Ronald Reagan: Reader, Writer, Thinker, Dreamer

President Ronald Reagan reads while eating lunch outside the Oval Office, in 1982. Public Domain

Ronald Reagan’s fans often recollect him as portrayed in the recently released film “Reagan”: a one-time athlete who enjoyed horseback riding and the outdoors, an actor who became first a governor and then a two-term president, and the “Great Communicator” whose policies helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Reagan’s critics had a different take on the man. Democrat and presidential adviser Clark Clifford once called Reagan “an amiable dunce.” Political commentator and essayist Christopher Hitchens described him as “dumb as a stump.” Others in the media took Reagan to task as being ill-prepared for the White House, ridiculed him for his Strategic Defense Initiative, which they dubbed “Star Wars,” and were appalled when he described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

On both sides of this palisade of opinion are many people ignorant of Reagan’s intelligence, honed by decades of reading and writing. Concealed behind an affable manner and an often self-deprecating sense of humor was a man who had spent countless hours with books and a pen and paper.

Childhood Heroes

In 1977, O. Dallas Baillio, director of the public library in Mobile, Alabama, asked 100 well-known Americans to name five books from young adulthood that had influenced them. In his response, Reagan displayed his characteristic humility. “I must confess your letter gave me some moments of mixed emotions,’’ Reagan wrote to Baillio. “There must be a little snob in each of us, because my first reaction was to try to think of examples of classic literature I could list as my favorites in my younger years. None were forthcoming so I decided to ‘come clean.’”

His favorites included boyhood classics from his youth: the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of the Tarzan books and the John Carter science fiction series. Most important was Harold Bell Wright’s “That Printer of Udell’s,” which as Reagan related, “made a lasting impression on me at about the age of 11 or 12, mainly because of the goodness of the principal character.” Given that his own home life somewhat mirrored that of the book’s hero—the father was an alcoholic, the mother a devout Christian—the deep impression left by this book is even more understandable. In a letter written from the White House to Wright’s daughter about her father, Reagan stated: “He set me on a course I’ve tried to follow even unto this day. I shall always be grateful.”

At the end of his letter to library director Baillio, Reagan wrote: “All in all, as I look back I realize that all my reading left an abiding belief in the triumph of good over evil. There were heroes who lived by standards of morality and fair play.’’

Reading His Way to the Right

The title of David T. Byrne’s 2018 work “Ronald Reagan: An Intellectual Biography” might prompt derisive laughter and snarky remarks from the 40th president’s enemies. However, through in-depth analysis Byrne reveals the importance of Reagan’s reading and its influence on his thinking, particularly in regard to his growing antipathy toward communism. Yes, he enjoyed popular fiction, like the Westerns of Louis L’Amour. When he became president and mentioned how much he had enjoyed Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October,” sales of the novel skyrocketed. “President Reagan made ‘The Hunt for Red October’ a bestseller,” Clancy later said.

In the meantime, however, Reagan was delving into more challenging literary fare that eventually led him into the Republican Party. As Byrne relates, in the 1950s he read books like “The God That Failed,” a crucial collection denouncing communism by writers who had turned their backs on the Soviet Union. Whittaker Chambers’s classic “Witness,” an account of the author’s disenchantment with Marxism and the USSR, was a particular favorite. Reagan was a longtime subscriber to William F. Buckley Jr.’s conservative magazine “National Review.” He read books by economists promoting democracy and free enterprise, like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman.

The Bible was also an influence. His mother, Nelle, a devout Christian who read Scripture to prisoners in the local jail in Dixon, Illinois, shared the Bible with her two sons too. At both of his presidential inaugurations, Reagan swore the oath of office with his hand on his mother’s King James Bible. In 1954, he read stories from the Old Testament for broadcast. As president he issued a proclamation designating 1983 as the Year of the Bible, an action that sparked a lawsuit from the ACLU, which argued that the proclamation was unconstitutional. The suit failed.

“Within the covers of the Bible,” Reagan once said, “are the answers for all the problems men face.”

(L–R) On March 1, 1984, Roosevelt (Rosey) Grier, Demond Wilson, President Ronald Reagan, and Meadowlark Lemon join in prayer after a meeting about voluntary school prayer. Public Domain

With Pen in Hand

To further comprehend Reagan’s appreciation of the written word, we have only to look at the published compilations of his writing. “The Reagan Diaries” contains Reagan’s daily entries while in the White House. This book is 784 pages long. Several different collections of his speeches exist, many of which he wrote himself. From 1975 to 1979, with an eye on the presidency, Reagan made more than 1,000 radio broadcasts, with more than 60 percent of the scripts coming from his own hand. It’s estimated that he wrote over 10,000 letters in his lifetime, a personal correspondence rivaled only by one other president, Theodore Roosevelt. Some of these letters are collected in the 960-page book “Reagan: A Life in Letters.”

In addition, while running for governor of California, Reagan wrote his autobiography with the help of Richard Hubler. The resulting book, “Where’s the Rest of Me?” had the title taken from a line he spoke in his film “Kings Row.” Later came another self-portrait in his 1990 “An American Life,” largely ghostwritten by Robert Lindsey. Though Reagan received help in putting together these books, they again reveal his belief that words on paper possess power.

It was in fact his words that first garnered the attention of conservatives and made him a political force in the Republican Party. In October 1964, in a pre-recorded session before a studio audience intended to boost Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign, Reagan delivered what soon became known as his “A Time for Choosing” speech. It failed to turn around Goldwater’s run for the presidency, but “The Speech,” as Reagan’s supporters would soon call it, marked his political debut on the national stage.

Biographer Byrne shares this recollection from Reagan’s son Michael on being asked his most vivid memory of his father from childhood: “Easy. Back before he became governor, he did a lot of work at home. … When I’d get back from school in the afternoon, I’d toss my books and go into the master bedroom to say hello. Dad had a big desk there, and he was always at the desk, writing. Not almost always. Always.”

A Sharpened Imagination

Many observers, including David Byrne, credit Ronald Reagan with a photographic memory, a gift doubtless enhanced by having to memorize lines and scripts as an actor. He had a great store of jokes at his command, could recite reams of both poetry and statistics, and often kept his knowledge and thoughts hidden, even from White House aides, behind a screen of affability.

But as Byrne also notes: “Even more than his photographic memory, Reagan’s greatest intellectual gift was his imagination. Knowledge is important, but it’s limited. Imagination is boundless … Reagan’s imagination surpassed every other post-World War II president … he was one of the few people who could imagine a world without a Soviet Union, a world bereft of the Berlin Wall, a world without communism.”

President Ronald Reagan, commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin, addresses the people of West Berlin at the base of the Brandenburg Gate, near the Berlin Wall, on June 12, 1987. Due to the amplification system being used, the president's words could also be heard on the Eastern (communist-controlled) side of the wall. Mike Sargent/AFP via Getty Images

If we compare Reagan to his predecessors, we find a striking difference in attitude toward totalitarian governments and communism. The presidents after World War II, for the most part, pursued a policy of containment in regard to the ambitions of Marxist regimes. Presidents Nixon and Carter aimed at accommodation by détente, particularly in regard to the Soviets.

Reagan continued to apply some of these policies, yet he also envisioned a world free from totalitarianism. He was more of an optimist and an idealist than his immediate predecessors, a romantic of sorts, as Byrne describes him, in his views about life and about politics. As others noted, his temperament was that of an artist, shaped by his boyhood in Dixon and his student years at Eureka College, followed by his work in film. The “abiding belief in the triumph of good over evil” that he had gained from his adolescent reading never left him.

The Backstage Reagan

So, was Ronald Reagan an intellectual? Not at all—at least, not in the way we commonly use the title. Note, for example, that even Byrne recognized that fact by the title of his book “Ronald Reagan: An Intellectual Biography.” It is in no way the biography of an intellectual.

Different advantages and circumstances helped carry Ronald Reagan into the White House. His natural physical attributes—his 6-foot-1-inch height, his Hollywood good looks, and his mellifluous voice—these and his generally sunny personality were valuable political assets. His years of experience as a film star made him a natural in front of an audience or a camera. “How can a president not be an actor?” he once said. His persuasive abilities, which he developed from his youth and which came to the fore time and again in his life, were also put to good use in the political arena, whether from behind a speaker’s podium or seated at a negotiating table with world-class figures.

(L–R) Ronald Reagan, Rhonda Fleming, and Bruce Bennett in 1951’s “The Last Outpost.” Reagan's natural charisma in front of the camera helped him gain rapport with the American public. Paramount Pictures

Yet certainly in times of solitude, when Reagan gave himself over to the pursuits of reading and writing, pondering ideas, and dreaming of a better world, when he considered how he might help bring such a world into being, these underpinned all his gifts and talents. When we realize what occurred behind the curtain before this actor stepped onto the world stage, we better understand the man.