President Reagan: The Triumph of ImaginationSimon and Schuster, 23 déc. 2005 - 592 pages Twenty-five years after Ronald Reagan became president, Richard Reeves has written a surprising and revealing portrait of one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century. As he did in his bestselling books President Kennedy: Profile of Power and President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Reeves has used newly declassified documents and hundreds of interviews to show a president at work day by day, sometimes minute by minute. President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination is the story of an accomplished politician, a bold, even reckless leader, a gambler, a man who imagined an American past and an American future -- and made them real. He is a man of ideas who changed the world for better or worse, a man who understands that words are often more important than deeds. Reeves shows a man who understands how to be President, who knows that the job is not to manage the government but to lead the nation. In many ways, a quarter of a century later, he is still leading. As his vice president, George H. W. Bush, said after Reagan was shot and hospitalized in 1981: "We will act as if he were here." He is a heroic figure if not always a hero. He did not destroy communism, as his champions claim, but he knew it would self-destruct and hastened the collapse. No small thing. He believed the Soviet Union was evil and he had contempt for the established American policies of containment and détente. Asked about his own Cold War strategy, he answered: "We win. They lose!" Like one of his heroes, Franklin D. Roosevelt, he has become larger than life. As Roosevelt became an icon central to American liberalism, Reagan became the nucleus holding together American conservatism. He is the only president whose name became a political creed, a noun not an adjective: "Reaganism." Reagan's ideas were so old they seemed new. He preached an individualism, inspiring and cruel, that isolated and shamed the halt and the lame. He dumbed-down America, brilliantly blending fact and fiction, transforming political debate into emotion-driven entertainment. He recklessly mortgaged America with uncontrolled military spending, less taxation, and more debt. In focusing on the key moments of the Reagan presidency, Reeves recounts the amazing resiliency of Ronald Reagan, the real "comeback kid." Here is a seventy-year-old man coming back from a near-fatal gunshot wound, from cancer, from the worst recession in American history. Then, in personal despair as his administration was shredded by the lying and secrets of hidden wars and double-dealing, he was able to forge one of history's amazing relationships with the leader of "the Evil Empire." That story is told for the first time using the transcripts of the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings, the climax of an epic story -- as if he were here. |
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Page xv
... chief of staff in Reagan's White House, James A. Baker III, once said of the boss: “He treats us all the same, as hired help.” Could the talented Mr. Baker have changed the tax code or doubled to 14 percent the portion of the federal ...
... chief of staff in Reagan's White House, James A. Baker III, once said of the boss: “He treats us all the same, as hired help.” Could the talented Mr. Baker have changed the tax code or doubled to 14 percent the portion of the federal ...
Page xvi
... chief of staff, have raised the morale of a nation? “What was the biggest problem in the White House when you were there?” I asked Don Regan. “Everyone there thought he was smarter than the President,” he said. “Including you ...
... chief of staff, have raised the morale of a nation? “What was the biggest problem in the White House when you were there?” I asked Don Regan. “Everyone there thought he was smarter than the President,” he said. “Including you ...
Page 2
... head slightly and whispered the words, “Not yet.” Back in the Situation Room, eighteen feet under the West Wing of the White House, Carter's chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, and Rafshoon were working, still on open phone lines back and ...
... head slightly and whispered the words, “Not yet.” Back in the Situation Room, eighteen feet under the West Wing of the White House, Carter's chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, and Rafshoon were working, still on open phone lines back and ...
Page 13
... chief of staff James A. Baker III, a smooth Houston lawyer who had been Vice President Bush's campaign manager during the Republican primaries; Edwin Meese, a former California prosecutor who served as Governor Reagan's ideological ...
... chief of staff James A. Baker III, a smooth Houston lawyer who had been Vice President Bush's campaign manager during the Republican primaries; Edwin Meese, a former California prosecutor who served as Governor Reagan's ideological ...
Page 14
... chief of staff in Washington, Jim Baker, put it this way: “He treats us all the same, as hired help.” “It isn't that he doesn't like people, because he's very friendly,” Martin Anderson told newcomers. “It's that he doesn't need people ...
... chief of staff in Washington, Jim Baker, put it this way: “He treats us all the same, as hired help.” “It isn't that he doesn't like people, because he's very friendly,” Martin Anderson told newcomers. “It's that he doesn't need people ...
Table des matières
1 | |
30 | |
43 | |
August 8 1981 | 58 |
August 13 1981 | 83 |
June 8 1982 | 99 |
March 8 1983 | 133 |
September 5 1983 | 160 |
November 19 1985 | 280 |
January 28 1986 | 295 |
June 17 1986 | 322 |
October 12 1986 | 340 |
November 25 1986 | 362 |
June 12 1987 | 378 |
July 7 1987 | 402 |
October 19 1987 | 419 |
February 26 1984 | 182 |
November 6 1984 | 204 |
March 11 1985 | 235 |
November 16 1985 | 265 |
December 8 1987 | 435 |
May 29 1988 | 448 |
January 11 1989 | 472 |
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