The Crusader -- Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Paul Kengor, Regan '06, $29.95, 412 pages, ISBN #0-06-113690-5. Index, source notes, appendix, no bibliography or illustrations.
Nearly 20 years after Ronald Reagan's presidency ended, an aura of revisionism has begun to permeate his legend. While dismissed by the chattering classes during and after his reign as a genial buffoon, recent presidential ratings have witnessed his star rising, owing in part to Nancy Reagan's careful burnishing of his image and to sympathy evoked by Reagan's descent into Alzheimer's Disease. To the extent that his new regard is substantive, it probably relates to the simplicity of his vision, not layered or complex but a straightforward mission: lower taxes, strengthen military defense, and contain and, eventually, destroy communism. Give him one thing: you never doubted where Ronald Reagan stood.
Kengor's book deals with the last part of the triad. The chief contribution of his book is to demonstrate that Reagan's fervent anti-communism sprang from his service as presidency of the Screen Actors' Guild in the 1950s, that it impelled him to enter public life, and that he called for tearing down the Berlin Wall as early as 1967.
No liberal, the author lashes out at Senator Ted Kennedy for reaching out to the Soviet Union in 1984 to try to derail Reagan's re-election. Drawing on a "highly sensitive KGB document, Kengor alleges Kennedy, "through a liaison, approached Soviet leaders with a plan to counter Reagan's foreign policy in the hope of scaring up a Democratic victory in '84." Mixed in with substantive material are such treacly details as Nancy Reagan's private wish to have been with her husband at his March, 1981 assassination attempt so she could "take a bullet for him"
