more constructive than bitter. The idea would also emphasise the legacy of which Reagan was perhaps most proud - his personal achievements in aiding the plights of individual political prisoners in the Soviet Union, and gaining the approbation of anti-communist dissenters worldwide.
In the closing pages to her memoir/hagiography When Character Was King, Peggy Noonan expressed the importance of the tale of Ronald Reagan. It had to be told so that America's children would learn it, internalise it, and carry it forward to America's future:
He'd like knowing that when the long war is over our kids will have learned something unforgettable that each generation must relearn, and make new again, as it lives on through history...The little bodies of children are the repositories of the greatness of a future age. And they must be encouraged, must eat from the tales of those who've gone before, and brandished their swords, and slayed dragons.
Noonan will be glad to know that some of those little bodies now form the National Youth Leadership Committee of the Reagan Centennial. These representatives of "America's next generation of leaders" include celebrities, athletes, beauty queens, students and servicemen and are chaired by a Jonas Brother and an American Idol winner.
When I visited in 2008, the Reagan Library had in its AV collection a few dozen episodes of General Electric Theater, which Reagan hosted and starred in during the 1950s. The tapes I watched left no great impression on me, save for the confidence with which the host promoted his employer's message of American progress and innovation. Last week the library was gifted the full collection of 208 episodes, discovered and restored by GE after being presumed lost as TV ephemera. Whatever else might be lurking in the NBC archives, this was a very timely discovery given GE's prominent sponsorship of the Reagan Centennial. Along with the tapes, GE CEO Jeff Immelt pledged $10 million for the library's celebration and refurbishment, and $5 million to a scholarship programme.
Immelt's speech described Reagan's employment by GE, as an actor and as an "employee ambassador" who toured facilities to raise morale and communicate the company philosophy to the workers. Rather than focus on Reagan's internalisation during this period of Lemuel Boulware's conservative ideology and management theory (as explored by Thomas Evans), Immelt presented Reagan as a model for GE's contemporary ambitions, methods, character and principles. This reversal is suitable for the CEO, joined GE in 1982, am enthusiastic disciple of Reaganomics. It is also the theme of GE's new advertising campaign, where Reagan is not presented as the creation of the company, but its inspiration:
A longer version can be viewed on GE's website, along with reminiscences ("progress reports") by the usual suspects as well as ordinary GE-employed folk. There is even a "Storyline" to call for what appears to be their own, weird, oral history project. The effect of this campaign is to reduce the significance of Reagan's, or GE's, politics, and promote him as a national symbol of American character. Immelt concentrated on themes of optimisim, determination, leadership and openness; Reagan's party and policies are second to his personal greatness and his national significance:
Ronald Reagan set an example for the country. I try to manage my life, and my company, to do the same. Always listen. Always try to learn. Always try to improve. Stay humble. Make those around you better. Appreciate your responsibility to perform with integrity and to make things better. Nearly 60 years after GE and Ronald Reagan first worked together, we are honored to renew the association. I am very proud GE can play a small role in celebrating the extraordinary life, character, service and legacy of Ronald Reagan. And, may I add, GE still believes progress is our most important product. No business created and operating in America should ever believe anything less. And should we ever forget it, we have the example of the great man whom we pay tribute to today to recall us to our senses and our obligations.
It's more fun if you imagine Jack Donaghy delivering the homilies.
