A uniter, not a decider.

• Author: Heilbrunn, Jacob
• Position: Books on former U.S. President Ronald Reagan - Book review

Jules Tygiel, Ronald Reagan and the Triumph of American Conservatism (New York: Pearson Longman, 2006), 392 pp., $14.95.

Thomas W. Evans, The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 302 pp., $29.50.

Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (Los Angeles: Regan Books, 2006), 412 pp., $29.95.

John Patrick Diggins, Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History (New York: Norton, 2007), 493 pp., $27.95.

EVER SINCE Ronald Reagan left the White House, his reputation has been on the upswing. Now that George W. Bush is floundering and the GOP has forfeited control of Congress, Reagan's legacy looms even larger. Only by returning to the conservative principles that Reagan espoused, his admirers suggest, can the GOP hope to regain its once solid electoral footing.

At the 2007 Conservative Political Action Committee meeting, Rudolph Giluiani referred to Reagan no less than a dozen times to present himself as the Gipper's true heir. John McCain also claimed Reagan's mantle, praising him as "an apostle of freedom." And at the annual Frontiers of Freedom Ronald Reagan Gala, Mitt Romney invoked Reagan's legacy, pointing to his successful prosecution of the Cold War as a model for the War on Terror and citing his observation that, "I have seen four wars during my lifetime and none of them began because America was too strong."

Beneath the paeans to Reagan, however, lies a potentially divisive battle over what he actually represented. Depending on which conservative camp you listen to, Reagan was either a bold crusader who championed the creation of democracies around the world or a cautious pragmatist who would have viewed George W. Bush with horror. The first camp consists of neoconservatives who advocate active American involvement in democratizing the Middle East, citing the Reagan legacy of confronting communism and promoting democracy in Eastern Europe. In their view, Reagan would have applauded U.S. engagement in Iraq. According to Norman Podhoretz, for instance, Bush has demonstrated that he is "a fiery follower of Ronald Reagan."

But to traditional, realist conservatives, the neoconservative appropriation of the Reagan legacy is heresy. This camp holds that Reagan, unlike the neoconservatives, was always reluctant to use force abroad. In America Alone, Stefan Halper, who served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, and Jonathan Clarke, a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, argue that "the neoconservative assertion of a line of descent from Reagan's foreign policy is far-fetched." They maintain that Reagan did not conduct an open-ended campaign for democracy and that he sought to avoid the direct use of U.S. force in any conflict, from Central America to Afghanistan. The Reagan Doctrine, in other words, wasn't an open-ended invitation to perpetual warfare around the globe, but a shrewd assessment that relying on surrogates could achieve American aims more effectively than direct intervention and that direct negotiations with adversaries could sometimes pay big dividends. Nor does the conservative critique of Bush end here. Libertarian conservatives, such as the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner, complain that Bush has strayed from the anti-big-government campaign Reagan waged. Bush, by contrast, has allegedly been bedazzled by the program of "national greatness" espoused by William Kristol and David Brooks. A big spender, he has repudiated the Goldwater-Reagan tradition and become an advocate of big government--even, in the words of economist Bruce Bartlett, an "impostor" and "pretend conservative."

To complicate matters further, this line of critique has been picked up and modified by the Left. During his presidency, liberals routinely excoriated Reagan. He was either derided as an "amiable dunce" or an unamiable one whose bellicosity might well have triggered a nuclear cataclysm. Today, however, Reagan has become a useful club with which to bash Bush. Former New York Times columnist Russell Baker recently lauded Reagan as a wise leader in The New York Review of Books. And Time magazine literally went weepy, depicting Reagan with a tear rolling down his cheek as he contemplates the desolate condition of his once-proud conservative movement. The message is clear: Reagan was a sensible old fellow who had nothing in common with the current generation of conservatives.

So who's the authentic Reagan? The crusader of neoconservative lore? A cautious pragmatist? Or was he something else entirely? A quartet of new books offers an excellent opportunity to reassess him. Though Jules Tygiel, Thomas W. Evans, Paul Kengor and John Patrick Diggins come to different conclusions about Reagan's presidency, they share some things in common: Each stresses the importance of his early life, and each suggests that Reagan created and choreographed a role for himself as a leading actor on the world stage long before he actually became president. Far from being someone who can be blindly emulated, Reagan emerges as a unique figure who grafted the optimistic spirit of the New Deal onto conservative principles, thereby creating a political hybrid that probably cannot be duplicated.

Unlike his older brother Neil, Ronald had an ambitious streak from the outset. In late spring 1922, the eleven-year-old Reagan came across a novel written by Harold Bell Wright, an author affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, which Reagan and his pious mother had joined. The book was called That Printer of Udell's: A Story of the Midwest. It told the story of Dick Falkner, a boy who rose from poverty and the disgrace of an alcoholic father to something greater--a life of public service and widespread veneration. Blessed with good looks, charm and eloquence, he marries the girl of his dreams, helps the poor and wins election to Congress. After finishing the book, Reagan told his mother, "I want to be like that man."

As Jules Tygiel observes in his marvelous Ronald Reagan and the Triumph of American Conservatism, Reagan had "discovered a parable that would uncannily presage his own rise." In recounting Reagan's rise, Tygiel, who is a history professor at...