Bernard Ingham: Ronald Reagan, a good man of the mid-west who embodied the American dream

ONE hundred years ago come Sunday, a remarkable man was born. He was christened Ronald Wilson Reagan. He lived the American dream. Born in the sticks of mid-West Illinois, he became a radio reporter, a film star, a union official, the governor of California and ultimately President of the United States.

And like all those on the Right of politics he was looked down upon and generally written off as a dumbo – the B-movie actor who played opposite Bonzo – by intellectual snobs of the Left in his own, this and other countries.

Yet this survivor of an assassination attempt became the strongest (and most restrained) man in the world, ended the Cold War, changed the international tax-and-spend approach to economics and restored America’s faith in itself after Vietnam. He will go down in history as one of America’s greatest presidents. Some dumbo!

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I count it one of my great good fortunes to have met him several times – I have a picture of me shaking hands with him at home – and sit in on some of his meetings with his awkward but enduring friend, Margaret Thatcher.

Curiously enough, I can see why the Lefties of the Western world scoffed at him. He was as good as Willie Whitelaw, our former deputy Prime Minister, at hiding his intelligence. He had what is called a short span of attention. You sometimes wondered whether he was mentally in the same room as you – utterly unlike Thatcher, who was open for business all hours.

Reagan was no debater. He seemed lost without his prompt cards. But give him a script and he was pure joy, as I found when I sat in on his weekly broadcast to the nation. They did not call him “The Great Communicator” for nothing. In contrast, Thatcher, a true daughter of Westminster, loved the cut and thrust of impromptu argument.

Reagan was a true son of the West. He had an endless fund of stories. He could anecdote the night away. Thatcher has never told an anecdote in her life.

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Yet, as I have told countless people, when I saw Rhett Butler kiss Scarlett O’Hara on the helicopter pad at Camp David, I knew that any doubts in the minds of the British press about the strength of the Anglo-American relationship had gone with the wind for another year.

I still marvel at the unlikely relationship between these two political soul mates with personalities like chalk and cheese. Reagan, the born host, his sunny disposition radiating bonhomie and optimism, and Thatcher always looking for another fierce argument to keep the blood circulating.

In terms of personality, Thatcher had far more in common with Mikhail Gorbachev whose Communism she and Reagan abhorred. Both had lively minds, loved arguing and were able to give and take hard knocks in debate without showing the slightest offence.

The chemistry was wonderful. Where did Russia find this unlikely leader? Previously, their top men had seemed like parrots rather than spirited debaters with a sense of humour.

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Gorbachev was a Soviet General Secretary made for the 1980s – and for Reagan and Thatcher.

These three, and Pope John-Paul II, are entitled to the credit for the fall of Communism. But the lion’s share goes to Reagan who effectively told the Soviets that they could have an arms race if they wanted one but they could never win it because his economy delivered and theirs didn’t. The Soviets got the message.

Nobody – repeat nobody – ever thought that when Reagan was elected president in 1980 the Iron Curtain would collapse within a decade. That is one measure of his colossal achievement.

His other quality, apart from constancy of purpose, was his tolerant common sense which I came to appreciate as Thatcher’s press secretary. She was a wearing friend. While she had resolved from the first to support the leader of the free world, she conceived it her duty to give him her candid advice.

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Fortunately, Reagan, a big man, saw the Iron Lady for what she was – loyal and true. He evidently prized that for he had many bruising encounters with her over the Falklands, the bombing of Tripoli, the US invasion of Grenada, his Star Wars deterrent system, his willingness in an unguarded moment with Gorbachev to abolish what could not be disinvented – nuclear weapons – and his refusal to raise taxes with his deficit soaring.

He was a good man. Tragically, he did not have his memory to keep him warm in his declining years. Like the good Lady Thatcher, he lost it in retirement. Cruel.