The figurehead presidency of Ronald Reagan

A glance at the summer issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review: The figurehead presidency of Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan’s performance as president from 1981 to 1989 was “absurd” and “terrifying,” writes Robert Erwin, a former director of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Mr. Reagan’s blunders, which included nodding off during a conversation with the pope and assuring a group of congressmen that U.S. submarines did not carry nuclear missiles, will be “a godsend to future historians in search of anecdotes to keep students awake,” he says. He does not group Mr. Reagan with “presidential ciphers” such as Millard Fillmore and Warren G. Harding, however. He gives Mr. Reagan a higher grade for “infirmity and experience” as opposed to “intrinsic stupidity.”

The former actor and California governor also escapes the lowest ranking, says Mr. Erwin, because he was a superb figurehead. Mr. Reagan succeeded at convincing a substantial number of Americans that he was their leader and not just an officeholder, he writes. “We face a great task,” Mr. Reagan told his followers when he was president-elect. “He never said what the task was, and they never inquired,” writes Mr. Erwin.

He argues that two changes that took hold during the Reagan years will affect the world indefinitely: the upward redistribution of wealth, and America’s loss of position as the premier manufacturing nation. “Reaganism” will continue to serve as an example of the ancient practice of political puppetry, he writes.

The article is not online, but more information about the journal may be found at http://www.virginia.edu/vqr/