Impressive, but not definitive 2010-05-19

Reviewer: Christopher Barat

Like RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY, Craig Shirley's recent book on Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential campaign -- which, interestingly enough, also took more time to be released than originally expected -- the second volume in Hayward's AGE OF REAGAN exacta is likely to stand for some time as the default pro-Reagan survey of its subject matter (in this case, Reagan's two terms as President). It also, like Shirley's volume, misses top-drawer status by just a hair. Hayward eschews the sophomoric language that Shirley occasionally used in favor of a straightforward narrative style, so the words aren't the problem. The real disappointment is how many important topics are either ignored entirely or skimmed over in passing, the victims of Hayward's relentless focus on the "twin peaks" of the Reagan era, the success/failure of "Reaganomics" and the events of the final decade of the Cold War. You'll find nothing here on the savings and loan crisis (which Hayward admits up front) but also nothing on South Africa, the great liberal foreign-policy obsession of the 1980s, and a surprisingly meager amount on the Religious Right, even in its somewhat fluid pre-Christian Coalition phase. The final chapter is also something of a letdown, primarily because Hayward spends so little time on linking Reagan's accomplishments to the triumphs and follies of the conservative movement today -- a linkage that he had explicitly promised to explore in some detail in the first volume.

Despite the holes in the narrative, Hayward does succeed in clearing the air of several misconceptions about the Reagan years. First and foremost, he dynamites any lingering impressions that "we all stood together behind the Gipper" as the Cold War wound down. The quotes from Vietnam-traumatized liberals and leftists about the Soviet Union, Nicaragua, Grenada, and similar would-be flash points are numerous, and damning. Oddly enough, Hayward makes no mention of Ted Kennedy's coziness with ex-KGB master Yuri Andropov, which would have fit right into his laundry list of defeatist declarations. A discussion of South Africa would also have been helpful here, as the huge amount of noise made about that country by the Left during the 80s would have provided a useful contrast to its deafening silence when it came to the USSR and Eastern Europe. Hayward gives Mikhail Gorbachev his proper due for helping to ease tensions and bring the Cold War to a virtually bloodless conclusion, but he also makes it clear that Reagan was anything but an amiable onlooker to these events; his resolve obliged the USSR to find a leader who would at least attempt to reverse the country's economic slide and compete with a newly confident America.

Hayward also nixes the notion of Reagan's second term as being a "failure" defined solely by the Iran-Contra scandal. 1985-89 saw the major breakthroughs with Gorbachev, the passage of a landmark tax-reform package that was thought to be impossible at the time, and the revocation of the Fairness Doctrine, which has since led to the creation of a conservative alternative media, a luxury that Reagan himself did not enjoy. If Reagan's second term was a letdown compared to the first, Hayward argues, it was partially his own fault. In "Realignment Manque," the most provocative part of the book, Hayward takes the Reagan reelection campaign in 1984 to task for not attempting to "de-legitimize" the intellectually sclerotic Democratic Party and fighting hard for Republican gains in the Congress. Instead, Reagan encouraged Democrats to support him without leaving their own party and used the cheerful but vacuous theme of "Morning in America." Hayward's argument is hard to answer, but he does not really discuss why Reagan chose to campaign in this manner. My own view is that this was another example of Reagan going over the heads of the elite media and establishing a personal bond of trust with voters. By so doing, he was able to counteract media bias (which was plenty bad, though nowhere near as raw and ugly as that seen during the "W" years), but he did so at the cost of blunting the edges of his rhetoric.

Finally, Hayward muddies the expected good guy/bad guy domestic debates of the era by pointing out how often Reagan was at odds with members of his own party. Bob Dole may have been a good senator and an effective spokesman for Viagra, but he does not come off at all well here. The waterier RINOs of the Lowell Weicker/Charles Mathias ilk are treated even more harshly (not least by quoting Reagan's disgusted diary entries about them). Hayward likewise details the worries of conservatives that a legacy-haunted Reagan might be snookered into signing a bad arms-control bill with Gorbachev late in his Presidency. Despite making these points, Hayward mystifyingly fails to tie them together with observations on the modern-day GOP in his final chapter, "The Reagan Revolution and its Discontents."

Though it will probably not convince a Reagan hater to "join the church," Hayward's book is an effective first stab at a complete assessment of the man's Presidency. I think it is safe to say that better books on the subject are in our future, however.

The Age of Reagan 2010-02-16

Reviewer: NDA

Outstanding, even if you thought you knew just about everything there was to know about our 40th President.

Kindle edition too expensive. Kindle Swindle. 2010-02-12

Reviewer: Sigmund Freud

i buy lots of Kindle books but i don't pay more than $9.99 for a hardback or more than 80% of the discounted paperback price for a Kindle edition. Unfortunately therefore my copy of this book has to remain on the Amazon shelf.

Detailed beyond other books on Pres. Reagan 2009-12-15

Reviewer: Lucas

Hayward shows his passion and reverence for the greatest president of the post-war era in this, much more that Wilentz in his plodding work of last year. Even at the first chapter, I could imagine myself actually sitting into the office with Baker or Meese in the presidential transition office, watching aides scurry about trying to set up the White House to undo the damage of the previous four years.

Any reader, regardless of persuasion, will profit from reading this fair and even handed piece, if anything to have a better (and more accurate) understanding of the president who was a game changer.

Brings back many memories 2009-11-01

Reviewer: Michael T Kennedy

I read the first volume of this two volume set last month. It was excellent and refreshed my memory of the situation that we faced when Ronald Reagan was elected. I was not a big fan of his when he was governor of California. I think it was the residual of my student liberalism that was fading as I grew up but which was finished off by the presidency of Jimmy Carter. By the time Reagan was elected, I was ready for a big change and, as this book relates so enjoyably, we got it. I do have a couple of differences with the author on details. In Chapter 5, "Stay the Course, Hayward writes about the vicious 1981-82 recession. He attributes it to Fed's pressure to eliminate inflation. On page 186, he writes that the Reagan response to critics of his tax cut was "the correct but weak-sounding explanation that his plan hadn't take effect yet." He doesn't explain that the delay in implementation of the tax cut had the wholly logical effect of causing everyone to delay economic activity until the tax cut had taken effect. This response was predicted at the time by the Wall Street Journal and I remember it well. All through the book we are reminded of the baleful influence of Senator Bob Dole who did what he could to derail the Reagan Revolution from Congress. Reagan's friends in the Republican Party were almost as obstructionist as the Democrats. They were still the old "Root Canal Republicans" and would be for some time.

The sections on the rise of Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War are excellent and I note that he includes several references to Reagan's private contact Susan Massie who plays a large role in the excellent book, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War. Reagan was often depicted as remote and uninvolved in the details of governing. These books should dispel that myth. There is a good explanation of the farcical Iran-Contra scandal that seemed such a major matter at the time but which has faded from memory, as it should. Still, it reminds one that the Democratic Congress was frequently obstructionist in foreign policy matters during the Cold War. The efforts to keep the Contras alive led to some inexplicable lapses by people who should have known better. He does not mention the attempted suicide of Robert McFarlane that resulted from his role in that fiasco. McFarlane later said that the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" had an important role in his recovery from depression. At times we can forget that real people are involved in such circumstances; not everyone is a politician.

There is also an excellent discussion of the politics of the two presidential campaigns. I was disappointed that Reagan was unable to control spending during his time in office but the author points out that he at least reduced the slope of spending if not the general trend. He also had two excuses that the Bush presidencies did not have; he had the Cold War to win and he had a Democratic Congress. Both volumes of this history are excellent and fill a need that has been obvious since the failure of the Edmund Morris "biography", Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, which I do not recommend. They are big books but read well.