Newsweek: The Left Starts to Rethink Reagan

The outcome of this November's election may hinge on a single question: which presidential candidate will prevail among the "Reagan Democrats"? Those traditionally Democratic voters made history—and a place in the political lexicon—in 1980 when they bolted their party's disarrayed ranks to swing the polls in Ronald Reagan's favor. Until recently, however, few liberal-leaning historians took a respectful look at the Reagan phenomenon. That's finally changing, with the publication of Sean Wilentz's new "The Age of Reagan," even as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—and John McCain—seek the support of that crucial bloc. NEWSWEEK's Evan Thomas moderated a conversation about the Gipper between Wilentz, a professed liberal, and NEWSWEEK's George F. Will, a longtime Reagan admirer.

THOMAS: Sean, why have you taken a look at Reagan, and have other historians started to take another look at Reagan?
WILENTZ: It's interesting. It's no secret that intellectuals, generally being liberals, didn't think much of Ronald Reagan at the time. Unlike Roosevelt, who got covered right away—as soon as he died there were books out about [him]—it took people a long time to catch up with Ronald Reagan. But I think that now they can no longer ignore him. His impact on the world and country, whether you like it or not, was so important that to ignore him is to ignore an entirety of American politics.

THOMAS: And why did it take so long?
WILENTZ: People had to overcome their own passions, their own dislikes. Some people had to grow up. Some people, it was a matter of all their ideas ripening. Ronald Reagan was difficult to read. His own official biographer couldn't make head or tail out of Ronald Reagan, and he had more access than most. Look, he was a conservative in a conservative age. This is not, normally, what is the stuff of heroic history. It just doesn't fit the mold in the way that Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln does. It's just different.


THOMAS: So, George, why do you think it took Sean so long to figure out Reagan was a great president?
WILENTZ: [Laughs]

WILL: Let me make [a couple of] points about what Sean just said. First, an intellectual is not a synonym for liberal. In fact, one of the differences Ronald Reagan made, and one of the differences that made Ronald Reagan, was there had emerged, particularly in the 1970s, a conservative intellectual movement—the think tanks and journals and all the rest. Secondly, what Sean is doing is what Murray Kempton did for Dwight Eisenhower. It took Murray Kempton to take a step back and say, "Wait a minute, this man, who did after all run the most complicated war alliance in history, who had dealt with de Gaulle, Churchill, Roosevelt and all the rest, was not a child. He was a subtle, devious, guileful man, difficult to read." That's the phrase Sean just used about Ronald Reagan—and Ronald Reagan was difficult to read. He had an actor's sense of the surface and the inner. Ronald Reagan's famous jokes were a way, I believe, to keep people at a distance. It was an armor of affability that he had, and [that] made him difficult to read, and I think he realized that would cost him among the historians for a while. My question is, Sean just said Reagan didn't fit the mold. I want to know what mold, and who made it?...