Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1991 TAG: 9104170468
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cal Thomas
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Kitty Kelley's "unauthorized biography" of Nancy Reagan is a not even thinly veiled attempt to do what frustrated enemies of Reagan failed to do for eight years: demean him in the eyes of his admirers.
Since his enemies couldn't bring him down while he was in office, and getting re-elected in a record landslide, they now try to topple him - through his wife and by sullying both their characters - from his deserved pedestal as the first two-term president since Eisenhower and most popular since Franklin Roosevelt. The line from Reagan haters in the '80s ("we don't like Reagan's policies, but we like him") has been replaced by the carpings from the frustrated underachievers who really hated both Reagan and his policies.
The setup for the Kelley book seemed well-timed. First, Donald Regan revealed that Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer. (Kelley says there were two astrologers and that the president used one, too).
Then came The Washington Post's Haynes Johnson, whose book, "Sleepwalking Through History," is a rehash of the anti-Reagan sentiment exhibited in his column.
Next came Lou Cannon, The Post's White House correspondent during Reagan's tenure, who also covered Reagan as California governor. Cannon's new book gives Reagan a little more credit than Johnson's, but not much.
And now there is the Kelley book.
Kelley tries to sound high-minded with her motive for writing this salacious work: "The Reagans set themselves up to be moral arbiters and to tell us how to live our lives. The '80s will go down in history as the Reagan era, an era of greed and avarice with no moral compass. It's important to know who was at the helm."
I suppose Kelley's reported $3.5-million advance has nothing to do with greed and avarice. Will her gains ill-gotten from besmirching someone's reputation go to the homeless and the drug addicts she says the Reagans ignored? Better not count on it.
The Reagans were no more responsible for those who were greedy and avaricious in the '80s than churchgoing Jimmy Carter was responsible for the "medecade" that was the 1970s.
Reagan's accomplishments - which led to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and a restructuring of Europe, and his demythologizing of big government as good government - are enough to ensure his place in history. But he did more.
Ronald Reagan made America fall in love with itself again. Corny? Perhaps. But most Middle Americans are corny, and they loved (and love) Ronald Reagan. These are the people who pay their own bills, believe sex ought to be enjoyed inside marriage, get their drugs at the pharmacy with a legal prescription, and think their president ought to love America as much as they do.
Ronald Reagan helped them believe in an America not controlled by the kookie fringe but by the solid middle. He took us from the valley of depression to a mountaintop experience of patriotism and pride most of us thought would never again be possible.
Was he a flawed man? Who isn't? But he was the best president we could have hoped to have in the 1980s. No small mind or small army of detractors can ever change that fact, no matter how many knives or how much mud they fling. Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB