Ronald Reagan: a Man of Certitudes

Ronald Reagan is two of America's favorite characters, the nice boy next door and the lovable, opinionated uncle, getting on but pretty damn lively for his age, cheerful, friendly, great storyteller (known to shade one to make a point), no big brain trust but plenty of common sense. Reagan comes from two quintessentially American places, the Middle Western small town and golden < California. The movie actor years, far from creating a stagy celebrity, seem to have merged role and reality--the good guy everybody (except maybe a few snobs and eggheads) wants to be, the American as seen by the American. This is a very different sort of leader from the aristocratic Franklin Roosevelt, the Hudson River squire, or the dashing young Jack Kennedy, the rich Irish- American nouveau Brahmin--two rare species. The many Americans who revered them did not for a moment imagine that these magnetic figures were simply themselves called to Washington.

In his plain Americanness, Reagan is more like Ford or Truman or Eisenhower. But he is a better politician than Ford or Truman, and has had more of an idea of what he wanted to do as President than Ike did. Reagan neatly stood on its head a cherished assumption of most students of the presidency: that vigorous, ebullient presidential leadership would naturally aim at expanding the role of the Federal Government (and the Chief Magistrate), and that any President of contrary outlook would necessarily be a cold, crabbed type or at best likably lazy. Franklin Roosevelt was the exemplar of the bold, joyous activist, Coolidge and Hoover the chill naysayers (so the academic stereotype went), Ike the lazy nice guy. So here came Reagan, not overworking himself but relishing the job and the power, using it with great gusto and skill to shrink the role of Government and of the President.

Reagan is a man of certitudes. Not since Harry Truman, very possibly, has a President been so confident he was right. There are plentiful hazards in that, but also many assets for a democratic leader. Reagan would not have chosen as one of his favorite messages the Reinhold Niebuhr line that Carter used to quote: "The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world." Reagan is not a big ambiguity fan.