“Ronald Reagan – A Conservative in the White House”, by Edwin Meese III: definitive biography of the most beloved US president of the last 40 years
Review by Patrick Bateman
A few weeks have passed since the conclusion (?) Of the last American presidential elections which saw Democrat Joe Biden prevail over outgoing President Donald Trump. And the outcome of these elections made me want to try my hand at reading a biography on one of the last (if not the last) great stars and stripes president: Ronald Wilson Reagan. Still today the North Star of conservatism and unsurpassed champion of freedom (not only economic and business), the fortieth American president has often been the object of mockery and ridicule by the usual liberal press, but this was not enough to oust him from a throne. of appreciation and consensus (not just popular) based on determination and concreteness, qualities that have allowed him to guide the United States through one of the most delicate periods in its history.
Reagan's role in the fall of the Soviet Evil Empire is in fact anything but marginal (although historians and ill-advised journalists tend to emphasize only the merits, however equally important, of Gorbachev); his choice to consider the elephantine government apparatus as a problem and not as a solution is a revolution of paradigms of historical significance and also his way of presenting and spreading to the world the idea of an America land of prosperity and well-being has determined a bipartisan growth in confidence that culminated with the near plebiscite of re-election in 1984.
These and others are the merits of one of the most dynamic presidencies ever, and the point of view offered by this precious biography published by Giubilei Regnani in 2018 is an exceptional point of view, entrusted to none other than Edwin Meese III, director of the staff of the president and from 1985 to 1988 United States Attorney General.
The story of Meese III begins in medias res , just before the primary in New Hampshire in 1980, the first aut-aut of the then Republican candidate Reagan: in Iowa against George Bush it went very badly and another debacle would certainly have led to inevitable withdrawal of that outsider and somewhat visionary candidate who had done so much as governor of California. After all, the former actor (as he was always called by his detractors), had a lot to do against opponents of the caliber of Gerald Ford and George Bush, appreciated and supported by most of the Republican establishment. Needless to say, it was a success, and the subsequent electoral challenge against outgoing President Carter was also a success, from which Reagan will inherit enormous federal deficit problems and a controversial situation in Iran that will also represent the Achilles heel of eight years of presidency. brilliant (the Iran-Contras scandal).
In the pages of Meese we are witnessing a painstaking operation of real debunking , in which the journalistic and not very detailed narration of so much non-fiction deployed is riddled by facts and statistics, with the author setting himself the goal of misleading who believes that Reagan has only made savage cuts to the budget by declaring war on the poor, those who believe that the president was just a beautiful face to present in public while others were making the decisions and especially those who think that Reagan has done nothing but risk exacerbating relations with the Soviet Union in a childish and disordered way rather than following a coherent and articulated line.
The figure of the president emerges victorious from this biography, but one should not think that the work of Meese III represents a hagiography, on the contrary. The author is in fact very clear in admitting some errors, especially in the management of the Middle Eastern question (from Lebanon to Iraq, passing through the thorny Iran), and this gives the book a depth that only honest reconstructions are able to give. . In conclusion, "Ronald Reagan – A conservative in the White House" is an essential work for those who want to get closer to the complex figure and the decisive choices of a single and unconventional president, comparable in completeness and information density only to the diaries written by the fist of the president himself.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/recensioni/ronald-reagan-un-conservatore-alla-casa-bianca-di-edwin-meese-iii-biografia-definitiva-sul-presidente-usa-piu-amato-degli-ultimi-40-anni/ on Sat, 28 Nov 2020 04:55:00 +0000.