History Forum / General / General Topics / October 2003

'Reagan' viewer warning

By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

   Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill,
is in Washington, lecturing and writing. Tapped after the death of
Churchill's son, Randolph, to write the authorized biography of this
colossal figure, Mr. Gilbert produced eight volumes (not counting
three volumes of documents), and he has written other books on
Churchill, Napoleon, the Holocaust and other matters. He is among the
most illustrious scholars of the day; and the British historian, Paul
Johnson, calls him the most "industrious" and exact of historians.
   A few days back, over dinner, the question came up of Churchill's
actual life as opposed to the legends that people, often revisionist
writers, tack onto his life. In the train of a great figure such as
Churchill, there will always follow fabulists and ignoramuses creating
legends about him, believing absurdities about him, building up a
debris of myths around the monument's feet.
   Even after Mr. Gilbert has devoted decades to chronicling with the
utmost precision the life of Churchill, the biographer's work with
Churchill is not finished. Over dinner someone observed that Mr.
Gilbert will naturally have to continue for the rest of his life to
assess the accuracy of new interpretations of Churchill, paying always
close attention to the evidence.
   Ah, yes, the evidence of a historic life or, for that matter, a
historic event — that is to say the relevant documents, the
established facts, interviews, diaries, other historical writing —
these are the materials with which history establishes an accurate
image of historic figures large and small.
   I thought about "the evidence" this week when I read CBS is about
to broadcast a two-part "miniseries," "The Reagans." It depicts
happenings and conversations in Ronald Reagan's life that never took
place. The producers of "The Reagans" do not deny that. They present
one of the great presidents of the 20th century as a dope and not
always a very nice dope.
   One of the complaints already raised against "The Reagans" is that
it is the creation of liberal Hollywood. Oh, the Hollywood artistes
involved in creating this miniseries deny their politics matter.
Whether or not they do, despite historians' rising esteem for the 40th
president and despite the evidence Mr. Reagan reversed America's
economic decline to trigger its longest period of economic recovery
simultaneous with winning the Cold War, Hollywood's recollection of
Mr. Reagan as a dunce endures. He still awaits his Sir Martin Gilbert.
   Mr. Reagan's momentous eight-year presidency covering a near-death
assassination attempt, his enormous arms build-up, his diplomatic
demarche with Moscow, his reformation of economic policy, his
re-election, two off-year elections, and attending to guerrilla wars
and terrorism worldwide, all pale in the mind of the Hollywood
dramatist in comparison with these gigantic matters: Mr. Reagan was
inattentive to his staff, had a bossy wife, and was supposedly
hardhearted and neglectful of the inchoate AIDS epidemic. These are
major themes in "The Reagans."
   Interestingly President Franklin Roosevelt suffered the same slurs
and still does, though pro-Roosevelt historians have put a sunny face
on the first two slurs. The famed disorganization of the New Deal
staff was a stroke of genius by Roosevelt. His impetuous wife was a
liberal exemplar. As for Roosevelt's neglect of certain contemporary
problems — dealing with Adolf Hitler's Final Solution is the one most
frequently mentioned nowadays — even the pro-Roosevelt historians are
critical, sounding like those now criticizing Mr. Reagan's neglect of
AIDS. I would defend both Roosevelt and Reagan with the same response.
They had their hands full with war and the economy.
   To dramatize Mr. Reagan's alleged neglect of AIDS, "The Reagans"
depict the president making a moralistic statement about AIDS victims
that he never made. Even the scriptwriter admits the statement was a
fiction. An even more contemptible slur included in this miniseries
about a man who at the age when most are in retirement ran the largest
corporation on Earth is the stress the Hollywoodians put on Mr.
Reagan's supposed forgetfulness. This is high drama for a Hollywood
scriptwriter; for, you see, Mr. Reagan now ekes out his daily life
through the fog of Alzheimer's disease.
   Actually, whenever I was around Mr. Reagan his forgetfulness was
no greater than that of most busy adults. A best-selling book of his
lifetime correspondence, "Reagan: A Life in Letters," shows a sharp
mind at work right up to retirement.
   Yet the 92-year-old former president does have Alzheimer's
disease. His wife, family, and friends live with great sadness, and
for Mrs. Reagan grave burdens. So what can we say in the end of CBS'
broadcast just now of this anti-historical life of a great man?
   We can say (A) the childlike mind of the Hollywood artistes
ignored "the evidence," and (B) CBS and the producers of "The Reagans"
have publicly committed an act of remarkable cruelty. It is on a par
with claiming Roosevelt's paralysis somehow impaired his performance
in office.
   Don't wince. In point of fact, there were primitives who made this
claim about Roosevelt, and it is not surprising that the creators of
"The Reagans" should come off as so many Roosevelt haters. They are
philistines and ignoramuses, and haters of the first rank.
   
   R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is the editor in chief of the American
Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct
fellow at the Hudson Institute.