"REAGAN'S INTELLECT" IS NOT AN OXYMORON

TUESDAY DECEMBER 19 2000, The Times of London

Reagan intellect confounds foes

BY BEN MACINTYRE

RONALD REAGAN was not the “amiable dunce” depicted by his foes, but a powerful thinker who analysed policy clearly and swiftly, to judge from recently discovered essays written by the former President in the 1970s.

The 670 speedily written essays were delivered as five-minute radio commentaries five days a week. They will be serialised in The New York Times next year.

“We kept marvelling at the clarity of his writing, but also the breadth of issues,” said Martin Anderson, a former Reagan Administration official who has edited an anthology of Mr Reagan’s works. Mr Anderson told The Washington Times that the commentaries showed the former President, who now suffers from advanced Alzheimer’s disease, to have been a “one man think-tank”.

Arnold Beichman, a fellow of the Hoover Institution, said that academics would be forced to revise their scholarship on Mr Reagan.

The essays have emerged, perhaps coincidentally, at the moment when George W. Bush, who has faced similar charges of being an intellectual lightweight, is about to enter the White House.

When he wrote the essays, Mr Reagan was preparing his ascent to the presidency. He made an unsuccessful attempt to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, but ran again and won the White House in 1980. The commentaries cover topics from foreign affairs to domestic policy.

Mr Anderson said: “You see his corrections. You see his mind at work. I know a lot of intelligent people who can’t write, but I don’t know any person who writes this well who is not intelligent.”

Mr Reagan is thought to have written up to 1,000 essays of which two thirds survive.

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-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 19, 2000

Answers

Who knew? Nancy knew, and she still loves him dearly.

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), December 19, 2000.