Keeping Faith: The Memoirs of Jimmy Carter By Jimmy Carter

Keeping Faith: The Memoirs of Jimmy Carter
By Jimmy Carter
Copyright 1982

Jimmy Carter is a prodigious memoirist, writing several autobiographical accounts of his life. Keeping Faith is a memoir of his presidency and opens not at the beginning of his presidency, but on its final day.

Carter chooses an unusual format to recall his presidential years. Traditionally, presidents move in chronological order, starting at the beginning and moving through the issues and crises as they presented themselves. Instead, Carter takes one issue at a time and provides narrative and commentary on them.

I didn’t think this particular format worked. It made for dry reading. When you read the memoirs of former presidents like Nixon, Ford, and Clinton, you get to know those men through their thoughts, their expressed frustrations, and their expressed ideals. Carter’s approach has him saying, “I proposed this. Congress did this. I said that and he said this.” It is all very dry and the man who is Jimmy Carter remains an enigma.

Jimmy Carter had a brutal presidency and one not known for great achievements. The Camp David Accords stand as perhaps the one reach for greatness that Carter made and as perhaps one of the great diplomatic achievements of the twentieth century. Shamefully, Carter’s retelling of the events make it almost impossible to appreciate the accords for what they were.

Carter was known as a detail man. He micromanaged every facet of his administration. In telling the story of the Camp David Accords, Carter spares no detail, no matter how mundane. My eyes glazed over as I read blow by blow accounts of meetings between the parties. There were way too many details and not nearly enough analysis. Almost half of the book deals with Camp David and there was certainly much more going on in the four years of the Carter administration.

Carter does not reveal much about the relationships he had with his close advisors. He does discuss Bert Lance and that relationship in great detail because Lance’s scandal was a tremendous blow to the administration that placed a premium on honesty. But Carter’s chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, was a colorful character who was prone to saying and doing the wrong thing. Carter provides no insight into what it was like to work with Jordan. We scarcely get to know his closest advisors with the exception of Zbigniew Brzezinski who was National Security Advisor and Cyrus Vance who was his first secretary of state.

Carter also gives very short shrift to his domestic agenda and relations with Congress. To read Carter’s memoirs, one would believe that Carter had warm relations with Tip O’Neill and Robert Byrd. It was quite the contrary. Carter enjoyed four years of Democratic rule in both chambers of Congress, but could not get a domestic agenda passed. This was because he did not and would not understand how Congress worked. This was in an age when the prerogatives of the legislature meant more to its members than party loyalty. Carter never got that and, in writing his memoirs, it appears he still doesn’t understand why he met with so much resistance from his party.

Carter had to feel some angst over the state of the economy during the latter half of his presidency. It was certainly in shambles. Unemployment was double digits, interest rates were sky-high, and inflation was out of control. Add to it an energy shortage and you have the makings of an economic calamity. Carter does not comment on this at all. He does discuss his efforts at passing an energy program, but provides scant detail as to what this program was. Nor does he provide any analysis as to why it failed to pass. The economy, as bad as it was, is barely mentioned.

Where Carter is at his best in writing about his years in the White House is in describing the events that led up to the Iranian hostage crisis and measures he took to secure their release. The book opens with his very last minute efforts to push through the transfer of funds to Iran to secure their release. In later chapters, he describes the American relationship with Iran and the Shah and how it deteriorated. The conflict between diplomats, the military, and security officials that followed the fall of the Shah is fascinating and Carter tells it well.

Here, Carter does make the reader sympathize with him. He was clearly anguished by the plight of the hostages and spared no effort in trying to secure their safe release. He also clearly describes the abortive military effort to rescue the hostages and how it failed. This failure was unfairly laid at the feet of Carter by the American public and led to a rapid deterioration of his approval. Carter does not complain and in retrospect, it was quite unfair. I respect the man for having made the bold attempt at rescue.

What I was looking forward to the most was a narrative about the Crisis of Confidence speech – or the “Malaise Speech” as it is commonly known. Not before or since has a national presidential address been so poorly conceived and delivered and I was curious to see how Carter would defend it.

He chose not to defend it. In his telling, it was all a grand success. The reality was much different. When he cancelled his scheduled address to the nation on energy and retreated to Camp David, he created an air of crisis where none existed. That is not necessarily bad. A manufactured crisis can serve a president well. But when you start inviting poets and ministers to advise you as Carter did during his retreat, you appear to be a leader full of self-doubt. When you are the president, you can admit error. But you can never admit to a lack of self-confidence. That is how it appeared to the nation.

Then the speech itself was delivered. It resonated well as a call to action. Then, pundits and opponents began to parse it. Upon closer examination, Carter seemed to be blaming the American people for the state of woe in the country. He accepted no responsibility. He made no exclamation of meeting the challenges facing the nation. Ronald Reagan used its text to malign Carter as a man out of touch with his country. The crisis of confidence was not in themselves, Reagan said. The crisis of confidence was in the man in the White House.

Carter’s bitterness toward Reagan seeps into his memoir. While this is a natural human emotion, it is not statesmanlike and Carter comes off looking somewhat petty. Reagan was considerate to Carter as the outgoing president and Carter refuses to acknowledge this.

Carter does express a great deal of warmth for Gerald Ford and, on several occasions, talks about the support Ford lent him as president. He also seems to hold Richard Nixon in high regard, discussing his advice in foreign affairs and the long trip the two took together to the Begin funeral.

The Carter presidency is soon due an unbiased and thorough examination by scholars as passions fade about the man and his presidency. They will soon begin that dispassionate analysis that we are now getting of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. A president’s memoirs lend themselves to this process. But Carter’s offer scant information to historians that’s not already available. Historians look to memoirs for a man’s passions, prejudices, anguish, and pride. Carter leaves little for historians to work with in this dry tome.

Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography From Plains to Post Presidency By Peter C. Bourne

Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography From Plains to Post Presidency
By Peter C. Bourne
Copyright 1997

Jimmy Carter has been out of office for more than 30 years, yet there are few scholarly biographies of this president. That is remarkable considering he presided over one of the most bizarre periods of American history. Deindustrialization of the United States was just getting started, everything William Phillips and John Maynard Keynes taught us about the economy was proved wrong, The Soviets achieved military superiority to the United States, and OPEC learned they could bully us.

Bourne was a health advisor to Carter during his presidency and worked on Carter’s campaign for governor and was instrumental, along with Vernon Jordan, Bert Lance, and others in convincing the little known governor of Georgia to run for the presidency in 1976.

Bourne describes Carter’s childhood in great detail. He was the first American president born in a hospital. His father was a benign bigot – more a product of his time and place than a hard core bigot. His mother was a Florence Nightingale to the black community in Plains and Americus, Georgia. It was Earl Carter who built the family peanut and warehouse business for which Carter would become so famous.

In describing Carter’s military career, it becomes clear that Rosalynn was every bit ambitious – perhaps more ambitious – than her husband. She didn’t enjoy the life of a military wife, with Jimmy being gone for long stretches as one of the first nuclear engineers in military history. But she saw it as a ticket out of Plains which was too small to contain her unrelenting drive.

She was devastated when Jimmy left the Navy and returned to Plains to run the family business. Earl Carter was known for his business acumen and Jimmy inherited that trait. Rosalynn was also adept at business, managing the business’s books. It was during this time that Carter was bitten by the political bug.

Carter entered southern politics at a time of transition in the South. The hardline segregationists were losing their grip on power, yet still controlled a large portion of the vote in rural Georgia. Carter ran for the Georgia state senate as man who was all things to all people. In his heart, he was a reformer, but made concessions to the reality of southern politics in the 1960s.

Despite his big grin, Carter showed he could be tough. He battled the entrenched segregationists within the Georgia Democratic Party and corrupt county officials in his first run for office. He challenged the sheriff of Quitman County who controlled voting there and won his first political race in 1961. He successfully ran for reelection in 1964 and served on the education committee within the Georgia senate.

He decided not to run for reelection in 1966 and seek a higher office. He considered a run for the U.S. House seat which is what Rosalynn wanted. Instead, he opted for governor. He ended up losing that race to Lester Maddox, an old school segregationist. But with Maddox term limited in 1970, Carter came back and won the governership. Maddox was elected lieutenant governor and the two did not get along with Maddox working to thwart every reform measure Carter pursued.

Bourne doesn’t spend too much time discussing Carter’s years as governor. The narrative really takes off when Carter’s advisors start to contemplate a run for the presidency.

Carter was the most unlikely candidate of the modern era of presidents. He had zero name recognition nationally and was not even well known among his governors. But politics is about time and place, and Bourne accurately portrays that Jimmy Carter was a man of his times.

Bourne doesn’t overplay his role, but apparently had an axe to grind with Vernon Jordan, who got his start as a kingmaker under Carter. Bourne is unrelenting in his criticism of Jordan’s disorganization and unwillingness to return phone calls. Bourne makes it clear they won that campaign despite Jordan.

Presidential primaries were much different in 1976 than they are today, with the individual states holding primaries from early in the year through the summer. Today, it is a sprint to the nomination once the primaries start. Back then, it was a marathon and Carter was durable. He won primaries and lost primaries. With Kennedy out, liberals kept hoping that Hubert Humphrey would enter the race and the Carter camp feared this. But as time wore in, also-rans like George Wallace, Frank Church, Jerry Brown, and Morris Udall eventually fell by the wayside and Carter won the nomination.

Bourne points out that it was Carter’s tireless grassroots campaigning – standing at shopping centers and factory entrances that won him the nomination. Carter and his campaign were not media savvy and his mass media campaign was lackluster. But Carter’s ability to engage voters one on one was unsurpassed by any president before or since.

Carter emerged from the Democratic National Convention with running mate Walter Mondale with a 30 point lead over Gerald Ford and Bob Dole. Ford was suffering from backlash from the Nixon pardon and an ailing economy. The election should have been a cakewalk for Carter. But it was not.

Ford responded with a brilliant Rose Garden strategy. He knew that Carter’s greatest weakness was his inexperience and Ford needed to look presidential to best Carter, who was running as a reformer after Vietnam and Watergate had shaken America’s faith in its politicians. Ford executed his plan well and the lead narrowed. Carter had a disastrous interview with Playboy magazine where he admitted to having “lusted” in his heart. He would go on to perform poorly in the first of two debates with Ford where he admitted being in awe of the president and his office.

Ford, who was doing so well with his Rose Garden strategy then committed a major gaffe at the second blunder. In defending the Helsinki Accords which he’d help broker, he claimed that there was, “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, nor will there ever be under a Ford administration.” Conservatives were aghast. Not particularly fond of Ford for besting their man, Ronald Reagan, in the primaries, they were now alienated. Bob Dole made things worse by describing all of the wars of the 20th century as “Democrat wars.”

The election was close, but Carter managed to defeat Ford. One of the great traditions of which Americans are most proud is the transition of power from a defeated president to the man who defeated him. Yet, Bourne neglects to discuss the transfer of power from Ford to Carter with any great detail. He does discuss in detail Carter’s process of selecting members of his cabinet and administration and the process is as ugly and disorganized as any in American history.

In the wake of the scorn and blame for Watergate heaped on Nixon chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, Carter elected not to have a chief of staff. He wanted multiple people within his administration to have direct access to him. This would prove a stupid maneuver. The people in charge of vetting potential advisors and cabinet members had no experience in Washington and were determined to appoint people who were not Washington insiders. They did not consult Democratic congressional leaders, alienating important men like House Speaker Tip O’Neill, senators Robert Byrd and Scoop Jackson, and the DNC. This was all part of the Carter strategy of portraying the man from Plains as an outsider who was going to change Washington.
Rather than tell a chronological story of the Carter presidency, Bourne compartmentalizes it into various aspects of presidential leadership.

He first describes the effort to bring peace to the Middle East where Israel and Egypt had been engaged in a long and brutal war. Bourne describes in detail (but without drama) the process of bringing Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to Washington to begin negotiations for peace. The divisions were ancient and bitter.

Sadat seemed to want peace more than Begin and immediately invested his hopes in Carter’s ability to wrangle the necessary concessions from Begin. Begin, facing pressure from conservatives in Israel who saw building settlements in disputed territories as their only buffer with hostile Arab nations, were tough negotiators. Begin finally relented enough for Sadat to be able. They reached an agreement in principle, but it would be two more years before the Camp David Accords were finally signed and Carter joined Begin and Sadat on the South Lawn for the three way handshake that would become the most famous image from the Carter presidency as the three celebrated.

In domestic policy, Bourne acknowledges the administration’s plan was a disaster from the start. Carter made myriad promises in many areas during the campaign and he seemed determined to bring them all to fruition in the first year. Proposals for energy legislation, tax legislation, education legislation, environmental legislation, and government reform legislation flew from the White House to Capitol Hill on an almost daily basis. Yet, in developing the legislation, nobody from the administration had consulted anyone on Capitol Hill.

It is this conduct that would make the Carter presidency a total disaster. The boys from Georgia Carter brought with him did not understand how to move legislation through Congress by working with their allies there. Carter himself was incredibly aloof and standoffish with congressional leaders. Much of what he proposed was opposed in principle by many of the old New Dealers that still populated Congress. Members of Congress will sometimes vote against their principles if offered other incentives, but Carter went out of his way to remove those incentives by vetoing bills that included important pork projects for Democratic members.

As the economy slowly faltered and the energy crisis became a real phenomenon, Carter was paralyzed. Part of the problem was the situation was unprecedented in American history. As unemployment rose, economists expected inflation to drop. This was how it had always been. Not under Carter. Unemployment reached double digits and so did inflation. The misery of the Carter economy left no one unhurt. Yet, with no goodwill in Congress, Carter could do nothing about it. He did appoint conservative monetarist Paul Volker to run the Federal Reserve. But it was too little, too late.

Bourne recounts Carter’s moment of personal crisis with dramatic flair. He describes Carter’s retreat to Camp David in great detail where Carter invited advisers, economists, common citizens, politicians, poets, business leaders, and labor leaders to offer him advice. The meeting was supposed to demonstrate Carter getting back in touch with Americans. What it did was reveal to the nation a man in over his head, grasping at any straw to save himself and the nation.

It was here that the woeful, “Malaise Speech” was conceived. It was pollster Pat Cadell’s idea. Cadell’s information revealed that Americans had lost faith in themselves and their country. He thought it important for Carter to acknowledge this and to encourage Americans to reach deep within themselves for sacrifice and determination to improve their lot.

The first to recognize this approach as a total disaster was vice president Walter Mondale. Mondale was a veteran politician who understood voters and understood politics. He recognized it for how it would be received: the president was blaming the American people for their own ills.

Carter delivered the ill-advised speech, speaking from fireside inside the White House in a cardigan sweater. He told Americans what he'd heard during his sojourn at Camp David and described America's Crisis of Confidence in itself.

Early polls seemed to prove Mondale wrong as Carter got an immediate bump in the polls. But as the speech was dissected by the media and by the opposition, the bump disappeared and Carter actually plumbed new depths in presidential approval, falling to just 22 percent – five points lower than Richard Nixon when he resigned. The nation’s economy was unraveling at an alarming rate. Gas shortages plagued the nation. Coal miners went on strike, crippling industry and the president stood helpless.

Bourne provides a bit of a history lesson in Iranian-American relations as he starts into his analysis of the Iranian hostage crisis. When the militants seized power and took the American embassy, Carter did not respond. Carter supported Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlav, but publicly chided him for his abysmal record on human rights. When the Shah fell, Carter refused to allow him sanctuary in the United States, forcing him to flee to Mexico. Just as he was paralyzed by the mess in the economy, he was paralyzed by the hostage crisis. The militants were demanding the return of the Shah, his wealth, an admission from the U.S. that it had meddled in Iranian politics and an apology, and a promise to stay out of Iranian domestic politics.

Carter finally decided to act and signed off on a rescue mission. This led to the resignation of Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance who had tired of the constant battles for power within the Carter White House which had no chief of staff, and therefore, no leader. Vance had battled NSA director, Zbigniew Brzezinski and de facto chief of staff, Vernon Jordan for access and power for years. This was a convenient time for him to exit.

The effort to rescue the hostages was a disaster. Helicopters failed to operate properly. Republicans had criticized the president for the lack of funding for spare parts for military equipment and this seemed to bear out their criticism. The rescue effort was further hampered by a horrible dust storm which made landing in the designated area nearly impossible. The disaster culminated in the collision of two of the helicopters, leading to the death and injury of several American military personnel.

As the hostage crisis wore on, the energy crisis wore on, and the economy remained in total shambles, Carter had no political capital with which to operate. Democrat Ted Kennedy, with whom Carter had never enjoyed a particularly warm relationship, decided to run for president in the Democratic primary.

Carter desperately wanted a second term, but was going to have to fight the liberal wing of his party to get it. The battle between Kennedy and Carter was vicious, but its outcome preordained. Kennedy still wore the stigma of Chappaquiddick and blew a high profile interview on CBS where he could not clearly state why he wanted to be president. Carter vanquished Kennedy in the primaries, but the two could not show a united front at the Democratic National Convention. The Democratic primary was split.

Meanwhile, the rift between conservative and moderate Republicans was repaired when Ronald Reagan chose George Bush to be his running mate at the 1980 Republican Convention. Just as Carter had done four years prior, Reagan/Bush emerged from the primary with a sizeable lead over the incumbent.

The race was between the incumbent who’d promised honesty and efficiency in government and a man who promised to restore American greatness. Carter, who was so involved in government that he approved daily White House tennis court schedules, was opposing a man who seemed to know or care little about how federal government worked, but was quick to label it the source of all American problems.

Just as Carter was the right man at the right time in 1976, promising honesty and efficiency in the wake of Watergate, Ronald Reagan was the right man at the right time who promised a weary and uncertain nation that he would lead it back to greatness by restoring its military might and reducing its government’s power to influence their lives. The race wasn’t even close. Carter conceded before the polls closes in California.

From this point, Bourne’s book lapses into nearly incoherent bitterness. In describing the transition meeting, he says Reagan took no notes during his briefing, but asked Carter if he could have his.

Bourne tries to convey how Carter wanted to spend his remaining years as a peacemaker and details his many trips to monitor elections in dangerous countries. What he does not detail is how small and petty Carter was in criticizing Reagan, Bush, and Bill Clinton from afar – a nearly unprecedented act for a former president. At one point, responding to a reporter's question about Carter's trip to Haiti, President Clinton was forced to remind the reporter that Jimmy Carter didn't set American foreign policy. He did. Bourne makes it appear as if Reagan actually wanted Carter to die in South America by withholding security for him. The notion is preposterous.

In reality, Reagan treated Jimmy Carter with as much respect and dignity as any president could a former president despite Carter’s constant sniping and criticizing. Reagan dispatched Carter to greet the hostages, rightly acknowledging Carter’s dedication in securing their release. Knowing how close Carter was to Anwar Sadat, Reagan sent him, along with Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon to attend Sadat’s funeral. In his memoirs, Reagan complimented Carter on his dedication to securing the release of the hostages and not once did Reagan ever criticize Carter’s conduct of those negotiations even though it would have certainly made valuable political fodder.

Bourne wraps up with describing how Carter dedicated himself to Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center. Both are laudable undertakings for the retired president and in his post-presidential years have been fulfilling for him and of benefit to the American people.

Bourne’s biography is simply not a well conceived book. On the positive side, Bourne does describe and analyze in great detail Carter’s unshakable Christian faith and how that faith shaped his personal and political conduct. When it comes to being a Christian, Jimmy Carter is the real deal. I doubt any other president has been so dedicated to his faith.

Most interesting (and unknown to me until I read Bourne’s book) was Carter’s devotion to the teachings of theologian Reinhold Niebhur. Carter embraced, in toto, Niebhur’s teachings. Niebhur preached religion and faith as something that should be incorporated into the actions of all politicians. Carter based many of his political and governmental decisions based on his Baptist faith.

What makes Bourne’s biography bad is what he ignores. The Bert Lance affair was devastating to Jimmy Carter. Not only was did it result in a tremendous loss of faith in Carter by the American people, it deprived him of the only wise political counsel he had within his administration. Also missing is any discussion of Hamilton Jordan who was a constant embarrassment to Carter and eventually found himself before a special prosecutor for allegedly using cocaine at New York’s notorious Studio 54.

Nor does Bourne acknowledge his own scandal. Bourne, a professional physician, wrote a fraudulent prescription to a member of the White House staff. Why he did this, he does not explain. He does not even mention it in the book which seriously undercuts his credibility.

What Bourne does do is take shots at people he apparently does not like. Chief among those is Vernon Jordan who is a now a major power broker in DC, and Ronald Reagan. At every opportunity, he points up Jordan’s ineptitude, arrogance, and ignorance. Yet it was Jordan, not Bourne, who emerged from the Carter presidency stronger and more influential than when he entered it. His criticisms of Reagan are too foolish to be discussed in any context. One can’t argue with results and Reagan’s results, while certainly not perfect, were better than Carter’s.

I went into Bourne’s biography knowing he was an admirer of Carter. I’ve read biographies of presidents written by admirers and found them analytical and informative. Bourne spends too much time trashing those he doesn’t like and making excuses for Carter’s missteps or simply blaming them on others.

I don’t like Jimmy Carter. I make no secret about that. I don’t like him as a person. I find him to be petty, bitter, angry, and hopelessly pious. I acknowledge that the man has made great contributions to American and global society for which he deserves to be lauded. But deep down, the man has an abrasive arrogance I don’t like.

I loathe him as a president. Not since James Buchanan has such a weak and inept man been at the helm of the nation at a time of such great crisis. So many things were going wrong in the second half of the 1970s and so much damage was done to our nation. While I’ll not compare Carter to Nero, what little effort he did make was too little and when he failed, he blamed the American people.

Bourne acknowledges none of these shortcomings. To blame them on others and memorialize them in a book does an injustice to history.

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

Theodore Rex
By Edmund Morris
Copyright 2001

Edmund Morris got a bit detoured after publishing The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt in 1979, having agreed to serve as official historian of the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Having concluded this gig, he finally got to the second installment of his Theodore Roosevelt trilogy, Theodore Rex. The second book chronicles the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt – a presidency with a fanciful mix of progressivism and old fashioned Stalwart Republicanism.

The book recaps just a little of Theodore Roosevelt’s time between the federal agents finding him at his remote camp ground and his trip to Buffalo. Roosevelt spent little time mourning William McKinley. He wasn’t fond of the man. He was, outraged, however, at McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz – a self professed anarchist. Roosevelt wanted justice – swift and harsh – for Czolgosz. Roosevelt despised anarchists.

Roosevelt first tried to maintain a stable transition of power by declaring that McKinley’s cabinet would be staying on. Slowly, many would be phased out, but credit Roosevelt for having the wisdom to restrain himself and make a slow, gradual transition from the McKinley presidency to his own.

Morris covers Roosevelt’s complex race relations conduct in great detail. Roosevelt had worked hard to cultivate the South. They were never going to vote Republican in Dixie, but southern Republican delegates were important at the convention and Roosevelt entered the presidency with the 1904 Republican nomination on his mind. That is why it is mystifying that one of his first acts as president was to invite a black man to dine at the White House. Booker T. Washington -- America's most prominent black leader at the turn of the last century, had dinner with Roosevelt and discussed race relations, black voting rights, and lynching with the president.

The entire nation was stunned and the South infuriated. This was a time when lynchings were a monthly occurrence in the South and prejudices ran high. Whatever support Roosevelt enjoyed in the South evaporated while northern progressives hailed the move.

Roosevelt was not so progressive in his thinking a few years later when he went to war with Ohio Senator, Joseph Foraker over the Brownsville Affair and 167 black soldiers who were dishonorably discharged for rioting in the Texas town.

After an altercation between a black soldier from nearby Fort Brown and a Brownsville businessman, the city banned all black soldiers from its municipality. On August 13, 1906, a bartender and police office were shot in the town. Residents claimed there had been a riot and that they had evidence – a shell casing – that clearly demonstrated that the murderer or murderers had been soldiers from Fort Brown.

The evidence was thin and none of the more than 100 soldiers questioned would offer testimony. Based on that, the Army dishonorably discharged the soldiers. Blacks and civil rights activists were outraged. Southern whites and bigots in the North were satisfied. Presidential aspirant Foraker saw a wedge issue and sought to exploit it.

Morris correctly leads the reader to believe that Foraker’s motives were not entirely noble. Foraker had two aspirations. First and foremost, he wanted to be the political equal if not superior of Ohio power broker, Mark Hanna who had traction with the White House. Secondly, “Fire Alarm Joe” needed an issue to catapult him to national prominence for a possible presidential run.

The two battled in the press and Foraker tried to press the Senate for committee hearings to look into the matter. But this was the time when the South was developing its dominance of the U.S. Senate and Foraker’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Despite being on the side of the angels, the issue petered out as did Joseph Foraker’s political career. Meanwhile, Roosevelt stood by his decision while providing scant justification.

It is also worth noting that Roosevelt frequently scolded the South for lynching black men. Lynchings during the Roosevelt administration occurred approximately once per month. While he gave the issue lip service, he never enacted any federal legislation nor did he employ the powers of the justice department to stop it.

On the issue of trust busting, Morris’ examination of Roosevelt’s record leads the reader into a much more gray area. Roosevelt has a popular reputation as being a great trust buster. However, Morris’ examination of Roosevelt’s record reveals that it was mixed. Roosevelt was perfectly willing to abide monopolies and make deals with them when it suited his political needs.

Acting on his own, he brokered a settlement between striking coal miners and mine owners in the anthracite coal mines of eastern Pennsylvania. This was one of the early and defining moments for Roosevelt as a leader. The strike threatened the nation’s economic health and the welfare of citizens who relied on that coal to power industry and to heat homes. The bargain he struck won him fans in organized labor and the respect of big business.

He and his attorney general, Philander Knox, took on a huge railroad trust when they took the Northern Securities Company to court under the Sherman anti-trust act. They succeeded in breaking up the railroad monopoly that would dominate and fix rates for the entire American Northwest. But he was unwilling to take on powerbrokers such as J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller and their monopolistic activities continued unabated. The government had come to so heavily rely on Morgan that alienating him would have had dire economic impact. It was Morgan who first came to define the phrase, “Too big to fail.”

When Roosevelt came into office, the fight over the canal through Central America was already being waged in Central America and in the halls of U.S. government. The fight was not over whether or not to build it, but where to build it. Some favored Colombia and others favored Nicaragua. When the Colombian route won out, the Colombians started making unreasonable demands. Roosevelt, who seldom let the interests of others thwart his plans, did all he could – including sending warships into the region – to foster a rebellion in the Panamanian region of Colombia. The revolt was essentially bloodless and the new government let the Americans have their land for a canal.

From the time he entered office, Theodore Roosevelt was eyeing reelection. He was certainly popular nationally, but had rivals within the Republican Party. Chief among those was McKinley’s old friend and mentor, Marcus Hanna. When Roosevelt would take one of his occasional forays into trust busting, it was Hanna that businessmen turned to to dissuade the president, mistakenly believing that Hanna had some influence as he’d had with McKinley.

Roosevelt and Hanna – certainly the two most powerful men of their time – did not trust each other. Roosevelt had felt that Hanna held too much sway over McKinley and was determined to not let the Ohio industrialist and senior senator influence policy in his White House. Hanna regarded Roosevelt as somewhat impulsive an immature; prone to act without thinking through the consequences. The two maintained a tense but functional relationship.

Based on what Morris tells us about Hanna, the reader can conclude that Hanna knew he was not physically or mentally up to the job of the presidency. He was chronically pained by gout and a weak heart. Nor did he seem to have a passion for the job. He never overtly or covertly sought the Republican nomination. He seems to have been content to let others throw his name around to curtail the young upstart’s developing progressivism. Hanna would die in 1904 before Roosevelt left office.

The 1904 Republican convention nominated Roosevelt by acclamation and chose Charles Fairbanks of Indiana as his running mate. What is interesting is how little thought went into the selection of Fairbanks, given that the selection of Roosevelt as McKinley’s running mate had turned out to be an important decision four years prior.

Sen. Fairbanks had a lackluster record in the senate as far as high profile issues. He was a yeoman senator, capable of wading into important, but unexciting issues. To Roosevelt, who did not like to share a stage, Fairbanks was the perfect running mate. Roosevelt was grooming several in his cabinet to be his possible successors including Knox, Elihu Root, and William Howard Taft who had emerged as a great leader under terrible conditions in the Philippines during the native uprising and was now serving as Secretary of War. The easygoing Fairbanks would not rival those men. Fairbanks was scarcely seen or heard during the second Roosevelt administration.

The Democrats nominated New York appeals court judge Alton Parker as their candidate who tried to run against the notion of an imperial presidency – a term not yet invented, but a concept embraced by Democrats. The deliberative Parker was no match for the decisive Roosevelt and Roosevelt easily crushed him in the 1904 election.

With a clear mandate and his own ego to drive him, Roosevelt was less deliberative than ever and more prone to taking progressive measures. He enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Morris points out that Roosevelt had a close professional relationship with journalist Upton Sinclair and it was his popular book The Jungle, that drove Roosevelt to clean up meat packing plants in the country.

Roosevelt the conservationist was in full swing as well, setting aside thousands of acres across the country and placing them under the protection of the Department of the Interior to be preserved. This angered oil men, mine owners, railroads, and timber harvesters who relied on cheap or free access to federal lands for their businesses.

As Roosevelt’s second term neared it s end, there was talk of a third term. But Roosevelt would not hear of it. He was a young man in his early fifties and certainly did not appear tired of the job. He seemed to revel in it. But he was not willing to set a precedent for a president serving three terms. He’d come to regret that decision.

He settled on grooming William Howard Taft to be his successor. This remains unexplained in Morris’ examination of Roosevelt because the two men could not have been more different in politics and personality. Roosevelt was gregarious, forceful, energetic. He loved to hunt and play tennis. Taft was affable, needed affection and acceptance, and preferred golf to tennis and lived a sedate lifestyle. Roosevelt secured the 1908 nomination for Taft and quickly realized that Taft was not going to campaign hard for the job. He sent a constant barrage of suggestions to the Taft campaign on how to be more aggressive. Fortunately for the Republicans, the Democrats had recycled William Jennings Bryan whom the nation had twice rejected before. Taft won easily in his own easy going manner.

Morris eludes to Helen Taft’s passion to become First Lady as the driving force behind the campaign to elect Taft. Taft had informed Roosevelt that he wanted nothing more than to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court – a lifetime appointment at the head of the judicial branch of government. Teddy was determined to see him as chief executive and so was his wife.

Roosevelt left office in 1909 apparently satisfied with what he’d accomplished and with his own conduct of affairs. He planned to do some big game hunting in Africa and domestically and to pick up his writing career, serving as a commentator on American politics. That is where Morris ends his second volume.

Theodore Rex won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and deservedly so. Seldom is any historical figure and his conduct so closely scrutinized as Roosevelt was by Morris. No detail of Roosevelt’s presidency is left unexamined and thoroughly discussed.

But the second installment in Morris’ three part biography of Roosevelt is not as well written as the first. While sound on a scholarly level, it lacks that narrative energy of the first. Morris relies heavily on Latin for adjectives. As someone not well schooled in Latin, the words meant nothing to me and mean little to those outside the legal and medical professions. While similes are seldom deployed well in scholarly writing, certainly Morris could have found English alternatives for his adjectives.

The one element of the Roosevelt presidency that was not closely examined was Roosevelt’s deployment of his “press secretary” George Cortelyou. This is remarkable since Morris was extensive in his analysis of Roosevelt’s manipulation of the media while serving as New York police commissioner in the first volume. While historian Margaret Leach correctly points out in her biography of McKinley, In the Days of McKinley, that it was McKinley who first employed the use of presidential aides to respond directly to the press, it is clear that Roosevelt was much more deft in his use of Cortelyou.

Also missing from Morris’ study of Roosevelt is the role Edith Roosevelt played. Morris provides ample narrative of Roosevelt’s interaction with his children and his children’s friends who tarried about the Executive Mansion on a daily basis. He also chronicles the restless life and ribald exploits of daughter Alice. But Edith is all but absent from Morris’ book.

It is true that women did not have the influence they have today, but certainly Edith must have had some affect on Roosevelt’s conduct of the office. Edith was no mouse and certainly asserted herself. We get nothing on that subject from Morris.

These are minor criticisms of an otherwise stellar biography of a larger than life historical figure.

Morris will take us through the tumultuous, unhappy final years of Teddy’s life in the third installment entitled, Colonel Roosevelt.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
By Edmund Morris
Copyright 1979

Edmund Morris’ first volume of his three volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt covers the time from his birth in 1858 to his ascendency to the presidency in 1901 upon the assassination of President William McKinley. Morris’ thorough research and adept writing make for an enjoyable and informative read.

Theodore Roosevelt – or “Teedy” was his older sisters would call him was born to wealthy family in New York City in 1858. When Roosevelt was a toddler the Roosevelt house would become a house divided with the onset of the Civil War. Roosevelt’s father lent his aide to the union cause whilst his southern born mother had family fighting for the Confederacy.

Roosevelt was a sickly child, prone to bouts of asthma, bronchitis, and dysentery. This did not deter him from a love for the outdoors and when the family summered upstate, he spent his time in the woods, studying the wildlife and fauna. He would soon take up the habit of taxidermy, much to the distress of his family for young Teedy was prone to leaving entrails in the most inopportune places.

Roosevelt was home schooled and was a gifted student. He excelled at history and science and authored and illustrated books on nature at a young age. He would eventually enroll in Harvard where he excelled academically.

As an adolescent summering in upstate New York, he’d meet a young woman named Edith Carrow in whom he took a strong interest. Later, however, he would meet another woman who would steal his heart. Alice Lee would become the object of his ardor for the next couple years and he courted her through his time in college.

Alice played coy. Sometimes she would entertain Roosevelt’s gestures of affection. At other times, she would brush him off, much to his distress. While attending Harvard, Roosevelt was very much a young man in love.

It was at Harvard that Roosevelt got his first taste of politics, campaigning for Republican presidential nominee Rutherford Hayes. Teddy was raised in a Republican household and adopted pro-business Republican sensibilities.

Immediately after graduating from Harvard, Teddy Roosevelt did three things that would forever shape the course of his life. He published his first book – a textbook on the naval war of 1812, ran for and was elected to his first political office, and got married.

The Naval War of 1812 was universally regarded as the best book ever written on the subject and became a staple textbook at Annapolis. It would establish Roosevelt as a serious author. He would go on to write accounts of the taming of the west (in which he would later participate), biographies of founding father Gouverneur Morris, legendary U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and a comprehensive history of the city of New York along with several lesser works.

Roosevelt became a force within the New York state legislature almost immediately upon his rival. His forceful, magnetic personality drew people to his causes – chief of which was civil service reform. From the beginning of his career until its untimely end, Roosevelt was a force for good government. He would become minority leader in the New York House in just his second term in office.

Roosevelt established a strong working relationship with New York’s Democratic governor, Grover Cleveland and the pair were able to make some major reforms that would challenge the political machines of both parties. However, when Roosevelt authored and passed a comprehensive reform bill, Cleveland vetoed it.

Teddy Roosevelt was a man of big ideas and big pictures. Cleveland was a man of detail. Roosevelt’s bill contained sweeping ideas, but was not well written and contained many contradictions. The detail oriented Cleveland – given to reading the minutia of legislation – noted these conflicts and declared he could not in good faith sign a bill that contradicted itself. Morris does not cast aspersions on Cleveland’s motive and Cleveland biographer, H. Paul Jeffers, also substantiates Cleveland’s true views on the bill.

The dispute put asunder a strong, bipartisan partnership that served the people of New York well. Although Cleveland and Roosevelt would be together again politically, the friendship would never be reestablished. Roosevelt took the rebuke personally.

Roosevelt was selected as a Republican delegate to the 1884 Republican presidential convention. It was there that Roosevelt would capture the attention of Republicans on a national level and cement a political friendship that would benefit him for the rest of his life.

Roosevelt and Rep. Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts led the effort to place reform candidate, George Edmunds at the head of the Republican ticket. They had behind them many young, but inexperienced Republican Mugwump delegates. They feared that the nomination of party stalwart, James Blaine – who was known to be politically corrupt and held a poor national reputation – would spell doom for the party in 1884 and perhaps beyond.

The effort failed badly and Blaine was nominated. He would go on to be defeated that November by Grover Cleveland. But Roosevelt’s friendship with Lodge was cemented and the influential and wealthy patrician politician would be Roosevelt’s political sponsor and backer through the rest of his career.

Roosevelt’s home life during his years in the New York Assembly were joyous. He was deeply, passionately, and madly in love with Alice Roosevelt. Shortly after they were married, Alice became pregnant. The storybook romance was to be doomed by this pregnancy.

Roosevelt was in Albany with the New York Assembly when Alice went into labor. Teddy had planned to catch a train to be back at his home in New York in time for the baby’s expected birth on February 14. A telegram arrived from Teddy’s sister telling him that the baby had been born, but that Alice was in poor health. Teddy raced home.

What he found was a tragic scene beyond the scope of comprehension for most mortal men. By the time Roosevelt arrived, Alice was delirious with fever and headed toward her end. Meanwhile, his beloved mother was also ill and near death in a bedroom on the lower floor. Teddy stayed at Alice’s bedside in her final hours until she died. He was then informed that his mother had also passed.

Roosevelt was devastated beyond comprehension. He made a single, poetic journal entry that day remembering his young wife that ended, “. . .and the light went out of my life forever.” He would not look upon his infant daughter, Alice He needed to get away. Right after the funeral, Teddy Roosevelt headed west.

Morris speculates that Teddy and Alice Roosevelt were a marital mismatch. Based on contemporary accounts, Alice, while beautiful and socially graceful, was no intellectual. She was not going to grow intellectually as Roosevelt would. She would not have been happy with her intellectually advanced husband and Teddy would have grown bored with her average intelligence and lack of intellectual curiosity.

The Badlands of the Dakotas were just the therapy Teddy Roosevelt needed. He wanted to graduate from grouse and pheasant hunting to killing some big game like buffalo and bear. He arrived in Medora, North Dakota in the summer 1884, shortly after the defeat of reform forces at the Republican convention. He was immediately recognized as a dude because of his spectacles.

He would soon make believers out of the rough settlers of the American Badlands who regarded him as a rich, weak easterner. He had the money to establish himself with a ranch and he had the gusto to make it work. He gloried in being in the saddle and in hunting big game. He killed buffalo, a couple grizzly bears, mountain lions, and sundry other creatures. He was slowly able to put the Alice’s death behind him.

For almost two years, Roosevelt inhabited the Badlands and at one point, served as sheriff of a small section of territory. But he felt the need to return home. He recognized his fatherly responsibility to young Alice – now almost two years old and in the care of his sister, Bamie. There was also the allure of politics.

When he returned home in 1886, he soon emerged as a candidate for mayor of New York City. He ran as a reformer and hoped to draw enough reform votes from Democrats and independents to defeat the nearly omnipotent Tammany Hall. Alas, it was not to be as Roosevelt finished third.

He also reestablished his acquaintance with Edith Carrow. The two fell in love and made plans to elope to Europe to be married. Teddy feared that it would be regarded as scandalous for him to remarry so soon after the death of his first wife.

Teddy seamlessly went from defeated municipal candidate to the national stage with Henry Cabot Lodge having secured for him an appointment in the administration of Benjamin Harrison. There, he would serve as the head of Civil Service reform – a major issue in that era following the death of President James Garfield at the hands of a deranged job seeker.

As he did with everything else in his life, he threw himself into the job with gusto and soon became a pain in the ass to his bosses. He brought postmasters up on charges of selling positions. He raged against partisan purges in various federal offices. Harrison and his cronies indulged the young, idealistic reformer, but did little to assist him.

Roosevelt was not enamored with Benjamin Harrison whom he thought was a cold, dull man. Most Americans agreed. Harrison was not the warmest of personalities. When it came time for Harrison to run for reelection in 1892, Roosevelt dutifully campaigned for him in New York, but his heart was not in it. Nor was the president’s whose wife would die during the campaign. With the notorious McKinley Tariff in effect and consumer prices high and getting higher, Harrison and many Republicans were swept from office.

Surprisingly, Grover Cleveland – now in his second term as president – kept Roosevelt on in the civil service department. Their friendship, nurtured over the issue of civil service reform, was over. But apparently the mutual respect still existed.

During his early days in Washington, Roosevelt became a strong proponent – bordering on fanatic – of U.S. expansion. He wanted the U.S. to drive Spain out of Cuba and America to support the rebels there. Harrison, who had known the horrors of war during the Civil War, had no interest in pursuing an unprovoked war of conquest. Cleveland, bedeviled by horrible economic depression, had his hands full with the nation’s sagging economy. It would be several years before expansionists would gain political traction.

During this time in Washington, Roosevelt was forced to deal with family problems as well. His younger brother Elliott, with whom he'd been close as a child, had lapsed into severe alcoholism. He carried on affairs with other women and fathered at least one child out of wedlock. He abused his family and his misbehavior was an embarrassment to the family and offended the puritanical Theodore.

Theodore tried to help his younger brother by getting him home from Europe and into a sanitarium for treatment of his alcoholism. He paid hush money to his mistresses. But it was all for naught. Elliott tried to commit suicide by jumping from a window. He survived the fall, but died of a seizure just days later.

Roosevelt grew bored and restless in his job in Washington and looked for an avenue of return to New York politics. He found it when he was appointed to the four member New York Police Commission. It was the perfect post for the reform-minded Roosevelt because New York had a notoriously corrupt police department.

In his early days on the commission, he was fantastically successful in reform. He forced the resignation of the department’s corrupt chief and his subordinates. He weeded out corrupt cops – often taking to the streets at night looking for cops sleeping on the job or spending their shifts drinking. He cultivated relationships with reporters and became exceptionally popular. But he went too far when he started enforcing the city’s law regarding Sunday beer and liquor sales. Roosevelt was not a prohibitionist, but the law was on the books and he was determined to have it enforced.

He won the battle. The saloons were shut down on Sunday in the city. But he lost the war when the public and other members of the police commission turned against him. Suddenly, the man who single handedly forced through sweeping reform, could not even manage to process police promotions. Two of his fellow commissioners – one of which was the son of President Grant – refused to attend meetings, denying him a quorum.

Once again bored, Roosevelt looked for a new position with the Republicans back in power in Washington upon the election of William McKinley in 1896. Henry Cabot Lodge secured for him the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Given his fascination with all things naval, Teddy was delighted.

He emerged as the de facto secretary of the navy when the real Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, frequently absented himself on long vacations. During one of these breaks, Roosevelt issued orders preparing the nation for war in Cuba following the explosion of the battleship, U.S.S. Maine, in Havana Harbor.

Roosevelt had lusted for war and also lusted to fight in a war. He dreamed of leading a group of his cowboy buddies from the Dakotas into battle. He formed a regiment nicknamed the Rough Riders. Morris points out that history has forgotten that almost half of the Rough Riders were Ivy Leaguers, but the name served its purpose.

Morris’ account of the Spanish American War is brief but adequate to demonstrate how poorly managed it was and how ill prepared the United States was for warfare. Poor logistics and poor quartermaster preparations left the men in precarious positions with nothing in the way of rations.

When the Rough Riders finally went ashore in Cuba, the Spanish were holding the high ground of San Juan Heights. There plan was to allow the Americans to lay siege, then let Malaria and attrition of war slowly wear down the Americans. Their plan almost worked. But superb planning and daring by Roosevelt and other commanders on the ground thwarted the Spanish.

I won’t go into the blow by blow account of the Rough Riders’ assault on Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill. Suffice it to say that they endured Yellow Fever, food poisoning from rancid meat supplied by the government, and wickedly accurate Spanish snipers. They would assault and defeat the Spanish on both hills and the Spanish would be forced to vacate the heights and eventually surrender. For his valor, Roosevelt was nominated for a Congressional Medal of Honor which would be denied him until long after his death. He finally received the honor posthumously in 2001.

Roosevelt returned to New York a national hero and was a favorite to run for New York governor in 1898. He won easily. Republicans were interested to see how reformer Roosevelt would work with New York Republican boss, Thomas Collier Platt. The relationship was surprisingly smooth. Roosevelt, more mature now, learned how to work and manipulate the boss to get what he wanted. Platt, a veteran of the give and take of politics, knew when to let Teddy have what he wanted and knew where to stand his ground. When a spot opened on the national ticket as President McKinley’s running mate, Platt worked hard to secure the spot for Teddy.

Roosevelt was conflicted about taking it. His friends assured him that it was the quickest route to the presidency for him. Roosevelt knew it was a meaningless, pointless job. He would not commit to accepting the nomination publicly, but refused to kill the nomination at the convention. McKinley remained neutral, allowing the convention to pick his running mate. Despite feverish maneuvering by Republican Party Chairman and the master of McKinley’s political rise, Marcus Hanna, Roosevelt was nominated. He and McKinley would go on to defeat William Jennings Bryan in 1900.

Roosevelt served as vice president for six months, but according to Morris, only carried out his duties as President of the Senate for four days. Congress recessed for the summer and Roosevelt returned to New York. Word reached Roosevelt that President McKinley had been shot while he was at his summer home in Oyster Bay. Assured that the president was on the mend, Roosevelt went mountain climbing further upstate. However, as he and his guide descended the mountain, a park ranger delivered a telegram to Roosevelt. The president was near death. Roosevelt rushed to Buffalo where President McKinley lay dying.

Early on the morning of September 14, word reached Roosevelt on his train that the president had died. He arrived in Buffalo that afternoon and was sworn in as president there. That is where Morris’ first volume ends.

Morris’ book is one of the finest biographies ever written. Morris combines extensive and exhaustive research with brilliant writing to create a book that is well endowed with information, illustrative anecdotes, and a compelling story. This first volume of three won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979.

In his research, Morris relied extensively on Roosevelt diaries. This obviously aided a great deal in the preparation of the biography and lends it much of its texture. It is easier for the biographer to bring to life a long dead historical figure by using his own words and we are fortunate that Roosevelt and his family preserved his journals and correspondence. So many presidents such as James Monroe and Millard Fillmore made a strong effort to destroy their personal papers, leaving them to be defined only by the impressions of contemporaries.

Morris also took the time to read most, if not all, of Roosevelt’s published works. Morris points out that all of Roosevelt’s writing was tinged with his own personal perception of the world and current events – even when writing about history.

Morris is a brilliant writer and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt reads very much like a novel with Teddy Roosevelt as its hero. The narrative is textured. His citations pertinent and not overly long. He fleshes out peripheral characters, giving them context within Roosevelt’s life. Morris has few rivals as a writer among his fellow historians.

Ronald Reagan read this book upon its publication in 1979 and was so moved by it that he decided that Edmund Morris would be his personal biographer were he to be elected to the presidency in 1980. Reagan won and Morris received that treasure denied to but just a few historians: direct access to a president, his White House, and the day to day workings of the administration.

The resulting book was a disappointment, but not the subject here. His work and the two volumes that followed, Theodore Rex and Colonel Roosevelt, stand as some of the finest non-fiction writing chronicling our nation’s history and the life of any man or woman.

The Final Days By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

The Final Days
By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Copyright 1976

Woodward and Bernstein chronicle the last year of the Nixon administration as it crumbles slowly under the weight of disclosures of cover up and deception on the part of the president.


Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are out as Nixon’s top advisers. Stepping into the role of chief of staff is Gen. Al Haig. Stepping in as chief political adviser on all matters Watergate is Ron Ziegler, the president’s press secretary who will soon be elevated to communications chief.

The book opens with the president’s two lawyers, Len Garment and Fred Buzhardt traveling to Florida to tell Nixon he ought to resign. This takes place in late 1973, before the existence of the Oval Office taping system or the existence of tapes is revealed.

As Woodward and Bernstein described it, these two men said Nixon, in defending himself, had “laid time bombs,” with a series of lies. These lies would eventually be revealed as the Ervin Committee went about investigating and hearing testimony from former aides.

Alexander Butterfield, who worked in Nixon’s appointments office before being appointed head of the FAA disclosed the existence of the White House taping system. Immediately, the Senate Watergate Committee, the House Judiciary Committee, and special prosecutor Leon Jaworski began demanding tapes.

Nixon and his lawyers fought hard against releasing the tapes. First they released redacted and altered transcripts, which reflected badly on the president who appeared to conspire with John Dean on March 21, 1973, to pay Howard Hunt’s hush money demands. Hoping to appease all parties, the president and his lawyers began releasing tapes a few at a time. But the release of some tapes just created demands for more.

Nixon and his lawyers encountered greater problems when a gap of 18 minutes and 15 seconds was found on one of the tapes. The gap seemed to be the result of two separate erasures. The first lasted approximately four minutes. The second lasted 14 minutes.

Ultimately, Nixon’s personal secretary, stood up to take the blame for the “accidental” erasure. Rosemary Woods claimed that she’d accidently hit the erase/record button when she paused to take a phone call and kept her foot on the dictabelt pedal. When someone demonstrated how the 56 year old Woods would have had to contorted herself, skepticism of Nixon’s veracity increased. The contortion became known as “The Rosemary Stretch.”

Much of the book details the negotiations of the lawyers with the special prosecutor and judge John Sirica over the tapes and testimony. Nixon’s lawyers were in constant legal jeopardy themselves because they would make claims before the grand jury and before judge Sirica based on lies told to them by Nixon.

To Woodward and Bernstein’s credit, they did not hype up or overplay the “drama” of the firing of special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. They described how the lawyers advised Nixon that he had the constitutional power to discharge any member of the executive branch. Nixon deliberated a great deal over this decision before he pulled the trigger. This is much contrary to the drama the media created by dubbing it the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and showing on live television the FBI agents sealing his office.

Nixon and his lawyers did not expect the strong public and congressional rebuke that came after Cox’s firing. That is because they are lawyers, unschooled in the ways of politics. Nixon should have known better. Haig, being a man of military with a clear chain of command, did not anticipate it either. Nixon was ill served by having Haig’s tin ear as his chief advisor.

It’s not stated by the authors, but it’s painfully clear that the Nixon White House chose to fight its primary battle on the legal battlefield. This was a horrible miscalculation because the tapes clearly demonstrated that Nixon had conspired with his aides. Some aides and friends suggested that Nixon make a full disclosure and apologize to the American people (the strategy that worked for Ronald Reagan in Iran/Contra and Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinksy case). Instead, the lawyers fought Nixon’s battle in Judge Sirica’s court.

Sirica is portrayed as an even handed, impartial dispenser of justice in The Final Days. In fact, Sirica routinely overstepped his bounds as a judge. He sentenced the Watergate burglars to many years in prison for a simple breaking and entering, despite the fact that the men had no prior criminal records and years of public service. His goal was to force their testimony against those who had given the orders. That is the prosecutor’s role, not the judge. Sirica was a glory hound, pure and simple.

Al Haig is also held up as a paragon of leadership in difficult final days of the Nixon administration. That is probably because he was the primary source for Woodward and Bernstein’s book. Haig was a leader. That much is true. But he was politically tone deaf. He failed to recognize pitfalls political veterans would have recognized. Watergate was a political matter. While criminal acts were committed, Nixon’s ultimate fate was determined by the politics of the situation.

Woodward and Bernstein routinely portray Nixon as drunk, distracted, and out of touch with reality. This flies in the face of all other published accounts of Nixon’s last days in the White House. Was he distracted? Sure. Watergate consumed Nixon’s time and caused him great distress. But, White House insiders and historian Stephen Ambrose have claimed that Nixon never lost control. He was always the man in charge. Ambrose asserts that Nixon’s drinking did increase during the Watergate battle, but was far from the disconnected drunk depicted by Woodward and Bernstein.

One can look to Al Haig for creating this perception. Haig’s character as a control freak and glory seeker would be publicly displayed many years later in the Reagan White House. Haig probably wanted to show how it was he who stepped up and led the nation while the president wallowed in self pity.

The authors also go out of their way to disparage the Nixon marriage. They claim the couple were distant and detached from each other. They also claim that Pat Nixon was going to divorce Nixon after the failed 1962 campaign for governor of California.

The Nixon marriage has fascinated historians and has been closely examined by scholars, primarily because Nixon gave the appearance of detachment. He did not hold hands with Pat in public. He rarely acknowledged her. Pat exacerbated this problem by appearing aloof from politics. She hated politics and hated being in the spotlight. Many historians have noted how distant the couple appeared, but none went as far as Woodward and Bernstein in saying the couple were completely emotionally detached and on the verge of divorce.

Nixon undid some of this damage in his memoir, In the Arena when he wrote about Pat, her courage, her love of her family, and how much she meant to him in those and other troubled times.

The final portion of the book deals with Nixon’s last struggles to stay in power. After each disclosure of tapes came more and more calls for his resignation, so he emphatically refused to turn over any more of the tapes. Leon Jaworski appealed directly to the Supreme Court to try to force the release of the tapes.

Meanwhile, the White House – actually Nixon himself – discovered a damning piece of evidence in one of the subpoenaed tapes. On June 23, 1972, He and Bob Haldeman sat in the Oval Office and discussed the Watergate break-in. Haldeman told Nixon that acting FBI Director, L. Patrick Gray wanted to work with the White House in containing the investigation, but his agents were finding evidence that was indicating others were involved. Haldeman then proposed a plan, recommended by John Mitchell and approved by John Dean. Nixon would tell CIA Director, Richard Helms, to call Gray and tell him that the break in was a CIA operation and the FBI should back off, lest they expose the operation.

It was a plausible plan. Several of the Watergate burglars were former CIA men with Cuban ties and ties to the aborted Operation Mongoose of the Eisenhower years. The burglary’s mastermind, E. Howard Hunt was an old CIA hand who trained operatives for Mongoose. The problem for both men was, they knew that the burglary was not a CIA operation.

It is very clear from the language on the tape that Nixon and Haldeman had no national security concerns on their mind as they discussed the plan. They wanted to halt the FBI investigation – thus, obstruct justice. Nixon asked Haldeman if John Mitchell knew of the plan. Haldeman told Nixon that Mitchell didn’t know the details, but he knew of the plan.

So on that day, less than a week after the burglary, Nixon sealed his fate. He had worked with Haldeman, Mitchell, and Dean to obstruct justice. The tape also refuted his claim that he had no knowledge of administration involvement in Watergate prior to John Dean’s disclosure of March 21, 1973.

Nixon at first thought the tape was fatal. Then he thought perhaps it could be managed. Others in the administration listened to the tape. The lawyers thought it was fatal. Haig thought it also fatal. Only Nixon’ most ardent supporters within the administration – Ron Ziegler, Pat Buchanan, and Tricia Nixon-Cox, thought that the situation could be managed.

The White House tried a damage control operation. They began alerting the president’s supporters in Congress that a new, damaging disclosure was on its way. They hoped that these men would find a way to salvage the Nixon presidency in the inevitable Senate trial. But nobody saw any hope. As they heard the information revealed, Nixon’s supporters in the House and Senate fell away, one by one.

Vice President Gerald Ford’s people had been secretly meeting with White House officials for more than a month to plan a transition. This was the most delicate political operation in U.S. history with stark constitutional ramifications. Ford had not been elected vice president, having been nominated by Nixon to take over from Spiro Agnew who resigned in his own scandal. Any inference that Ford was planning to take power might taint Ford. Ford feared (justly) that it would look like a coup by an unelected vice president.

Yet, wise men knew that Ford could not just jump in and start leading the nation without some groundwork being laid. Finally, in August, when it became clear that Nixon would have to resign or face impeachment, Jerry Ford began meeting with these men who had been planning the transition. Gerald Ford was finally accepting the reality that he, a congressman from Michigan, was soon going to be president of the United States.

Nixon lost badly in the Supreme Court with the court voting 8-0 (with Nixon appointee Renquist abstaining) demanding that Nixon turn over the tapes. For just a few moments, the White House considered defying the court. But the constitutional ramifications were just too dire. The president was not above the law and would comply. The tapes were turned over.

The June 23rd tape – or Smoking Gun Tape – had just the effect the White House feared. What support Nixon had collapsed. Friends that had supported him found out they’d been duped. His detractors had the sword with which to slay him. It was now not a question as to if the president would resign, but when.

Nixon struggled with the decision, but ultimately decided he could not survive a senate trial. He informed his family that he would resign. The moment of disclosure to his family was captured on film by the White House photographer at Nixon’s request. Nixon then informed Haig who informed the cabinet. Nixon would resign on August 9th. He would make a televised announcement on August 8.

Bob Haldeman, facing multiple felonies in relation to Watergate made an eleventh hour plea for a pardon. Haldeman suggested that Nixon pardon all involved in Watergate and offset the political fallout with a pardon of Vietnam draft dodgers. Perhaps with a sense of morality, or a mind’s eye on his place in history, Nixon refused all pardons – including of himself.

Woodward and Bernstein do a wonderful job of describing those tense moments in the Oval Office as Nixon prepared to announce his resignation. Just minutes before he was scheduled to go on air, he began to tear up. He composed himself and distracted himself by making small talk with the network photographers in the room. Just seconds before air, he put on his game face. When the light went on, he began speaking. “. . .therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in in this office at that time.”

A one sentence letter of resignation, addressed to secretary of state Kissinger was typed and Nixon signed it.

The next day, the Nixon family left the residence and came to the East Room where they bade farewell to the White House staff. There, Nixon spoke extemporaneously in a rambling, but heartfelt speech. He warned his friends and supporters to not hate those who hated them – that that hate would ultimately be their downfall. Apparently Nixon finally got the hard lessons of his own downfall.

The Nixon family was escorted to the Marine One helicopter by President Ford and his wife. Nixon shook Jerry Ford’s hand and said, “Good luck Mr. President.” Betty Ford simply said, “Have a nice trip, Dick.” With that, Nixon turned and gave his trademark V for Victory salute and boarded the plane. The somber new president and first lady walked slowly back to the White House.

The Final Days is an interesting chronicle of the inside workings of the White House during the last battles of Watergate. One wonders how much is entirely accurate because the men who gave their accounts knew they were framing their own places in history. Nixon would tell his story several years later.

That Bob Woodward hates Richard Nixon is undisputed. As the 40th anniversary of the break in approached, the Washington Post ran a story headlined, “Nixon was worse than we thought!” over Bob Woodward’s byline. The story then goes on to quote the Nixon tapes darkest moments.

Nixon was foolish to tape himself. That is certain. But how many of us would want to be defined by our darkest thoughts uttered? Bob Woodward works hard to assure that Nixon is defined in just that way.

Historian Stephen Ambrose sees Nixon much differently. Ambrose was not a Nixon supporter, having never voted for him. Like most of the country, he was outraged at Ford’s pardon of the former president. But Ambrose, like most Americans, has come to weigh Nixon’s achievements against Watergate and finds that there was much to be liked about Richard Nixon. His war on cancer, his efforts on behalf of workers and the environment, and his great international achievements. None of those things mean as much to Bob Woodward as his own aggrandizement. Ambrose was a scholar. Woodward is a reporter. I’ll go with the scholar.

Stories in His Own Hand: The Everyday Wisdom of Ronald Reagan

Stories in His Own Hand: The Everyday Wisdom of Ronald Reagan
Edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson
Copyright 2001

This book is a compilation of Ronald Reagan’s writing between 1976 and 1979 with a few letters from his presidential years. Reagan told stories and provided short commentary on radio in the late 1970s between presidential campaigns. He wrote and edited these scripts long handed on legal pads. Skinner culled what he deemed to be the best of more than 650 stories Reagan authored.

Included in the book are reproductions of Reagan’s hand written scripts including his edits. This provides us with a glimpse into the style and process of communication by one of the great communicators in history.

Foreword by George P. Schultz
Shultz served Ronald Reagan as his Secretary of State. Reagan’s White House has been characterized by his detractors as a collection of “yes men.” Schultz was no yes man. He was one of Reagan’s advisors unafraid to tell the boss bad news, to tell him he was wrong, and to tell him he was being ill-served by others. Of all of the men involved in the Iran-Contra mess, only George Schultz has emerged in history as a hero.

Schultz recalls his boss fondly and recalls the tales with which Ronald Reagan regaled his cabinet and advisors. He notes that Reagan’s speeches usually included anecdotes and stories to drive home the point he was trying to make. Reagan was a plain spoken man which is what made him the Great Communicator he was. He understood better than anyone that the best way to reach the American people was not through political sermons or cold political analysis. You reach people by grasping and tugging at their emotions. Reagan’s stories did that.

Introduction
Skinner notes that when these manuscripts were uncovered in the Reagan Library, they were often accompanied by notes that verified the veracity of the stories Reagan presented as factual. Other stories, Skinner notes, were based on folklore even though Reagan told them as if they were true. Reagan sometimes confused anecdote with fact.

That sometimes Reagan mixed fantasy with reality is well known and well documented. That’s not the point, Skinner tells us. Reagan the man was and remains an enigma because he revealed so little of his genuine feelings. The window into the mind of Ronald Reagan, Skinner says, is in his stories. Whenever Reagan said, “That reminds me of. . .“ and launched into an anecdote or story, you knew he was revealing his true feelings on the matter at hand.

Life and Death
Reagan tells two stories dealing with death and how it affects us. One is inspirational and the other is poignantly tragic.

The first is about a seven year old boy dying of leukemia. The boy is suffering and wants to die. He tells the doctors to disconnect the equipment that is keeping him alive and even plans his own funeral. Before dying, he tells his family that he wants to die because he does not want to suffer anymore. He wants to go to heaven where he will be disconnected from his earthly body which is broken, but will live on with his spirit which is not. He is confident he will be able to see the lives of his loved ones unfold from heaven. Reagan’s account is documented with a news clip attached to the manuscript. He tell us that sorrow is our own for what we have lost. The dead have no sorrow for they have gone to a better place.

The second tale tells of a father writing to his son who is away at war. In a poem, the father expresses his regret that his distorted conception of manhood and masculinity never allowed him to hug his son or express love and affection. His love for his son comes through as he tells his son if he were here with him, he’d hug him and tell him how much he loved him and expresses regret for his cold and taciturn nature. The story concludes with Reagan telling us that the day the letter containing the poem was mailed, the man received a War Department telegram telling him his son had died.

I’m no psychologist, but I’ve read enough psychoanalysis of Ronald Reagan to wonder if he was not reaching out to his own children through this story. Reagan was emotionally detached from his children. He was not cold, but he was not close to them and he remained as much an enigma to them as to history.

Love and Compassion
Reagan tells two tales that deal with overcoming the odds against disease and injury rather than stories of love and compassion.

In the first tale, he recounts how Alexis de Toqueville observed that Americans look to themselves and their fellow Americans to help solve their problems rather than asking for the government. He then tells the tale of a young girl with leukemia who needed a bone marrow transplant, which was an experimental procedure at that time. The girl was from California, but the surgery was to be performed at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. People in Minnesota and California joined forces to raise more than $10,000 for the girl to have her surgery. The government did not help and did not need to.

The second tale is of a young man injured in a car accident. Doctors gave him no hope of recovery and he lay in a coma for almost a year. During that time, his fiancé refused to give up hope and visited him daily. As it turned out, he did recover and the couple married.

Faith and Religion
This chapter includes three essays on Christian faith and a letter to a nun Reagan wrote while serving as president.

In the first, he discusses his love of all things Christmas. He says, some complain of the crass commercialization of the holiday replacing its spirit. For Reagan, the decorations and displays warmed his heart and were part of the Christmas. He defines the root of his faith. Were there no such things as miracles, how, he asks, could a homeless carpenter wander the countryside for three years, preaching his faith and proclaim himself the son of God and start a whole new religion that has endured for 2,000 years? A superb question to put to atheists. . .

In his second essay, he critiques the claims of a scientist who claims that the some of the miracles found in the Bible can be explained away by mirages. This scientist stated that Moses parting the Red Sea was but the reflection of heat off of the desert – not real water. The same phenomena can explain the “illusion” of Christ walking on water. Reagan then goes on to quote the scripture in easily understood terms. The mirage did not sweep away Pharaoh’s men as they pursued the Hebrews. Christ walked upon the water to a boat tossed on heavy seas. Mirages do not toss boats. It will take more than a mirage to sweep away the claims of the best selling book of all time, claims Reagan.

In his third essay, Reagan talks about a group of Christian athletes who travel the country, playing college and pro basketball teams. They get paid little, but must spend halftime professing their faith to the crowd. Many of these young men gave up scholarships and lucrative pro money in the name of their faith.

The letter is written to a nun who had obviously written to congratulate Reagan on his re-election in 1984. In it, Reagan expresses his strong belief in intercessory prayer. Reagan says that he prays on behalf of others so much that he believes God says to himself, “Here he comes again!” He concludes by quoting Abraham Lincoln’s belief that no man can stand as president without the help of God.

Reagan’s strong statements of faith are probably genuine. Reagan was wont to profess faith while president. Yet, he was not a regular church goer as president, nor was he in civilian life. Contrary to popular belief, Reagan never introduced legislation or justified policy employing theology.

Women
In two essays on the subject of women, Reagan discusses how women are, by nature, peacemakers. Despite being regarded as the weaker sex, Reagan says it is the courage that comes naturally to women that make them peacemakers. Perhaps it was that belief that women are most prone to bring peace that he took the courageous and historic step of making Jean Kirkpatrick the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and appointing the first female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor. It was in his strong belief in the necessary role women must play in the political and government process that Reagan was a progressive in the true sense of the word.

In his first essay, Reagan recounts a somewhat humorous story of a dinner taking place in a palace in India. As the diners enjoyed their repast, one of the Americans in attendance noticed that one of the servants placed a saucer of milk outside the door to the dining hall and left the door open. He knew that milk was used to lure cobras and that the serpent must be in the room. He feared moving lest he frighten the snake and cause himself or another diner to be bitten. Eventually, the snake made its way out from under the table. The man later asked the hostess how she knew the snake was in the room. She replied that it was lying on her feet during the meal.

His second essay tells of the courage of the women of Northern Ireland in the face of guerilla warfare in their country. The Irish Republican Army and their protestant counterparts too often considered children to be collateral damage in their war of terror against each other. Finally, the women had enough. Catholic and protestant women of Northern Ireland banded together and protested in the streets. They knew the feelings on both sides of the war over Northern Ireland were too powerful for them to stop it. But they demanded of their respective warriors respect the sanctity of life of children. It was a great risk, but the women prevailed.

Race Relations
Ronald Reagan was mindlessly derided as a racist by liberals of his day because he staunchly opposed race based solutions to race based problems. He saw the fundamental flaw of combating discrimination with reverse discrimination. While liberals may have mindlessly called Reagan a racist, those who knew him – including black liberals who knew him on a personal level -- knew differently. Reagan may have been the most colorblind president in history.

The first essay is an interview conducted by a sports program. It is a story that Reagan recounted in his autobiography and is often told by those who adore him. Reagan, as a young college football player, was shocked and dismayed that, in his home state of Illinois, racism existed. He found this out when his Eureka College football team tried to find a motel while playing in Illinois. Eureka had two black players on its team and no motel in the area would accept them. Reagan implored his coach to let the players stay in his parents’ home and to tell them that there simply wasn’t room. The young men stayed at Reagan’s home and the crisis was defused. According to Reagan, he did not know that his black friends were not fooled. The interviewer, who had spoken to one of the players involved, said the young man knew then as he knew today that he’d been refused a room. Reagan said he was surprised. I doubt this. Reagan often feigned ignorance of racial strife to demonstrate that he was above it. One can be quite confident that Reagan was aware his friends knew. That does not diminish Reagan’s progressive views on race in the era of Jim Crow.

The second essay is a radio eulogy of Gen. Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr, the first black four star general in the history of the United States. Rather than offering testimony to the greatness of the American melting pot that saw this man rise to this high rank, he offered testimony to the spirit of the man that was Gen. James – a man who would not let the ugly face of racism destroy his belief in the fundamental rightness of America and that for which she stands. James, as a young officer, had been denied entrance into officers clubs, despite his rank and his unabashed and undisputed heroism in battle. Gen. James was not ambivalent about racism. He knew it and experienced it. But he also knew America. James said of his country, "I fought in three wars and three more would not be too many to defend my country. I love America and as she has her ills and weaknesses, I’ll hold her hand.”

The third and final essay is yet another eulogy – this one for a San Diego police officer who was often part of Gov. Reagan’s protective detail when he visited the city. Reagan spoke of the man’s dedication to duty and to the people he knew growing up. He insisted on serving the poor neighborhood in which he grew up. Sometimes, he posted the bail of those he arrested, hoping that they would change their ways. He helped his neighbors by working on their cars – the cars upon which they depended to get them to and from work. He died of a rare disease at the young age of 42. Here, although he doesn’t say it, we see Reagan embrace compassion as part of conservatism – a vital component missing in many of today’s conservatives despite claims of compassionate conservatism. Not only that, Reagan never mentioned his race. He simply feted the life of a great man who lived a great life. Again, Reagan was colorblind. The man’s race didn’t figure into any equation in Reagan’s mind.

America
Ronald Reagan was the ultimate patriot. When America’s morale was low, it was Reagan who convinced us we could be great again. When we were victims, he lashed out at our enemies. When we were criticized abroad, he told the world we were the last, best hope for man on the face of the earth. In these essays, Reagan relates anecdotes that reflect his love of America and how others came to love it as much as he.

The first essay is about a young man by the name of Peter Johnson who, in 1973, decided to walk across America. It was not a marathon; he sought to promote no awareness of a social or political issue. Like many of the Vietnam era and the age of the hippies, he just started wandering. He walked from Connecticut to Oregon, taking a meandering course through the south and the southwest. Like many of his generation, Johnson didn’t care for America when he set out. When he waded into the Pacific Ocean five years later, joined by 150 people – ordinary Americans – he met on his journey. Each, in some small way, had lent him aid or assistance as he journeyed on God’s good graces across our country. He also discovered God and his good grace.

The second essay was written by a Canadian journalist in the 1970s, during Watergate and found new life during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. In 1973, as the world watched Watergate unfold and it seemed as if America was headed toward an ugly constitutional crisis on the heels of the Vietnam War, America’s morale was low and the opinion of it around the world had sunk to new lows. Canadian Gordon Sinclair took to the Canadian airwaves to extol American strength of character and charity. He talked of the valiant effort of our soldiers in World War II, the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe, the aid and assistance we lent countries in times of disaster. No other country, Sinclair pointed out, was so apt to step in and help in an international crisis. As Reagan notes at the beginning of the essay, it is right, proper, and sometimes patriotic to criticize government. But we, as Americans, can always be proud of ourselves as people and as a nation.

The third essay summarizes a capsulized summary of history called, There Once Was a Great Nation. It talked of its rise under the leadership of the hero of its independence. He then recounts the rise and eventual fall of that great nation under a burdensome and corrupt government. You believe he is talking about America, but it is the rise and fall of the Roman Empire he is recounting. Reagan believed that big government would forever be the doom of civilizations of the earth.

In fourth essay, Reagan described the early days of the healing process that followed the disaster in Vietnam. Vietnam was a subject little discussed in 1977. Reagan recounted how four Vietnam War veterans met by chance and ended up in Washington, asking for permission to return to Vietnam to help out a small village that was destroyed in the war. Reagan wrote the essay because he felt that it was unfair that, after President Carter provided amnesty to Vietnam draft dodgers, that those who ducked the war were getting all of the attention while those who fought were being ignored while America tried to forget that abortive war and its own bad behavior during those years.

The last essay in the chapter, America, is also about Vietnam. Reagan notes that the movie, The Deerhunter had won an Oscar for best picture. Some Hollywood elites were bitter because of its positive portrayal of the Vietnam veteran as a virtuous person and America as a virtuous nation. He called on Hollywood to make a movie about the Hanoi Hilton and the experiences of Captain John McCain who was roasting in a coffin sized box whilst Jane Fonda dined with North Vietnamese leaders. He wanted the world to know of the experience of Jeremiah Denton who spent six years in the Hanoi Hilton and was beaten into making a statement to Fonda and the world about how well he was being treated, all the while blinking his eyes in Morse Code the word, “torture.” Basically, Reagan was telling the Hollywood elite – people he knew too well – they could shove their self loathing up their un-American asses.

People
Reagan was called the Great Communicator because of his remarkable ability to engage people. He could engage mass audiences and he could engage them one on one. Reagan was fascinated by people, but was actually a shy man who revealed very little about himself to those closest to him. He often forgot the names of his closest advisors. But there were people who made an impression on Reagan and he recounts some of those people in this series of essays.

The first essay is about a brave University of California student who touched Reagan’s heart. Reagan was the governor who imposed tuition upon the students of California who before enjoyed a free college education at the various campuses of the U.C. He was hated for that and for his conservative politics when he was governor of California. One day, Reagan had to attend a board of regents meeting in San Diego. Students there devised a clever and effective means of protest. Instead of shouting at Reagan, they decided to line the sidewalks and remain silent as Reagan walked the 200 yards from his car to the building. Reagan felt the tension and admits he was intimidated. Just before he got to the building, one young woman stepped forward, extended her hand, and told Reagan how much she appreciated his leadership. Reagan said he could not reply for the lump in his throat and troopers whisked the girl away before he could get her name. Reagan says he never found out who that girl was, but that he would be forever grateful for her kind words.

His second essay extols the virtue of President Calvin Coolidge. Some historians blame Coolidge for setting the stage for the Great Depression (he actually tried to warn of its coming) and others claim that he simply did nothing while he was in office. He was mocked as “Silent Cal,” for his penchant for saying little in public. But, as Reagan notes, Coolidge turned debts into surpluses and presided over the largest economic expansion in American history to that point. America moved forward economically, technologically, and socially in the era of Calvin Coolidge. That is why Reagan feted him by hanging his portrait in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

Reagan enjoyed extolling the virtues of the American Dream and worked hard to convince Americans that it still existed even when President Carter told us we had a “crisis of confidence” in ourselves. The third essay is about a high school dropout who went on to serve in the Army. He returned from the service and decided to take courses to first get his GED and eventually his college diploma. He learned to play a musical instrument (Reagan never says which one) and played with his city’s philharmonic orchestra. He went on to form two successful business enterprises and become comfortably wealthy. Reagan saw all of this on the CBS News. The last line struck Reagan as the man told the world that anybody could do what he did if they would only take advantage of what was available to them in our great nation.

The last two essays are a two part story about a 27 year old man whose productive years seemed to be cut short when an industrial accident made him a paraplegic. After a period of feeling sorry for himself, this man decided to resume his hobby of riding horses. He found a horse that was yet unbroken. He then hired a blind horse trainer. Together, they trained the horse and the man took to touring the country, showing off his skills to the handicapped to show them that they need not be defined by what made them different.

Enter the big, bad government. This man only made enough on his shows to break even. He received a regular disability check, but the government cut that off because they deemed him a “performer” capable of earning a living. The story ends with the banks threatening to repossess his horse. Reagan derides the “computers and desk jockeys,” of the Social Security Administration for their lack of humanity and desire to crush a man who worked so hard to make something of what he thought was a ruined life.

Values and Virtues
Reagan holds forth on the values that are desirable in Americans. I doing this, he quotes the son of one of our greatest Americans, and then describes the business practices of one of America’s legendary entertainers who was an immigrant.

The first essay is about Charles Edison, the son of Thomas Edison. Reagan recounts how a reporter once asked Charles if his father had given him any important advice. Charles replied that he sought advice from his father, but his father was convinced that youth wouldn’t take advice; that youth had to learn lessons "on the battlefield of their own experience." One lesson that Thomas Edison imparted to young Charles was the importance of honor in all facets of life. A life that is lived honorably will be naturally fruitful and rewarding.

The second lesson is about Lawrence Welk. For my generation, and my parents' generation, Lawrence Welk, with his bubble machines and wacky tuxedos, was the punch line of a joke. But there is no doubt he was one of the most enduring figures in American cultural history, remaining popular from the Big Band era of music through the days of The Beatles and The Doors on Ed Sullivan. Reagan tells us that no musician has a contract with Lawrence Welk. If you were a talented musician or performer, willing to live by the values established by Lawrence Welk, you would be employed by Welk and paid handsomely with a nice pension, profit sharing, and benefits to boot. Reagan says that if anyone had spent time with Welk and his cadre of 50 performers, they would have found a strong family spirit of mutually supportive people.

Reagan’s final essay in the chapter is a tale common, but uplifting. A boy living in Seattle had cancer. While sick, he got to meet two famous football players: Jim Zorn, quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks and running back O.J. Simpson. Reagan said that this young man probably thought it was a special moment for him, but the moment was probably more special for Zorn and O.J. when they found out this kid played football – and started for his high school team – while undergoing treatment for cancer.

Human Nature, the Economy, and Progress
Ronald Reagan spent his entire political career railing against government intrusion into the lives of Americans. Reagan did not espouse these values because they fit some preconceived idea of what the Constitution says, like today’s doctrinaire Tea Party. He espoused these values and fought for them because they improved the human condition. Ronald Reagan didn’t preach constitutional principles. He simply sought to improve the human condition – something the modern Republican Party ought to re-examine.

The first essay is simply called, The Hen and is a parable on the nature of man to take the path of least resistance when it is offered. I believe my grandmother told me something very similar when I was in junior high school to demonstrate to me how welfare was killing America. For those of you not familiar with the story, a hen spends the entire summer growing grain, harvesting it, and baking bread while the other animals lie about and give the hen excuses as to why they can’t help. Then, when the bread is done, they all want to partake. The hen wants to keep all the bread since she worked for it, but the farmer (government) says you must give up half your bread to feed those who did not contribute.

The second essay is an example of an argument a socialist and a conservative might have. Reagan says today’s (read 1970s) socialist ignores the strength of the human spirit to achieve if it is set free to do so. While the above parable is brilliant in its simplicity, this essay reads more like a grade school screenplay. Sometimes event the brilliant miss the mark and Reagan’s simplistic argument fails to impress.

The third essay is entitled, Kettering, drawing its name from a former General Motors vice president, C.F. Kettering, who delivered a speech on how one generation builds upon the accomplishment of others. He goes on to show how the development of the radio (the modern means of mass communication at the time Kettering delivered his address) actually started before Christ when Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus, discovered that rubbing together two pieces of amber created a force that would pick up straw – the discovery of electricity. Reagan’s use of the Kettering speech demonstrates what was at the core of Reagan’s foreign policy, his economic policy, and his social policy: that man, when left to his own devices, is capable of achieving great things. It was stories like that told by Mr. Kettering that Reagan kept in his head and could tell flawlessly on a moment’s notice.

A fourth essay is entitled, Pollution, but has very little to do with clean air or clean water. Rather, Mr. Reagan tries to demonstrate to a younger, pessimistic generation in the late 1970s that their ancestors did not have it so well. Pollution comes into play when Reagan talks about the coal burning furnaces with which every home was equipped and how every home belched coal smoke into the sky every night from autumn through summer. He goes on to talk about the unsanitary conditions of the outhouse and the rapid spread of disease in the prior generation. He concludes that perhaps life was not so simple before the mechanized age.

The former essay is a poor segue into the final essay which is entitled Freedom. Here, Reagan tries to make the case that in the good old days, things were much simpler. The good old days were before government placed regulations on everything. He talks about how there was no government mandated age for a driver’s license. In his day, if you drove well enough for your father to trust you with his car, you drove well enough for the motoring public. He points out that after he graduated from college, with the Great Depression in full swing, he had to take a job doing construction. He’d need half a dozen licenses to do today what he did to get by during the depression. He concludes by saying, “We are all stamped – ‘Property of the United States Government. Do Not Fold, Bend, or Mutilate.’”

Reagan’s Own Life in Stories and Humor
Reagan loved telling stories about Hollywood and the glamorous life he led while working as an actor. He also enjoyed the folkish stories he told of his youth. History has shown us that Reagan had a troubled youth with a ne’er do well father who was an alcoholic. Reagan never discussed that. He chose to remember his youth as a idyllic time.

In a letter to a constituent written in 1984, Reagan describes his youth in those idyllic terms and the essay is called, Reagan’s Huck Finn Years. Reagan attributes his family’s nomadic ways to his father trying to achieve upward mobility in the shoe industry. There is some truth to this as Jack Reagan was always chasing the next big job and moved the family all over Illinois. But Reagan omits that his father lost jobs because of his alcoholism. One can hardly blame him for this omission. I knew children of alcoholics when I was growing up. It was always something that the family believed it was keeping secret. I’m sure the Reagans were no different.

The second essay is entitled Reagan’s First Jobs and is also written in 1984. Reagan tells again the story about working construction and tells how he ended up working as a lifeguard. He then talks about how he got into radio which was his dream. He hiked all over Illinois trying to see program managers to demonstrate his talent. Nobody would even see him since he didn’t have any experience. He finally got a program director at WOC in Davenport to listen to him retell the play by play of a Eureka College football game. He got the job rebroadcasting Cubs games as they came into him via teletype. Reagan’s public career was launched.

Ronald Reagan loved to tell jokes. At no point was this more evident than when he was shot and quipped with hospital staff until he was sedated. In 1986, he was asked by a reporter what three jokes he enjoyed the most. He replied, “I assume he [Ullman] means stories suitable for speeches.” Reagan was quite fond of the raunchy joke and he and Tip O’Neill use to exchange them every time they saw each other. Reagan was quite fond of Irishman jokes.

In 1937, Reagan’s hometown newspaper asked him to send back regular updates on how his Hollywood career as a contract player was going. Reagan writes to his hometown paper through 1937, telling them about how tough the job was sometimes, how he got to meet Olivia de Havilland, and how uncomfortable he was seeing himself on screen for the first time when he had to attend a movie premier.

What comes out of all these essays is Reagan’s simplistic – sometimes excessively simplistic views on life. Coolidge read Plato. Reagan read Sports Illustrated. Nixon read Cicero. Reagan read the funny pages.

One should not sell Reagan short, claiming he lacked intellectual curiosity. Reagan was an avid reader of newspapers and contemporary political thought. He was an intelligent man gifted with incredible insight into the American character. Just like Kennedy (who was no Rhodes Scholar like Bill Clinton), Reagan proved a man need not be an intellectual giant to be a great leader.

He was called the Great Communicator. His detractors would say he was great at reading a script. Even a cursory examination of Reagan reveals that there was much more depth to Reagan’s skill. Like Kennedy, Reagan was a gifted writer. Kennedy’s detractors will point to Ted Sorensen as the genius behind Kennedy’s eloquent prose and verbiage. Sorensen was a great speechwriter, but it was Kennedy who put the flourish and the style into Sorensen’s rough drafts. Kennedy almost always knew what he wanted to say and just how to say it.

Reagan was very similar. Reagan employed speechwriters, but he saved the writing of the most important speeches for his own hand. As one can see in the marked up rough drafts of the essays, Reagan put a great deal of thought into what he wrote and usually exercised good judgment in his editing. Like Kennedy, Reagan understood words. He knew how to deploy the English language for maximum benefit.

I would point to this book when I hear Reagan’s intellect derided. Yes, Reagan had a simplistic view of America and the world. Sometimes, those views were old fashioned. Sometimes he mixed anecdote with fact. But he was a smart, intelligent man gifted with the ability to write and speak. I would challenge any Reagan detractor to read these essays. They may not change their views of Reagan’s politics or principles, but they would dispel any notion of Reagan as an intellectual lightweight.