Ronald Reagan: A Good Man and The Anti-Intellectual

Max Boot’s 2024 Reagan Biography

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I love reading biographies. I’ve read biographies on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Manson, Jim Morrison, Charles Bukowski, Dostoevsky and too many more to count.

Recently I picked up the 880-page Reagan: His Life and Legend, by Max Boot. I’ve always been fascinated by the Reagan mythos and over the years I’ve found myself often wanting to know more about him. Growing up myself in a solidly Democratic household Reagan was always shaped out of the center-left cliché you hear most often: Reagan was a far-right Christian Nationalist who let out a lot of mentally ill people, cut a lot of social programs for the poor, was terrible on Apartheid and created the biggest income inequality in America to date, a gap we’re still dealing with now, not to mention the largest arms buildup in world history during the Cold War.

And then, as a teen, as I’ve written many times and as described in my novel, I got into early 1980s hardcore LA (and other) punk rock. And of course punk rock was all about being anti-Reagan. Reagan was seen by the original Gen X punk rockers as, basically, Satan; a man for the rich and rich only, an evil fucker who was racist, sexist and more or less totally evil. Early 80s punk in part has its whole ethos, edge and style bent around the glimmering hatred of Reagan. (There’s a slight irony here which is that the first-wave of American punk, which started in the mid-late 1970s, began under, of all presidents, Jimmy Carter, one of the most progressive leaders in U.S. history. But cities around the nation from SF to NYC were experiencing serious and rapid urban decay during this era. Thank you, stagflation.)

And yet I knew, re Reagan, as is usually the case, that the story was almost certainly much more complex than this. Because it always is.

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I had no idea who Max Boot was, though I’d heard the name before, who knows where. Turns out he’s a mid-fifties, bald, former Russian-turned-U.S. citizen who identified as a Conservative for most of his career but who then broke with the Republican Party, becoming an Independent, when Trump rose to power in 2016. He saw Trump—rightly—as being illiberal and anything but Republican or Conservative. Trump was not a party man or even a politician; he was a narcissist-madman riding the harsh wave of The White Backlash after the rise of multiculturalism, diversity and Obama. (Who, Trump famously claimed, wasn’t even an American citizen and was “from Africa.”)

When I researched Boot I discovered a man who I largely agree with on the major social concepts—pro-choice, pro-free speech, pro-LGBTQ, pro-immigration, pro-environment, etc—and even agree with on some of his more Conservative ideas: cut some “entitlement programs,” make sure Social Security remains solvent, pro-free trade, a fan of getting the national deficit under control.

Where I strongly diverge from Boot is when it comes to war and being “the world’s policemen.” I agree that we need to have a strong presence globally—because if we don’t then China, Russia, North Korea etc will, and that is much worse for everyone—but Boot supported Iraq and other adventures, and I disagree with that war and in Afghanistan: I think many of our Middle East Adventures from the 1980s on have been disastrous, not only for nations in that region but for the U.S. and the West as well. I don’t support “exporting Democracy.”

However.

I have to say: This book—which I read feverishly in one week, averaging 126 pages per day—was, by far, the most fair, both-sides, balanced book I’ve probably ever read. The final few paragraphs of the introduction stated clearly and unequivocally that Boot was an Independent and former Conservative and that he had no overt bias, goal or agenda with this book.

He wasn’t trying to convince you of anything. He didn’t view Reagan as either good or bad, moral or immoral, right or wrong, but simply as a complex man with contradictory drives, impulses and incentives as we all have, especially a president of the most powerful nation in the world. I deeply appreciated these final paragraphs. It made me trust Boot in a way I haven’t trusted writers in a long, long time. Too many authors today—whether it be biography or a novel—steep themselves in team-politics and it makes me feel annoyed and resentful, treated like a child; my intelligence feels insulted.

Boot let us know up front that he thinks of his readers as smart, capable individuals who can make up their own mind, wherever that lands them. His job was to paint the accurate, highly-researched portrait (there are more documents available now than ever before having to do with Reagan). Boot really stuck to his word: Every time he said something about Reagan, good or bad, he also dutifully mentioned the other side as well.

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Reagan was born in 1911 in a small town called Tampico, in Illinois. He came from Irish stock and his family generations back from Ireland had been called O’Regan, later altered in America. His family was poor. Mom stayed at home and Dad, a terrible lifelong drunk, worked at clothing stores and other retail stores on and off for many years. It was just Reagan and his older brother. Just the four of them in the family at a time when it was still common practice, especially in small rural towns like Tampico, to have five, eight, ten kids. They moved constantly because Dad was often being fired, usually for his drinking. Life, therefore, was not exactly stable.

Always seeming to supersede his familial predecessors, Reagan did well in school, made friends and later played football, swam religiously and became a lifeguard. He saved many people on the Rock River in Illinois. He was tall, handsome and fit, and the girls swooned over him. He was 18 when the stock market crashed on Black Tuesday, October, 1929 which initiated the Great Depression.

His family were rock-ribbed Democrats, both Mom and Dad, and more than just Democrats they were liberal Democrats. At a time when bipartisanship was normal (this would last into the 1990s) and Southern Democrats were simmering in racist rage, Reagan’s parents were Northern Democrats who were pro-Black Civil Rights, antiracist and pro-social programs for the poor. They detested Herbert Hoover in the late 1920s and the early 1930s who had no answer to the global shockwave of the Great Depression, insisting on letting the system “fix itself.”

Ergo when FDR ran and came into power, the Reagans supported him. Since the time of Lincoln, the Republican Party had been the anti-slavery, pro-Black party. But Black Americans started to vote for Democrats for the first time in 1933, seeking a president who wanted to actually do something about the Depression, which hit nearly everyone hard but especially African Americans. At its height the Depression produced an incredible 25% unemployment rate, which is simply astonishing. One in four Americans were out of the job.

Throughout Reagan’s twenties he would be a staunch supporter of FDR and The New Deal. He supported the creation of social “entitlement” programs like Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Housing Administration, Federal Security Agency, etc. He agreed with FDR expanding the federal government in a massive way and creating programs for the poor and unemployed which helped (but did not fix) the struggling American economy in the 1930s and early 1940s. Big government was a good thing. (It would ultimately be World War II that would end the Depression and get America’s economy humming again and in fact would make the United Staes the next Great World Power, an empire.)

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Reagan did decently but not particularly well in high school and worked as a lifeguard on and off to survive. He stayed away from drinking for the most part, because of his father, was a handsome man, was a gentleman with the ladies, and was determined to somehow get into radio broadcasting, which had begun to become more popular in the 1920s. Unlike the rest of his family members for generations before him, he was able, through grit, hard work and a partial scholarship, to attend the private Eureka College, in rural (Eureka) Illinois.

Eureka had been founded in 1855 by Disciples of Christ religious people who were strong slavery abolitionists. Reagan’s mom was pleased by this choice because she was a deeply committed Disciples of Christ member. (Reagan grew up with a highly stable, very capable and intense religious mother.)

Reagan worked washing dishes and doing other odd jobs while at college in order to pay for the half of the scholarship which wasn’t covered. Reagan was in college from 1928 to 1932 and achieved a Bachelor’s in Sociology and Economics. He had been a middling student but played football, dated, was class student president, and was popular.

After college he asked around and, by a stroke of ambition, drive and luck, he landed a radio announcer job in a town an hour away. He did sports announcing for football games. He was a natural and soon he was making decent money and was beginning to be known regionally in Illinois. But by his mid-twenties he had decided that he wanted more than just radio broadcasting. He saw himself in Hollywood. And so, in 1937—at the age of 26—he quit broadcast radio and moved to Tinsel Town.

He became somewhat of an underground B-film star—later playing roles in a few A-level movies (most notably King’s Row)—while in Hollywood. He was called up during World War II but had lawyers and the network who got him constantly deferred. In the end he stayed in California at the studio doing film and broadcasts but later created the myth that he’d actually fought in battle in Europe.

At the age of 36—now a decade behind him working as a successful actor in Hollywood—he was elected, in 1947, as the president of the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG), which he’d been involved with for many years by that point. He took over and spent many years dealing with SAG unions, negotiating settlements, and, by this time, fighting about communism, which Reagan (and many others) was convinced was hiding behind every tree and bush.

(After the end of World War II, Russia, who had done the hardest fighting against the Nazis, and had carried the biggest death toll and hardship, during the epic war between 1939 and 1945, became embroiled in a “cold war” between themselves and the United States. This involved a massive buildup of weapons between the two nations, threats of nuclear war, and “hot” (and cold) proxy wars all over the globe, in Vietnam, Korea, South America, Cuba, and many other nations.

People were obsessed with the “Domino Theory,” the idea that if one nation fell to communism, all the rest would and it would be World War III. And so endless proxy wars were fought between the two superpowers. Literally and symbolically this was demonstrated by the Berlin Wall, the “iron curtain” separating East and West Berlin, the east side occupied by the USSR and the west side by America. And, famously, in the 1950s senator Joseph McCarthy would arise from the muck and filth of politics to become a hardcore anti-communist who would nearly pull the whole American system into the valley of death with his raucous anti-communist rage and muckraking.)

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In 1940 he married Jane Wyman, his 1938 co-star in the film Brother Rat, an unstable woman who threatened suicide if he didn’t marry her. (They divorced in 1948.) She became pregnant. They had two kids: Maureen and a sister who died shortly after birth, and they adopted a son, Michael; both Michael and Maureen would become trouble later. He worked in TV and radio again and started touring the nation speaking on behalf of General Electric Theatre, doing speeches about film and TV, economics, anti-communism and labor unions in the film world. These speeches made him famous, made him more interested in public life and in politics, and dubbed him the name, The Great Communicator. In 1949 he met Nancy Davis; they married in 1952. Nancy became his lifelong wife, partner, manager and best friend.

In the 1940s Reagan spoke out against racism, against the KKK and was anti-nuclear weapons. In 1948 he voted for Harry S. Truman. He began fighting communism vehemently. It was in the very early 1950s that Reagan’s views began to shift to the right. Once mentioning Nixon as a sketchy, questionable, immoral man, by 1960, when Nixon battled JFK for the presidency, Reagan supported him. He supported Eisenhower in 1952. He continued to argue against communism and, for the first time, publicly began to criticize New Deal legislation and social programs like Social Security and Welfare, arguing that they infringed on individual rights. By 1962 GE had dropped him and he registered as a Republican. All his life he would claim that the Democratic Party shifted away from him, not he from the Democratic Party.

In 1964 he backed the racist, hardcore right-wing Republican Barry Goldwater, who morphed the Republican Party from the “Party of Lincoln” into essentially the White Backlash anti-Black, anti-Civil Rights party. The racist Southern Democrats (the “Dixiecrats”) broke from the party and joined Republicans. Historically, the Republican Party had always been the Big Government, anti-slavery party. Goldwater broke that. The parties switched. Democrats were the pro-Civil Rights party and Republicans took a hard turn to the right.

(However, to complicate things: The 1960s was still a time of solid bipartisanship. There were shades, degrees of political thought; moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats. And in fact many moderate Republicans joined Democrats during 1964/65 to help pass LBJ’s Civil Rights legislation such as the Voting Rights Act.)

Reagan was a part of this general turn to the right.

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Governor

Ironically, given that it was California in the turbulent, radical 1960s, Reagan, after being dropped by GE, decided, against the odds, to run for California governor. Pat Brown was the contender, already in office. (And also ironically Brown’s son, Jerry, would become governor after Reagan left office.)

Reagan’s time as governor (1967-1975) of California included the following: Strong gun-control legislation, the most liberal and pro-women abortion rights in California (and probably the United States) history, the appointment of a California Supreme Court judge that, in 1972, ended the death penalty in California, raised taxes on corporations and inheritances. However, he also began “welfare reform” which negatively affected low-income individuals and families in need, rejected Civil Rights bills, did major cuts to public education, cut mental health funding which released thousands of mentally ill individuals out into the streets starting off the mental health homeless crisis we’re still dealing with today, and had cops and the National Guard beat the shit out of 1960s Free Speech/anti-Vietnam Berkeley student protestors which became a hallmark of his time as governor.

In short: A very mixed bag.

In 1976 he ran for president, challenging incumbent Republican Gerald Ford, and lost. The final years of the 1970s belonged to Democratic progressive Jimmy Carter, a one-term president who failed the nation with stagflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979. The late seventies became an era of urban decay seeing places like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City become urban centers of anarchy, chaos and social decadence, giving rise to punk rock and other subcultures as a response.

Carter was pro-Civil Rights, pro-women, pro-corporate tax and taxes on the wealthy and was a supporter of “détente” with the Soviet Union. Carter was pro-gay, pro-environment, pro-education, pro-humanitarian and supported world peace. He advocated for a national health insurance program. He was diplomatic when it came to global geopolitics and tried to mediate issues between places like Israel and Palestine. He deregulated some industries and tried to be careful with the USSR.

But stagflation (rising prices alongside rising unemployment) and the Iran hostage crisis did Carter in.

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Reagan—like Trump—rode the “white backlash” tidal wave in 1980. For Trump this meant white voters resentful of multiculturalism, diversity and the first Black president, mixed with AI and jobs going more and more overseas a la NAFTA (which often got falsely blamed on “immigrants”). For Reagan in 1980 the White Backlash stemmed from Civil Rights. Welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, fair housing, aid to families with dependent children, virtually everything LBJ had passed in The Great Society in the post-JFK 1960s.

Many white voters were angry about Civil Rights, about Blacks moving into their towns and neighborhoods, Blacks wanting equal rights, programs paid by taxpayers for the poor, integrated public schools, etc. (Plus rising crime, which they blamed exclusively on Black Americans, not to mention the Watts riots, etc.) Basically: All the Barry Goldwater complaints. Southern Democrats and Republicans especially wanted to see taxes lowered, social programs cut, and white men redeemed.

Reagan destroyed Carter in the election, winning 51% to 41% of the popular vote, which got split by a third candidate which took 7%. Reagan carried 44 states winning 489 electoral votes to Carter’s pitiable 49. This was a true referendum, unlike Trump in 2016 and 2024 which was less of a referendum and more of a failure of the Democratic Party. (And the use of gerrymandering and the electoral system.)

By all accounts—according to Boot—Reagan was genuinely a very good person, a good and truly decent man who treated all people as equals and never wished harm on any person or group. He genuinely thought he was helping people. And he did sometimes help people, as I mentioned earlier when he was governor. He was a terrible father: All four of his kids (two with Jane Wyman and two with Nancy) turned out to have major struggles and issues. Reagan was more connected to and frankly interested in Nancy and his political career than his kids. He was often emotionally closed off, distant, aloof. He reportedly lacked any emotional self-reflective abilities and had little to no self-awareness. He treated Michael and Maureen—his kids from the first marriage—often like second-class citizens.

Reagan was often clueless interpersonally. He could be quite tone-deaf and had a pattern of mythologizing his own past, lying, spouting lines about Lenin and Stalin and many others which were made up whole cloth. (When told this he continued saying them in public anyway.) He believed in astrology, as did Nancy, and they had a private astrologer who helped them decide on dates and times to do certain speeches; this lasted for his whole presidency. He was a supporter of the racist John Birch Society and read their pamphlets, believed their conspiracy theories and spouted “facts” they wrote about, even after being told they were inaccurate and untrue by aids.

As I mentioned earlier, Reagan had grown up with parents who were pro-Civil Rights and antiracist, progressive Northern Democrats who supported FDR and The New Deal. They vehemently opposed racism, bigotry and systemic oppression. (Which, back then, was a much more serious problem compared to the media-supported, inaccurate narrative of “systemic racism” today in 2025.)

Reagan himself often told friends, family and aids that he loathed racism and bigotry. And yet: This was one of the biggest ironies of Reagan and his time as president. He could on the one hand staunchly support Civil Rights and Black Americans on an individual basis (and in his own mind) while simultaneously doing massive, ruthless welfare reform, and cutting other major social programs like he’d started doing as governor of California. All these social program cuts—to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, aid to needy families with dependent children, fair housing laws, etc—disproportionately hurt Black and brown people in the United States. He was against fair housing laws for minorities.

His misunderstood Milton Friedman-based (sort of) “Supply Side Economics”—aka “Trickle Down,” the idea that if you slashed taxes for the very rich and big corporations the extra profit would “trickle down” to the poor and working classes—failed dismally in 1981 and 1982 and, in order to avoid a serious recession or worse, he was finally forced to raise taxes. He was also at the same time increasing spending on the military which was part of his weapons buildup when dealing with the USSR

And yet most of these bills were bipartisan. Politics was not nearly as polarized is it is today. People crossed the aisles regularly. It was taken for granted that the three branches of government checked each other. People generally respected Congress and didn’t go above or around them (minus Nixon). (And minus the CIA in many instances, from Truman to Reagan.)

And there was more irony. Reagan appointed the first woman—Sandra Day O’Connor—to the Supreme Court. She ended up upholding Roe V. Wade, which by then Reagan was firmly against; he’d become, during his rightward slide, staunchly pro-Life.

In 1983 and 1984 the biggest fear for the nation was nuclear war with the USSR. At the start of Reagan’s presidency Brezhnev was in power. Before him it had been Khruschev, and before him, the infamous Stalin, who helped the West win against the Nazis but then turned around and started the Cold War, trying, post-war, to gobble up as many nations in Europe as possible. *(Sound familiar?) Ever since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia towards the end of World War I, the United States had been concerned with communism, even as many American intellectuals (and European ones) supported it. Now, after WWII, it had become a sharp divergence between two strictly opposed ideologies: Western Democratic Capitalism versus Eastern Communist State Control. Stalin had been a straight-up dictator, someone spiritually you might think of as Putin’s Grandfather.

In 1982—the year I was born—Brezhnev died and was replaced by Andropov and then Chernenko, two leaders who quickly died in succession as old unhealthy men, between 1982 and 1985. Finally Gorbachev came to power, a liberal, pro-Western politician who’d risen through the ranks slowly over the decades and wanted to dismantle the weapons buildup and make peace between the two warring nations. He especially feared nuclear Armageddon.

Like with Kennedy and Khruschev in the 1960s, there would be misunderstandings, close calls, deals, meetings and breakdowns between the Russian and American leaders. In the end Gorbachev ironically would be more aggressive about dismantling weapons than Reagan was. Reagan always claimed to want to dismantle and make peace, but his odd obsession with things like the “space force field” SDI—Strategic Defense Initiative—aka “Star Wars,” which experts told Reagan was highly unlikely to succeed, prevented a solid deal between the USSR and the U.S. for many many years. Gorbachev tried to make Reagan understand that the SDI plan simply looked bad as far as optics and would put political pressure on him in Russia to continue building up arms. But Reagan, who could be famously stubborn, wouldn’t budge.

He and Gorbachev had several meetings over the second term of his presidency (1985-89) with generally good overall but also mixed reviews on both sides. Eventually, they did make a deal. In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and in 1991 the USSR fell apart and dissolved. (Only to sort of be de facto revived in the 00s by dictator Putin, though not in the guise of communism but simply straight-up dictatorial authoritarian rule.)

Reagan’s legacy is a mixed bag. He was terrible on Civil Rights. Trickle Down Economics was a ridiculous failure. He cut tons of social programs for the poor. He contributed to the homeless mental health crisis we’re still dealing with today. He courted the White Backlash and religious Right which brought us the chaos of the 1990s from the Republicans who opposed everything Clinton (the quintessential neo-Liberal) stood for during his term. (Especially National Healthcare.) He appointed three justices to the Supreme Court: O’Connor, Scalia and Kennedy, and appointed William Rehnquist (appointed to the court by Nixon) as Chief. Generally speaking, then, he shifted the court to the right, though Kennedy and O’Connor both upheld Roe V. Wade. He also appointed nearly 400 federal judges which were right of center/conservative.

In short: He was a good and decent man as an individual, while as a president he made some good and many bad choices and was, if anything, The Quintessential Political Anti-Intellectual. Reagan was not known for his sharp intelligence. He was not an idiot, but he was no JFK, no Obama, no Bill Clinton, no Jefferson. He was also not a crafty political machine man who knew the ropes like LBJ, George H. W. Bush, etc. He was, really, a poor white kid from rural Illinois who worked hard and did well enough in school to get into a decent college and then through sheer grit, determination and luck squeezed himself into radio which opened doors for film, TV and Hollywood, which led to SAG which led to General Electric Theatre which led to fame and an eye towards politics which led to the governorship and finally the White House.

He was never able to shift away from self-mythology, claiming he fought in WWII, that he was a strong supporter of Civil Rights and minorities, that he was a family man with “family values” (even as he cast his own kids aside for his wife and ambitions), that communism was the single biggest concern for humankind, ignoring and even propping up dictators around the globe who pushed back communism. His biggest controversy was Iran-Contra in 1986-87, wherein his CIA and top aids sold weapons to Iran and diverted the profits to the Contras fighting against the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. There was an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance here: He claimed to no nothing about it. And likely, according to Boot, he actually didn’t know everything going on. (Some yes, but probably not the full extent.)

Because Reagan didn’t really run the government when he was in power. The “Troika” did: Chief-of-staff James A. Baker, Counselor to the President Ed Meese, and Deputy Chief-of-Staff Michael Deaver. These three men—and the aids who took orders from them—were the main culprits between the Iran-Contra affair (which nearly got Reagan impeached) and most other political and foreign policy affairs. Reagan had a stronger say with the USSR re his SDI obsession and the weapons buildup. But more than anything else Reagan was an actor, literally and figuratively.

He was supported financially as a political operative by a group of wealthy donors called The Kitchen Cabinet. The Kitchen Cabinet and The Troika ran about 95% of Reagan’s time in office. He was a figurehead, a symbol. He was a fantastic, potent speaker, “the great communicator,” but when it came to real life and real politics he was not in control. Aids who wrote memoirs later often agreed that Reagan never cared about political details. He had broad, wide, general ideas which he could speak about eloquently and convince the American People about. But when it came to the real stuff and real laws and changes in government, that was not Reagan’s area.

Modern Conservatism owes a lot to Ronald Reagan. Trump in many ways owes a lot to Reagan and Reaganism. It was Reagan, after all, who started the MAGA chant line. Even as Reagan was pro-immigration. While Trump grew up privileged, Reagan was poor. While Trump was a sketchy real estate tycoon who screwed people over at will, Reagan always had personal and professional character, even if his policies harmed many people in general. Both men were actors, Reagan in films and TV and Trump in reality shows. Both men were shot and nearly assassinated. (Reagan was shot by Don Hinkly Jr., the 22-year-old nutjob trying to impress Jodie Foster.) Reagan had just started his first term when he was shot and was lucky to survive.

Both men reshaped their parties. Both men claimed to be small government, tax-cutting presidents who in the end turned out to be big spenders. Taxes were raised 11 times under Reagan’s presidency. (Reagan set the tone for massive military spending which is still even now at Cold War levels.) Both men were divorced and had several kids with multiple women. Both men were anti-intellectual in the most classic sense. Both men discarded “details” in favor of broad populism. Both men lied consistently, though Trump wins the blue ribbon on that one.

Trump is an immoral, reckless buffoon who thinks real life is reality TV. He is not a smart man and is invested more than anything in himself. Reagan, by contrast, was a decent, respectable fellow who happened to be an artist, an actor, a man who lived too much in his imagination, too much in the current moment, so much so that he didn’t fully grasp American history or poverty or racism in his time and therefore didn’t understand what was really happening around him. He lied but never on purpose. He bought into astrology and conspiracy theories. He predated the credulous internet person who discovers Steve Bannon or Alex Jones and thinks they’ve uncovered The Truth.

And yet he also set in motion some good precedents. Bipartisanship. The Cold War weapons thaw. He foresaw and encouraged the dissolution of the Soviet Union, even if he was actually partly to blame for it not ending sooner with Gorbachev. (In the end he did make an agreement.) He tried to be moral and to have good values. In many ways he failed. But at least he tried. That’s more than history can say for Trump. Reagan’s old school “small government” (sort of) brand of classic Conservatism would seem absolutely quaint in today’s world. Reagan would be rejected today as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and would be kicked to the curb by Trump/Vance.

Reagan died in 2004 after 15 years or so struggling with Alzheimer’s. He has been remembered generally very fondly. People say his legacy only looks better and better the more time passes. That’s true, I think. And probably in general deserved, at least against the backdrop of our social-media-saturated, hyper-polarized, death-by-politics, winner-take-all historical moment.