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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... federal budget devoted to interest payments? Could the shrewd Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, have more than doubled the Pentagon budget? Could the experienced Secretary of State, George Shultz, have believed Russia would be ...
... federal budget devoted to interest payments? Could the shrewd Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, have more than doubled the Pentagon budget? Could the experienced Secretary of State, George Shultz, have believed Russia would be ...
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... federal government; (2) rebuilding the American military; (3) confronting communism around the world; (4) restoring American patriotism and pride. Ronald Reagan wanted to destroy communism. He had long ago rejected words like ...
... federal government; (2) rebuilding the American military; (3) confronting communism around the world; (4) restoring American patriotism and pride. Ronald Reagan wanted to destroy communism. He had long ago rejected words like ...
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... federal government be significantly dismantled, can the authority of the central government be broadly reduced, programs and spending cut, without savaging the lives and hopes of those Americans who are least equipped to defend ...
... federal government be significantly dismantled, can the authority of the central government be broadly reduced, programs and spending cut, without savaging the lives and hopes of those Americans who are least equipped to defend ...
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... federal income taxes. On spending, Reagan used a triedand-true line he had repeated a thousand times in after-dinner speeches: “Over the past decades we've talked of curtailing government spending so that we can lower the tax burden ...
... federal income taxes. On spending, Reagan used a triedand-true line he had repeated a thousand times in after-dinner speeches: “Over the past decades we've talked of curtailing government spending so that we can lower the tax burden ...
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... federal spending. Second, we must cut tax rates so that once again work will be rewarded and savings encouraged. Third, we must carefully remove the tentacles of excessive government regulation. . . . Fourth, we must work with the Federal ...
... federal spending. Second, we must cut tax rates so that once again work will be rewarded and savings encouraged. Third, we must carefully remove the tentacles of excessive government regulation. . . . Fourth, we must work with the Federal ...
Table des matières
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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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