Did Ronald Reagan Pave the Way for Donald Trump?

REAGAN: His Life and Legend,by Max Boot

Is it possible, sometime in the 2050s, that we’ll see a biography of Donald Trump that “is not intended to be either a hagiography or a hit job,” instead offering “a more dispassionate look at a once-polarizing figure”? This question lingers over Max Boot’s gripping new biography, “Reagan,” which reminds us that liberals once hated the 40th president of the United States as much as they now hate Trump.

Reagan’s detractors called him cruel and callous for cutting social programs, mocked the soaring deficits that belied his talk of fiscal responsibility and genuinely feared he would spark nuclear holocaust with his bellicose rhetoric and his “Star Wars” missile defense system. Yet today, he is wreathed in a cloud of nostalgia, and many historians have judged him both consequential and effective.

Reagan has famously stumped his chroniclers. His official biographer, Edmund Morris, was so confounded by the assignment that he resorted to fiction, producing a muddled portrait of “Dutch” (Reagan’s longtime nickname) that was blasted by reviewers.

Boot’s book enters a crowded field, but stands out for its deep research, lucid prose and command of its subject’s broad political and social context. “Reagan” dives straight into the contradictions that defined the man. He was the voracious critic of the federal government who presided over its vast expansion; the arch-conservative who liberalized abortion law as the governor of California; the Great Communicator who tended toward monologue and repetitive anecdotes; the divorced champion of family values with a painfully dysfunctional blended household.

More than half the book covers his life before the presidency, and Boot’s careful focus on Reagan’s early years untangles many of the knots. He was raised in an unhappy home dominated by an alcoholic father. The family moved frequently, meaning young Dutch — “fundamentally a loner,” Boot writes — never developed deep bonds with his classmates. Despite, or perhaps because of, this he proved skilled at connecting with faceless crowds.

Boot is particularly good at depicting 1920s small-town America, and he gives full consideration to how religion shaped Reagan’s outlook. Balancing out his ne’er-do-well father was his pious and optimistic mother, from whom Reagan inherited his characteristic sunniness. These early pages establish Reagan’s worldview as one defined by faith and belief, even at the expense of reality.