Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  THE BRADY BILL passed, but not for another two years, suggesting that Reagan, indeed, was not the kinetic force he had been. On other issues, too, his influence waned. Though George Bush had campaigned as a Reagan conservative, he governed as a throwback to the era when Republicans took balanced budgets seriously. Not long after Reagan left office, the heady economic growth of his final six years slowed and then reversed, carrying the country into recession. As recessions do, this one cut into government revenues, causing the sobering deficits of the Reagan years to become alarming. Investors feared for the economy’s future and their own. And the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, passed during Reagan’s tenure, mandated automatic and painful spending cuts if Congress and the president didn’t come to terms.

  Bush preferred spending cuts to tax increases, but the easy trimming had been accomplished in the Reagan years, and the Democrats, who still controlled both houses of Congress, insisted on tax increases to accompany any spending cuts. After much anguish and doubtless unspoken laments that he had permitted himself his Dirty Harry moment, Bush agreed to a deal with the Democrats that combined spending cuts with tax increases.

  It was a bold decision. It enraged the Republican right. “Read My Lips: I Lied,” screamed the New York Post. The libertarian Cato Institute called Bush’s reversal the “Crime of the Century.” But the bargain bore fruit when its terms took hold, shrinking the deficit and helping fuel the rapid economic growth of the 1990s, which, together with additional tax increases under Bill Clinton, diminished the deficit further. By the end of the decade, the federal budget showed a surplus for the first time since the 1960s.

  Yet Bush’s retreat on taxes confirmed the belief of Reagan conservatives that he had never been one of them. The Reaganites remembered Bush’s branding of Reagan’s policies as “voodoo economics,” and the conservatives who didn’t abandon Bush at once made clear that they might do so any day.

  Amid the complaining at Bush’s apostasy, few conservatives noticed that his compromise on the budget followed the practice, if not the rhetoric, of his predecessor. Reagan had consistently advocated lower taxes, and in the aggregate he had achieved lower taxes. But he had tolerated modest increases in taxes when they were necessary to secure the best available bargain with Congress. Reagan was a conservative, but he was also a pragmatist. He took what he could get, never holding practical results hostage to ideological purity. James Baker heard Reagan say as much many times. “If Reagan told me once, he told me fifteen thousand times,” Baker recalled: “ ‘I’d rather get 80 percent of what I want than go over the cliff with my flags flying.’ ”

  ON ANOTHER SUBJECT as well, Bush followed Reagan’s example. In July 1991, Bush and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The START pact mandated deep cuts in strategic forces like those Reagan and Gorbachev had begun discussing in Geneva and nearly agreed to in Reykjavík. Gorbachev dropped the last of his insistence on linking START to restrictions on SDI, which had progressed more slowly than Reagan and its enthusiasts had hoped. The START process did not eliminate nuclear weapons, as Reagan had dreamed, but it marked a major step toward dispelling the nuclear specter that had haunted the world for much of his lifetime.

  AFTER BUSH WON renomination in 1992, despite the complaints of conservatives, Reagan was happy to address the Republican convention on his successor’s behalf. He looked remarkably hale for a man of eighty-one, and if his movements and gestures lacked some of the sureness and vigor of earlier times, his delivery was still polished and his voice strong. His speech, like so many of his speeches over the years, was a paean to American exceptionalism. He had never had better occasion to trumpet America’s virtues. The last stage in the unraveling of the Soviet empire was the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself; at the end of 1991 the Soviet government voted itself out of business and ceded power to the republics that had formed the union. America’s Cold War foe of nearly half a century was no more. And the communist ideology that had tested democratic capitalism had finally and conclusively failed its own test.

  Reagan didn’t gloat. But he took pride in his country and what it had achieved. America, he said, was the world’s moral compass, the guardian of freedom, the beacon of opportunity. And after all America had accomplished, its best days were ahead. “The changes of the 1990s will leave America more dynamic and less in danger than at any time in my life,” he predicted. Humanity expected more of America than ever. “We remain the one nation the rest of the world looks to for leadership.” He urged the party and the country to remain true to America’s roots. “May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance and never lose your natural, God-given optimism.”

  The delegates were transported by the sight and words of their hero. They interrupted him again and again, shouting, “Reagan! Reagan!” and “Thank you, Ron!” They waved printed banners emblazoned “Reagan Country” and hand-lettered signs reading, “We Love You, Ron.”

  NOT ALL AMERICANS loved Reagan as much as the Republicans did, but even many Democrats confessed to a modest liking. He was, after all, a likable fellow. Yet his legacy as president evoked a decided ambivalence. A poll conducted at the time of the Republican convention revealed that only 43 percent of respondents approved of the job Reagan had done in office, while 50 percent disapproved. Another poll had respondents rate Reagan’s presidency; 33 percent declared it below average, 39 percent called it average, and 28 percent said it was above average.

  Some of the unhappiness reflected the recent recession. Economists debated whether the downturn had its roots in the deficits of the Reagan years, but stalled growth and rising unemployment typically sour voters on the president’s party, and Reagan’s reputation took a hit along with Bush’s.

  Reagan’s legacy suffered also from the continuing investigation into the Iran-contra scandal. The indefatigable Lawrence Walsh had reached the cabinet level in his probe of the Reagan administration; in June 1992 he persuaded a grand jury to indict Caspar Weinberger for perjury and related felonies. Although the chances of an indictment against Reagan himself seemed slim, the continuing attention to the great blunder of his administration cast a shadow over his time in office.

  Reagan tried to ignore the investigation. He carried on the routine he had established since leaving Washington. He and Nancy split time between the ranch and a home in Bel Air. He kept an office in Century City and spent his normal working hours, ten to three, there. “This is not retirement,” his spokeswoman said. She added, inadvertently contributing to her boss’s reputation for not overtaxing himself, “This is as bad as the White House—worse.” Traveling dignitaries—Lech Wałesa, Václav Havel of Czechoslovakia, among others—dropped by to share news of the world and enjoy the Pacific view from Reagan’s thirty-fourth-floor suite.

  Reagan and Nancy remained physically active. They went rafting in Wyoming and yachting among the islands of southeastern Alaska. Reagan lifted weights in a home gym, played golf with friends, and rode horseback and cut brush at the ranch. He and Nancy kept tabs on their health with regular checkups at the Mayo Clinic. His office in August 1992 declined to release details of their latest exams, beyond saying, “Their physicians found them both to be in excellent health.”

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  FOR REAGAN, THIS wasn’t true. A month earlier he had testified before the Walsh commission, and from the start of the questioning it was painfully obvious that his memory was disappearing. He couldn’t remember some of the most basic information about who had worked for him and what they did. “You were reelected in 1984 and began your second term in January of 1985,” Walsh said by way of introductory refreshment. “At that time the State Department was headed by Secretary Shultz, George Shultz. Would that be correct, sir?”

  “I think so but I can’t swear anymore,” Reagan said. “I know there were changes that came along and so forth in there but I think that you’re right.”

  “And Edwin Meese started as counselor to the pre
sident during your first term of office and then became attorney general during your second term of office,” Walsh said. “Would that be approximately correct?”

  “I take your word for it here,” Reagan replied. “I don’t remember the times in which those changes and things were made but that is true of Ed.”

  “During your second term was Bud McFarlane the national security adviser?”

  “I can’t tell you or remember when Bud left that job.”

  “Would it have been approximately December 5th, 1985?”

  “I can’t remember. I just know that I had him in that position for a while and I know that he did rather well.”

  “Could you tell us a little bit about how the work was divided between Don Regan and Bud McFarlane?”

  “No I can’t. I just have to tell you that all of this and every day—the whole history of this took place after we were—I was out of the governor’s office and Nancy and I started talking on how little we could remember about what took place because there was always—you were in motion always and that was what led to—in the president’s job, that’s what led to the diaries was because we remembered that we just couldn’t pin down the happenings in those eight years when I was the governor.”

  Walsh inquired about other staffers and their backgrounds with the former president. “Mr. Deaver—was he in the California administration with you?”

  “I’m going to have to think.”

  “Well, don’t—”

  “I honestly can’t swear to that. I’d hate to have him hear me say that.”

  “Judge Clark had been in your administration?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then he subsequently became secretary of Interior?”

  “I think that Deaver was in both areas but I can’t be sure.”

  The Walsh investigators had subpoenaed and won access to Reagan’s diaries. Walsh showed the former president transcripts of various entries to jog his memory. He asked Reagan to read one from February 26, 1985.

  “NSC briefing report,” Reagan read. “Assad seems to be making an effort to get four kidnap victims back from Hezbollah.” Reagan seemed unfamiliar with the reference.

  “You don’t happen to remember this particular incident and what President Assad was trying to do? Does that come back?”

  “No. And you know something, I’m trying to remember now who was Assad.”

  Walsh read another entry himself. “Heartbreaking photos of kidnap victims,” he quoted Reagan.

  “I don’t recall that at all,” Reagan said.

  “Would you remember in June of 1985, June 14th, that there was a hijacking of a TWA flight and the whole flight was captured?”

  “I don’t have a memory of that.”

  “It may prove to have some importance to you because there was the thought that Iran had been instrumental in getting the hostages—in getting the flight released.”

  “I would have to be reminded of that. I’m quite sure it happened but I don’t have any memory of it.”

  And so it went, agonizingly. Again and again Walsh tried to trigger Reagan’s memories; again and again the memories wouldn’t come. Walsh asked if Reagan remembered that Vice President Bush had headed a counterterrorism task force. “I had forgotten about that,” Reagan replied. Walsh read from Reagan’s diary about his meeting with McFarlane after his surgery in July 1985. “I have no memory of that either,” Reagan said.

  The interchange grew more excruciating. Walsh asked Reagan more questions he couldn’t answer; Reagan shook his head in frustration. “I’m very embarrassed,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Walsh tried to reassure him. “This was a long time ago,” he said, though it had been only several years.

  “It’s like I wasn’t president at all,” Reagan said.

  REAGAN’S DEPOSITION WASN’T released until years later, and so the public had no inkling of the extent of his mental deterioration. He continued to appear in public and to deliver prepared speeches, which he could read almost as well as ever. He commented occasionally on matters of public policy. After Bill Clinton defeated George Bush in the 1992 election, aided by the wild-card and sometimes wild-eyed candidacy of Texas billionaire Ross Perot, the Democrats moved to undo an aspect of the Reagan legacy that had long irked them. Clinton’s secretary of defense, Les Aspin, announced in May 1993 the termination of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Critics of SDI pointed out that a decade after Reagan initiated the program, it had produced little of substance to show for the $30 billion it had consumed. The exotic technologies SDI proponents had promised never panned out, and the Democrats thought they never would. Surveying the changes in world politics in recent years, Aspin told a Pentagon news conference, “Today we are here to observe another point of passage, which is the end of the Star Wars era. The fate of Star Wars was sealed by the collapse of the Soviet Union.” Missile defense wasn’t being abandoned, Aspin said, but it was being reconceptualized. The kind of threat the Reagan program had been intended to deal with, a mass attack from the Soviet Union, had “receded to the vanishing point.” The threat now was from single missiles from potential rogue states. Consequently, missile defense would be ground based, rather than space based, and would focus on intercepting single missiles rather than waves of missiles.

  Reagan decried the decision. “I may not be a Rhodes Scholar, but I know this,” he told graduates at the Citadel in South Carolina: “If we can protect America with a defense shield from incoming missile attacks, we should by all means do so.” Reagan credited SDI with helping to win the Cold War, and he thought it had a continuing mission. “If the new administration in Washington thinks we are no longer at risk, they need to open their eyes and take a long, hard look at the world.”

  AT TIMES IT seemed that Lawrence Walsh’s pursuit of the Iran-contra story would never end. Begun in 1987, the Walsh expedition outlasted Reagan’s presidency, then George Bush’s. It suffered a setback when Bush, before leaving the White House, pardoned Caspar Weinberger, who was about to come to trial, and Robert McFarlane, who had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of withholding information from Congress. Walsh had hoped the Weinberger trial would bring new evidence to light; instead, he found himself struggling to keep a decreasingly popular investigation afloat. It lasted another year, but in early 1994 Walsh published his final report on the Iran-contra affair.

  The report exonerated Reagan of criminal wrongdoing but blamed him for allowing the misconduct of others. “It was concluded that President Reagan’s conduct fell well short of criminality which could be successfully prosecuted,” the Walsh report declared. “Fundamentally, it could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that President Reagan knew of the underlying facts of Iran/contra that were criminal or that he made criminal misrepresentations regarding them.” Yet he had much to answer for, the report said. “President Reagan created the conditions which made possible the crimes committed by others by his secret deviations from announced national policy as to Iran and hostages and by his open determination to keep the contras together ‘body and soul’ despite a statutory ban on contra aid. In the Iran initiative, President Reagan chose to proceed in the utmost secrecy, disregarding the Administration’s public policy prohibiting arms sales to nations supporting terrorism. He also chose to forgo congressional notification under the National Security Act and the Arms Export Control Act. Having bypassed accountability to Congress, the President failed either to establish an effective system of accountability within the Administration or to monitor the series of activities he authorized.”

  On the diversion of funds from Iran to the contras, the report said, “No direct evidence was developed that the President authorized or was informed of the profiteering on the Iran arms sales or of the diversion of proceeds to aid the contras. Yet it was doubtful that President Reagan would tolerate the successive Iranian affronts during 1986”—the reneging on agreements to release hostages—“unless he knew that the arms sales continued to supply funds to
the contras to bridge the gap before the anticipated congressional appropriations became effective.”

  Reagan and his supporters pronounced the Walsh verdict the worst form of prosecutorial misrepresentation. In a written statement Reagan characterized the report as an “encyclopedia of old information, unwarranted conclusions and irresponsible speculation.” Reagan’s statement went on to say that Walsh’s report was a “self-administered pat on the back and a vehicle for baseless allegations that he could never have proven in court.” Reagan’s lawyer, Theodore Olson, branded the Walsh report a “fantasy” and a “purely speculative theory based upon misinterpretations of several key facts.” Walsh’s allegations about President Reagan were, Olson said, “refuted by overwhelming evidence.”

  FOR REAGAN, THIS might have been the last of the long, regrettable story if Oliver North hadn’t chosen to run for the Senate. North’s conviction had been overturned on appeal when the appellate court determined that evidence in his trial might have been tainted by his testimony to Congress, for which he had been granted immunity. North took the appeals court judgment as exoneration and launched a political career based in part on Reagan’s characterization of him as a national hero. But he drew Reagan’s ire when he began portraying himself as the Iran-contra scapegoat and asserted that Reagan had ordered him to lie to Congress about the contra diversion.

  Reagan initially refused to respond. He had no wish to give the Iran-contra story further legs. Moreover, he reasoned that criticizing North might be interpreted as intervening on behalf of North’s Republican opponent in the Senate primary in Virginia. But Paul Laxalt told Reagan he owed it to the country and to himself to set the record straight. Reagan agreed and gave Laxalt a letter intended for publication. The former president reiterated that he didn’t like stepping between Republican candidates. “But I do have to admit that I am getting pretty steamed about the statements coming from Oliver North,” he wrote. “I never instructed him or anyone in my administration to mislead Congress on Iran-contra matters or anything else. And I certainly didn’t know anything about the Iran-contra diversion. In fact, as you know, the minute we found out about it, we told the American people about it and called for investigations. And the private meetings he said he had with me just didn’t happen.”