The Reagan Doctrine - by Lee Edwards

For thirty-five years -- through seven presidencies -- the United States and its allies labored unceasingly to contain communism around the world with a broad range of diplomatic, military and economic initiatives that had cost tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. They used economic programs like the Marshall Plan, military alliances like NATO and SEATO, direct conflicts like the Korean War and the Vietnam War, indirect engagements like the the Bay of Pigs, weapons treaties like SALT I, economic treaties like MFN (Most Favored Nation), and covert operations like the attempted assassination of Cuba's Fidel Castro. And yet, after three-and-a-half decades, communism was not only alive and seemingly well in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, mainland China, Cuba and North Korea but had spread to sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan and Nicaragua.

Clearly, containment was not working, or at least it was not working fast enough. The time had come, Ronald Reagan decided, not merely to contain communism but to defeat it. He took his lead from fellow conservative Barry Goldwater, who had asked in his 1962 book of the same name, "Why not victory?" In his first news conference as president, Reagan bluntly denounced the Soviet leadership as still dedicated to "world revolution and a one-world Socialist-Communist state."[i]

As Reagan put it in his 1990 autobiography, "I decided we had to send as powerful a message as we could to the Russians that we weren't going to stand by anymore while they armed and financed terrorists and subverted democratic governments."[ii]

To most liberals (and to Republican realists like Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon) any notion of victory over communism seemed quixotic, if not dangerous. Every sensible person knew that the Soviet Union was economically strong and militarily powerful -- the West's only responsible option was negotiation and accommodation, in a word, detente. As liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. declared after a 1982 visit to Moscow, "those in the U.S. who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse, ready with one small push to go over the brink, are ... only kidding themselves."[iii]

Two years later, the liberal establishment's favorite economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, published a glowing appraisal of Soviet economics, explaining that "the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast to the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.... The Soviet economy has made great national progress in recent years."[iv] The most glaringly faulty analysis of all was probably that of economist Lester Thurow, who wrote in his textbook, "Today [the Soviet Union] is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."[v]

In truth, Mikhail Gorbachev took command in 1985 of an empire in deep trouble. Nearly seventy years after the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet economic growth had stagnated, Soviet farms were unable to feed the people, most Soviet factories never met their quotas or inflated their figures, consumer lines in Moscow and other cities often stretched for blocks, and a distant war in Afghanistan dragged on with no end in sight to the fighting or the deaths of thousands of young Soviet men.

From intelligence reports and the insights accumulated over a lifetime of study and reading, Reagan concluded that communism was cracking, ready to crumble. He went public with his belief in a commencement address at his alma mater, Eureka College in May 1982, declaring that the Soviet Empire was "faltering because rigid centralized control has destroyed incentives for innovation, efficiency and individual achievement."[vi]

In a prophetic address one month later to British members of Parliament at Westminster, Reagan said that the Soviet Union, "the home of Marxist-Leninism," was gripped by a "great revolutionary crisis" and that a "global campaign for freedom" would ultimately prevail. There would be "repeated explosions against repression" in Eastern Europe, he said, and went further: "The Soviet Union itself is not immune to this reality."[vii]

Indeed, in one of the most memorable utterances of his presidency, Reagan predicted that "the march of freedom and democracy ... will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people."[viii]

It was bold, inspiring, and, according to most liberals and some conservatives, wishful thinking. The New York Times scorned the speech as an appeal for "flower power" and said that "curiously missing from his plan was any formula for using Western economic strength to promote political accommodation."[ix] But Reagan did have a plan, although not the kind the Times had in mind.

Unwilling to continue the policy of containment and accommodation which he viewed as strategically flawed, Reagan and his top foreign policy aides -- CIA Director William Casey, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen and his successor, William P. Clark -- set out to end the Cold War by winning it. "We adopted a comprehensive strategy," Weinberger later recalled, "that included economic warfare, to attack Soviet weaknesses."[x] It was an offensive strategy intended to shift "the focus of the superpower struggle" to the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union itself.[xi]

Reagan implemented his strategy despite strong criticism from both liberals and conservatives. During his first term, Reagan was unyielding toward Moscow, sparking sharp criticism from anxious doves. When asked why he had not yet met with any Soviet leader, Reagan quipped, "They keep dying on me" -- a referrence to the rapid successive deaths of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko.[xii] In his second term, Reagan was conciliatory with Gorbachev, eliciting strong opposition from suspicious hawks. William F. Buckley Jr. wrote bluntly that to greet the Soviet Union "as if it were no longer evil is on the order of changing our entire position toward Adolf Hitler." In the end, however, through a remarkable combination of vision, tenacity, and improvisional skill, he produced what Henry Kissinger termed "the greatest diplomatic feat of the modern era."[xiii]

Reagan and his aides implemented the president's vision through a series of top-secret National Security Decision Directives. NSDD-32, approved in March 1982, declared that the United States would seek to "neutralize" Soviet control over Eastern Europe and authorized the use of covert action and other means to support anti-Soviet groups in the region. Conservatives had been urging such a policy since 1959, when an annual National Captive Nations Week had been authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Even earlier, anticommunist writers like Eugene Lyons and Lev E. Dobriansky had referred to the people behind the Iron Curtain as "our secret allies."[xiv]

In November 1982, NSDD-66, drafted by NSC aide Roger Robinson, stated that it would be U.S. policy to disrupt the Soviet economy by attacking a "strategic triad" of critical resources -- financial credits, high technology, and natural gas -- deemed essential to Soviet economic survival. NSDD-66 was tantamount, Robinson later explained, "to a secret declaration of economic war on the Soviet Union."[xv]

The third directive was NSDD-75, written by the distinguished Harvard historian and Sovietologist Richard Pipes, who served on Reagan's national security council staff for two years. Issued in January 1983, it called for the United States no longer to coexist with the Soviet system but rather seek to change it fundamentally. It "was a clear break from the past," said Pipes. "At its root was the belief that we had it in our power to alter the Soviet system through the use of external pressure." NSDD-75's language was unequivocal: America intended to "roll back" Soviet influence at every opportunity.[xvi]

From 1981 until 1987, the Reagan administration pursued a multifaceted, foreign policy offensive that included covert and other support to the Solidarity movement in Poland; a psychological operation to engender indecision and fear among Soviet leaders; a global campaign to reduce Soviet access to Western high technology; and a drive to hurt the Soviet economy by driving down the price of oil and limiting natural gas exports to the West.

The "Reagan Doctrine" put a name on Reagan's already functioning but top-secret foreign policy. Neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer came up with the phrase in an April 1985 column:



The Reagan Doctrine proclaims overt and unashamed support for anti-communist revolution .... It is intended to establish a new, firmer -- a doctrinal -- foundation for such support by declaring equally worthy all armed resistance to communism whether foreign or indigenously imposed.[xvii]



Krauthammer had no way of knowing that Pipes, Robinson, and other members of the Reagan administration had already said much the same thing in NSDD-32, NSDD-66, and NSDD-75. In keeping with their boss's injunction not to worry who gets the credit so long as things get done, Reagan aides allowed Krauthammer to remain the man who "invented" the Reagan Doctrine. But none of the more than two hundred National Security Decisions Directives signed by the president referred to a "Reagan Doctrine."[xviii] In truth, Reagan's strategy was far broader and more complex than Krauthammer's conception, which was essentially a policy of proxy warfare in four countries -- Afhganistan, Nicaragua, Angola, and Cambodia.

Yet one cannot underestimate the importance of the Reagan administration's decision to assist pro-freedom, anti-communist forces in each of these countries.

President Carter had begun helping the anti-Soviet mujahideen in Afghanistan during his final months in office. But American aid to what Reagan called "freedom fighters" increased significantly during his administration. A key decision was the White House approval of Stinger ground-to-air missiles, which the mujahideen desperately needed and promptly used to shoot down the Soviet Hind battle helicopters that had kept them on the defensive throughout the war.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, the Marxist Sandinistas were not only establishing a Leninist state in Nicaragua but supporting communist guerrillas in El Salvador and elsewhere. Deeply worried about the spread of communism throughout the region, the Reagan administration directed the CIA to form an anti-Sandinista movement and then asked Congress to approve funds for the contras, as they were called, when ten thousand peasants joined them.

The president cared deeply about the future of Central America. When Tip O'Neill kept insisting that he and others in Congress would block the administration's program, Reagan exploded: "The Sandinistas have openly proclaimed Communism in their country and their support of Marxist revolutions throughout Central America ... they're killing and torturing people! Now what the hell does Congress expect me to do about that?"[xix]

However, Reagan never contemplated sending U.S. troops to Nicaragua. He believed that with sufficient military support and firm diplomatic negotiation, Nicaraguans could rid themselves of the Marxist regime. He was proved correct by the democratic elections in February 1990 when anti-Sandinista Violeta Chamorro decisively defeated commandante Daniel Ortega for the presidency.

In another part of the world, when Soviet-backed forces formed a government in Angola in sub-Saharan Africa, the United States promptly allied itself with the anti-communist Union for the Total National Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi. Savimbi became a favorite of many conservatives -- he was even dubbed the "George Washington" of Southern Africa by Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus. Reagan began helping UNITA in 1985 when congressional proscriptions on assistance were lifted.[xx]

And in Asia, after Pol Pot of the murderous Khmer Rouge had wiped out perhaps one-fourth of the Cambodian population in the mid-1970s, he was overthrown by a puppet regime installed by the communist government of Vietnam. A guerrilla movement then emerged in Cambodia, including elements of the old Sihanouk monarchy, some democrats and the Khmer Rouge itself. In this constantly shifting situation, the Reagan administration supported the insurgents, while trying to minimize help to the Khmer Rouge faction.[xxi]

As applied in these four countries, the Reagan Doctrine was the most cost effective of all the Cold War doctrines, costing the United States only an estimated half a billion dollars a year and yet forcing the cash-strapped Soviets to spend several times that amount to deflect the impact. The doctrine was also one of the most successful in Cold War history. It resulted in a Soviet pullout from Afghanistan; the election of a democratic government in Nicaragua; and the removal of forty thousand Cuban troops from Angola and the holding of UN-monitored elections there. Only in Cambodia was the result less than satisfactory: former Khmer Rouge officials continued to dominate the government although in 1997 Pol Pot was captured and scheduled to be tried for crimes against the Cambodian people before his death in 1998.

Some neoconservatives have boasted that "without the neo-conservatives, there would not be a Reagan Doctrine."[xxii] But neo-conservatives were more implementors than initiators of the doctrine, developed by Reagan and other conservatives over the years. As Democrats who had worked for Hubert Humphrey in the 1960s and Henry "Scoop" Jackson in the 1970s, the neoconservatives had never been part of the political-policy team that had worked to obtain the Republican presidential nomination for Ronald Reagan as early as 1968. To be sure, several neoconservatives served brilliantly in the Reagan administration: Jeane Kirkpatrick, the first female U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Richard Perle, the Defense Department's canny arms control advocate; Max Kampelman, America's chief arms negotiator in Geneva; and Elliott Abrams, the assistant secretary of state for Latin America.

All four had been members of the Coalition for a Democractic Majority (CDM), founded in 1972 by centrist Democrats anxious to move the party away from "the isolationism of the New Left" and back to the muscular foreign policy of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. CDM's manifesto was drafted by Norman Podhoretz, editor of the influential Commentary magazine; his wife and social critic, Midge Decter; and Ben Wattenberg, a political scientist who had written speeches for Lyndon Johnson.[xxiii]

Most of CDM's members stayed loyal to the Democratic party through the 1970s although their man, Jackson, lost the 1976 presidential nomination to Jimmy Carter. The Carter administration also ignored all 53 of the coalition's recommendations for foreign policy positions with one slighting exception -- the dispatching of a presidential envoy to the negotiations on the political status of Micronesia, an archipelago of tiny islands in the Pacific where the United States had once conducted nuclear tests. "They froze us out," remarked Elliott Abrams in disgust.[xxiv]

Even with all of Carter's foreign missteps and mistakes, from SALT II to Iran to Afghanistan to Korea, CDM members could not bring themselves to leave the party they had supported for so long. The breaking point came in January 1980 when coalition leaders met with President Carter in the Roosevelt Room of the White House's West Wing. Slumping in the polls and challenged by Senator Edward Kennedy in the Democratic primaries, Carter needed all the support he could get from sympathetic Democrats. But when CDM's spokesman, political scientist Austin Ranney, began by making a distinction between Carter's foreign policy before and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the president's face flushed red, and he answered in his characteristically icy way:

Your analysis is not true. There has been no change in my policy. I have always held a consistent view of the Soviet Union.

For the record, I did not say that I have learned more about the Soviets since the invasion of Afghanistan, as is alleged in the press. My policy is my policy, and has been my policy. It has not changed, and will not change.[xxv]

The president's stubbornness stunned the group. There were similar non-responses and non sequiturs from the president throughout the thirty-minute meeting. After Carter had left for another meeting, Vice President Walter Mondale spent an hour with the visitors, stressing the hard-line attitude of the administration toward the Soviets' aggressive behavior and trying desperately to erase the disastrous impression he knew the president had made. He was not successful.

The CDM delegation left the White House with almost everyone but Ranney and Wattenberg agreeing that their hopes for working with Carter had been "dashed." When Midge Decter asked Jeane Kikpatrick for her reaction, Kirkpatrick replied in a firm voice, "I am not going to support that man."[xxvi]

The following month, she was invited by Richard V. Allen (who had worked with Kirkpatrick on the launching of the bipartisan Committee on the Present Danger in 1976) to meet with Ronald Reagan and a group of foreign policy experts. The long-time Democrat was curious: she had received a very flattering three-page letter from Reagan about her Commentary article, "Dictatorships and Double Standards." At the policy meeting, Kirkpatrick was impressed by the serious questions Reagan asked and his "intuitive grasp" of the issues. That evening, she sat next to Reagan at a private dinner at the Chevy Chase home of columnist George Will. Afterwards she told her husband, political scientist Evron Kirkpatrick, that Reagan was attractive and "very likable." And his view of foreign affairs, she stressed, was "generally correct and very realistic."[xxvii]

Although a professor of government at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Jeane Kirkpatrick loved politics and was eager to make policy, not just write about it. She wanted to be a part of the action in 1980. But how could she, a life-long Democrat, join the Republicans? She remembered how Reagan had teased her at the Will dinner, saying "I was a Democrat once, you know," and then adding, after a pause, "I felt a little funny when I first started associating with Republicans."[xxviii]

In May 1980, shortly before the Pennsylvania primary, a triumphant Richard Allen announced the establishment of a twelve-member policy council, supplemented by two groups of policy advisers, one on foreign affairs, the other on defense. Among the names was Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. When a Washington Post reporter asked her if she was supporting Reagan, Kirkpatrick mentioned the bad treatment by liberal Democrats and the friendly messages from conservative Republicans that she and other "Jackson Democrats" had been receiving. "After a certain time," she explained, "it begins to seem irresistible." And then she added, realistic as always, "Especially if the person seems likely to be the next president of the United States."[xxix]

Reagan's Cold War strategy was later spelled out by Ed Meese, who, if not a member of the president's foreign policy inner circle, was in the immediate outer circle because of his White House position and his long association with the president. Meese listed several core elements of the president's offensive strategy that "never altered":

Communism "was torn by fatal contradictions" -- its overweening imperialist designs on the one hand and its crushing domestic problems on the other. Moscow could no longer afford guns and butter -- it would have to choose one or the other. Therefore: It was incumbent on the United States and the West to take the initiative by refurbishing their defenses, assisting anticommunist forces around the world, and emphasizing their scientific-technological superiority.

And, finally: The West should "stop bailing the communists out of their technical and economic difficulties" through one-sided arms agreements, technology transfers, strategic trade, and economic credits.[xxx]

Most of the above had been outlined by Reagan when he challenged Gerald Ford in 1976 and in the years leading up to his successful run for the presidency in 1980. Reagan was convinced that if such a strategy were implemented firmly and consistently, the weak Soviet economy and the abandonment of ideology by the communists would lead to an end of the Cold War on terms favorable to the forces of freedom.[xxxi]

For President Reagan, 1983 was the pivotal year. In March, the president stated, without apology, that the West should recognize that the Soviets "are the focus of evil in this modern world" and the masters "of an evil empire."[xxxii] In so doing, Reagan echoed the anticommunists who had preceded him, including Robert Taft, Whittaker Chambers, William F. Buckley Jr., and Barry Goldwater.

Many conservatives consider Reagan's "evil empire" speech the most important of his presidency, a compelling example of what Czech President Vaclav Havel calls "the power of words to change history." When Reagan visited Poland and East Berlin after the collapse of Soviet communism, many former dissidents told him that when he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," it gave them enormous hope. Finally, they said to each other, America had a leader who "understood the nature of communism."[xxxiii]

The president acted decisively whenever the Soviets tried to extend their empire. In October 1983, Reagan dispatched about two thousand American troops, along with units from six Caribbean states, to the island nation of Grenada to oust a Marxist regime that had recently seized power. It was the first time in nearly forty years of the Cold War that America had acted to restore democracy to a communist country. The once-sacrosanct Brezhnev Doctrine -- once a communist state, always a communist state -- was successfully challenged.

As usual, the liberals did not get it. The New York Times complained editorially that the Grenada invasion was "a reverberating demonstration to the world that America has no more respect for laws and borders, for the codes of civilization, than the Soviet Union."[xxxiv] Reagan and his advisers shrugged off the rebuff, confident there was no moral equivalence between America and Soviet Russia.

A bipartisan congressional delegation visited Grenada shortly after the rescue, and almost every member, including critical Democrats, reported that after talking to the Grenadian people and inspecting the warehouses filled with Cuban weapons, they "agreed with the president" on his action.[xxxv]

Subsequently, American troops uncovered a hoard of documents detailing the Marxist regime's secret arms pacts with other communist countries -- three with the Soviet Union, one each with Cuba and North Korea -- and "its plans to make the island a military base for Soviet bloc activities" throughout the Caribbean.[xxxvi] Moscow was clearly attempting to construct a revolutionary triangle in the region with Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada as its three sides.

That fall, despite noisy protests in the streets of London, Rome, Paris and other European cities, the Reagan administration calmly proceeded with the deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe. They were deployed because the Soviets had installed several hundred SS-20s (intermediate range nuclear missiles) and had aimed them at key points in West Germany and other NATO countries.

The president had given Moscow an option, a "zero option," to either dismantle all the SS-20s or accept the deployment of American intermediate nuclear missiles directed at major Soviet targets. The Soviets had refused to dismantle, gambling that they could apply enough pressure through diplomatic maneuvers and through the nuclear freeze movement in Western Europe and the United States to force Reagan to cancel deployment. They had yet to take the full measure of the American president.

The stakes were high in Europe. Six Western European countries had scheduled elections for 1983 -- Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands -- and in each of these countries, political scientists Andrew E. Busch and Elizabeth Spalding wrote, "the leading liberal-left party had been captured by the peace movement and was opposing INF deployment."[xxxvii] Had voters turned against deployment, the NATO alliance would have been seriously weakened and might have collapsed. But, backed by Western leadership, every one of the European parties that stood for military preparedness won that year.

Reagan directed American negotiators not to budge. It was the zero option or nothing. To the dismay and even despair of many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment and the State Department, the Soviets walked out of the arms control negotiations in Geneva. The president was immediately assailed in the press and by the disarmament movement; there were even warnings that nuclear war was imminent.[xxxviii]

But America's European allies concurred with Reagan that negotiations should come only after the establishment of Western strength and Soviet acknowledgment of that strength. As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher noted, Reagan "strengthened not only America's defenses, but also the will of America's allies."[xxxix]

The calmest man during the negotiations was Reagan, who predicted that eventually the Soviets would return to the bargaining table. He was proved correct four years later, when the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, in which both sides agreed to dismantle their "Euromissiles," was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The "zero option" was formally ratified. Never before in the Cold War had an entire category of nuclear weapons been eliminated.

Mikhail Gorbachev's signature on the treaty confirmed Reagan's shrewd judgment of him, which had been questioned by many hard-line anticommunists. Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus had gone so far as to declare that the president was "no longer in any way accountable to the millions who recognize that we are in a deadly, strategic end-game with the Soviet Union, militarily the most powerful regime in world history." "Rubbish," responded Secretary of State George Shultz, but even Senators Jesse Helms, Malcolm Wallop and Dan Quayle -- all solid conservatives -- opposed the INF treaty.[xl]

Through it all, Reagan insisted that Gorbachev was "different" from previous Soviet leaders because he was willing "to take chances." The American president asserted that the Soviet president was "a remarkable force for change." Reagan's insightful evaluation was supported by another hard-nosed conservative, Margaret Thatcher, who pronounced after her first meeting with Gorbachev, "We can do business together."[xli]

And then there was the most important initiative of all -- the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan had long favored an alternative to the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), under which the United States and the Soviet Union each retained the nuclear capability to retaliate and destroy its opponent in the event of a nuclear attack. MAD was based on the assumption, as Caspar Weinberger put it, that in the area of nuclear strategy, the Soviet Union would act as the United States would act -- "they would take no risks we would not." Proponents explained that mutual vulnerability was a vital precondition to MAD. That is, both sides would be safe because both were vulnerable. Weinberger was less diplomatic in his language, stating that MAD was a "mutual suicide pact."[xlii]

Reagan apparently first encountered the idea of missile defense in 1967 when he visited Edward Teller, the "father" of the hydrogen bomb, in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Teller briefed the new governor about the work being done to stop a missile attack on the United States. "It was a rather long presentation," Teller later recalled, "and I remember clearly that [Reagan] listened quite attentively." Some day, said Teller, space-based lasers might be used to destroy nuclear missiles fired at the United States. Reagan responded that history showed that "all offensive weapons eventually met their match through defense countermeasures."[xliii]

Caspar Weinberger, who served in Reagan's California cabinet, remembered that as governor, Reagan had expressed the view that America "would be better advised to rest [its] defenses on military strength" not only of an offensive character but "on means of protecting aginst the missiles of the other side." That was, as Weinberger states, very unconventional thinking in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[xliv]

In 1976, when he was challenging Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination, Reagan often expressed his doubts about the MAD doctrine. Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, then a national security adviser to the conservative candidate, recalled that Reagan put it this way: "Our nuclear policy is like a Mexican stand-off -- two men with pistols pointed at each other's head. If the man's finger flinches, you each blow the other's brains out. Can't you military people come up with something better than that?"[xlv]

The general had no answer in 1976, but Reagan kept looking for alternatives to MAD. In July 1979, he toured the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado. According to Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, Reagan asked Air Force General James Hill what could be done if the Soviets fired a missile at an American city.

Nothing, Hill replied. NORAD would track the incoming missile and then give city officials ten to fifteen minutes warning before it hit. "That's all we can do," said Hill, "we can't stop it."[xlvi]

The soon-to-be presidential candidate still found it hard to believe that the United States had no defense whatever against Soviet missiles. "We have spent all that money and have all that equipment, and there is nothing we can do to prevent a nuclear missile from hitting us," he later remarked.[xlvii] Reagan kept pushing for a better way, and it turned out to be the Strategic Defense Initiative, about which the normally modest president said flatly, "SDI was my idea."[xlviii]

A number of people contributed the details, including General Daniel Graham, a former director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency; Edward Teller; and George Keyworth, the president's science adviser. Keyworth's support was critical.

By his own admission, the science adviser had been skeptical about strategic defense since his days at Los Alamos in the late 1960s. But he came around after long talks with his mentor, Edward Teller, his own research, and interactions with General Graham and experts at the Heritage Foundation.

There was, however, strong opposition to SDI throughout the Reagan administration, even at high levels of the Defense Department. Secretary of State George Shultz once called Keyworth "a lunatic" in front of the president for his advocacy of SDI, arguing that it would "destroy" NATO. But Reagan did not budge from his commitment, causing an admiring Keyworth to remark that Reagan "has this marvelous ability to work the whole thing while everybody else is working the parts."[xlix]

Finally, on March 23, 1983, President Reagan announced in a nationally televised address that development and deployment of a comprehensive antiballistic missile system would be his top defense priority -- his "ultimate goal." "I call upon the scientific community in our country," he said, "those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."[l]

Reagan called the system the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but it was quickly ridiculed as "Star Wars" by liberal detractors, led by Senator Edward Kennedy. The New York Times called SDI a "pipe dream, a projection of fantasy into policy."[li] One of its most enthusiastic congressional supporters was Newt Gingrich, who said of a space-based anti-missile system: "Every citizen who is concerned about national survival and who wants the most effective defense possible for the least cost necessary should write their congressmen and senators and ask them to take a look at [it]."[lii]

In this Moscow spring, this May 1988, we may be allowed [this] hope: that freedom, like the fresh green sapling planted over Tolstoy's grave, will blossom forth at last in the rich fertile soil of your people and culture. We may be allowed to hope that the marvelous sound of a new openness will keep rising, ringing through, leading to a new world of reconciliation, friendship and peace.[lxvi]

The key word in his remarks was "freedom" -- not openness or reconciliation or friendship or peace -- but freedom. In his remarks to some ninety-six dissidents at the U.S. Embassy, Reagan stressed that his human rights agenda in Moscow was one of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of travel for the Soviet people. Near the conclusion of his talk, Reagan quoted the poet Alexander Pushkin, revered above all others by the Russian people, "It's time, my friend, it's time."[lxvii]

Democracy triumphed in the cold war, Reagan wrote in his autobiography, because it was a battle of ideas -- "between one system that gave preeminence to the state and another that gave preeminence to the individual and freedom."[lxviii]

The Iran-contra affair had its origins in two quite different but stereotypical impulses of Reagan. The first was humanitarian -- to free the handful of American hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon. The second was ideological -- to support the anticommunist resistance in Nicaragua, whose Marxist regime threatened stability in all of Central America.

But exchanging arms for hostages contradicted the administration's stated policy of not acquiescing to the demands of terrorists or dealing with Iran. Both Secretary of State Shultz and Defense Secretary Weinberger were adamantly opposed to any compromise with terrorists.

Nevertheless, as Reagan biographer Lou Cannon wrote, "Reagan was determined to get the hostages out, by whatever means possible." Indeed, the president became "so stubbornly committed to the trade of arms for hostages" that he could not be dissuaded from it even when new American hostages were taken.[lxix]

As Reagan put it in his memoir:

What American trapped in such circumstances wouldn't have wanted me to do everything I possibly could to set them free... It was the president's duty to get them home.[lxx]

And so the president decided at the end of 1985 to proceed with the Iranian initiative. His decision divided his top advisers with Meese, Casey and Poindexter in favor; Weinberger and Shultz were vehemently against it. A little more than a year later, the Reagan administration was struggling to contain a serious political crisis. In March 1987, a reluctant President Reagan conceded in a nationally televised address, "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."[lxxi]

Conservatives were stunned by the admission. Commented one Reagan appointee, "It's like suddenly learning that John Wayne had secretly been selling liquor and firearms to the Indians."[lxxii] Still, they did their best to defend their favorite president.

In his memoir, Ed Meese asserted that when it became clear that the U.S. initiative to build ties with Iranian "moderates" was not succeeding, "it should have been dropped and Congress should have been notified of what had happened." Meese, attorney general at the time, did not try to defend "the protracted failure to disclose" the administration's actions to Congress (as required by law) but argued that the sale of arms was "a policy error, not a crime."[lxxiii]

The American public was unequivocal in its rejection of any arms for hostages deal. A December 1986 New York Times/CBS News poll recorded a drop in Reagan's approval rating of twenty-one points, from 67 to 46 percent, the sharpest one-month drop in presidential surveys since such polling began in 1936.[lxxiv]

The contra half of the controversy erupted in March 1982 when Congress discovered that the CIA was involved in training anticommunist rebels in Nicaragua. Led by Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill, Congress passed, in the fall of 1982, the first Boland amendment, which prohibited funds "for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua." The Reagan administration argued that the goal of contra funding was not to overthrow the Sandinista government but to persuade it to hold democratic elections (which it finally though reluctantly did in 1990).[lxxv]

An always firm supporter of contra aid was Congressman Newt Gingrich. Once asked why the contras were not more successful, Gingrich replied sarcastically: "If you're on the pro-Soviet side, you get more equipment, more advisers, more money, more help, and when you're on the American side, you get more debates, more argument, more excuses and more evasion."[lxxvi]

Nicaragua was not a peripheral issue to either the administration or its critics. For Reagan, Nicaragua was "another Cuba"; for the Democratic leadership in Congress, it was "another Vietnam." Believing that the vital interests of the nation were at stake, each side dug in hard and prepared for political war.

American funding continued until December 1984 when Congress strengthened the Boland amendment by denying any U.S. support either "directly or indirectly" to the contras. Because the president wanted to keep helping what he called the Nicaraguan "freedom-fighters," administration lawyers decided that although Boland prohibited American agencies "engaged in intelligence activities" from operating in Nicaragua, the National Security Council was not an intelligence agency. So the contra campaign was shifted from the CIA to the NSC under the direction of National Security Adviser John Poindexter and NSC staffer Oliver North.[lxxvii]

Apparently with CIA Director William Casey's approval, North illegally diverted funds from the Iranian arms sales to the contras. Meese calls the fund diversion "a tremendous error that should never have been allowed to happen. That it did happen was a failure of the administration -- for which it paid dearly."[lxxviii]

Ultimately, North, Poindexter, former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane (who had succeeded William Clark), and General Richard Secord (who had bought weapons to trade for American hostages) were indicted and convicted on charges stemming from the Iran-contra affair. Many of the convictions were later overturned because independent counsel Lawrence Walsh had relied on information obtained by congressional investigators operating under grants of immunity to obtain the convictions.

Iran-contra was not Watergate reborn. Reagan did not try to cover up the affair but directed his attorney general to conduct an immediate inquiry, invited former Senators John Tower and Edmund Muskie and Nixon's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to undertake an independent investigation, and asked for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to determine if any laws had been broken.

Unlike Nixon, Reagan did not approve wiretaps, did not direct the IRS to examine people's tax returns, did not suggest that offices be broken into, and did not attempt to manipulate the FBI and the CIA in their investigations or compile an enemies' list.

However flawed, Iran-contra was concerned with public policy -- Watergate was always about electoral politics. Reagan approved the arms for hostages deal to save American lives -- Nixon used Watergate to try to save himself.

Every official inquiry agreed that President Reagan had not personally authorized the diversion of money to the contras. The Tower Commission report found that the president had not even known of the diversion of funds. But it was highly critical of McFarlane and Poindexter, stating that the "National Security Adviser failed in his responsibility to see that an orderly process was observed."[lxxix]

In November 1987, a select committee of the House and Senate released a 700-page report. Like the Tower Commission, the Democratic majority concluded that the president had been unaware of the funds diversion. It accepted Poindexter's testimony that "he shielded the president from knowledge of the diversion."[lxxx] The Republican minority emphasized that the mistakes of the Iran-contra affair were just that -- "mistakes in judgment and nothing more. There was no constitutional crisis, no systematic disrespect for the `internal rule of law,' no grand conspiracy."[lxxxi] Indeed, Iran-contra soon faded from the American people's consciousness because they decided that it was an exception rather than the rule of the Reagan Doctrine.

In his generally balanced biography, Lou Cannon concluded that "no president save FDR defined a decade as strikingly as Ronald Reagan defined the 1980s."[lxxxii] In fact, Reagan left an indelible mark on American politics starting in the mid-1960s when he was governor of California, blossoming through the eight years of his presidency, and continuing to this day. Indeed, even as the first half of the twentieth century has been called the Age of Roosevelt by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and other historians, the last half of the twentieth century can be called the Age of Reagan.

Looking back, we can see that Ronald Reagan deliberately patterned his presidency after that of his favorite president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Just as FDR led America out of a great economic depression, Reagan sought to lift a traumatized country out of a great psychological depression, induced by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained by the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Carter malaise.

He used the same political instruments as Roosevelt -- the major address to Congress and the fireside chat with the people -- and the same optimistic, uplifting rhetoric. But while both Roosvelt and Reagan appealed to the best in America, there was a major philosophical difference between the two presidents: Roosevelt turned first to government to solve problems while Reagan turned first to the people. "Trust the people" was Reagan's mantra.

Reagan persuaded Americans to believe in themselves and the future again. He led them to accept that they did not need the welfare state to solve all of their economic and social problems. And he looked the Soviets in the eye and concluded they weren't ten feet tall after all.

He was right about the resilience of Americans and the weakness of the Soviets. It came therefore as no great surprise to anyone, including the Democrats, when Reagan was reelected in 1984 by a landslide. He received just under 59 percent of the popular vote and 525 electoral votes, carrying forty-nine states. With his overwhelming victory, summed up Congressional Quarterly, Reagan "ripped apart what was left of the once-dominant Democratic coalition," demonstrating that the GOP, at least at the presidential level, was the "real" umbrella party.[lxxxiii] The only electoral cloud for Republicans was their disappointing showing in Congress where they gained only fourteen seats in the House and lost two seats in the Senate, reducing their majority there to 53-47.

The 1984 election had never been in question although a few doubts were raised following the president's poor performance in the first televised debate with Democratic candidate Walter Mondale. Reagan had repeated himself, sometimes sounded uncertain, and even looked old at times. No one had to tell Reagan what had happened -- the old pro knew he had flopped.

There were some excuses about the president being "over-briefed," but the truth, as campaign adviser Stuart Spencer later admitted, was that Reagan had not debated anyone for years, and his skill at political thrust-and-parry had grown rusty. The campaign staff had not helped by overly shielding Reagan from the press and the public. And so it was decided to let Reagan be Reagan. A tough, anti-Mondale speech was delivered with relish by the president. He revealed that he had become angry when Mondale kept distorting his record during their first debate, and had thought of saying to Mondale, "You are taxing my patience." But then, said Reagan, "I caught myself. Why should I give him another idea? That's the only tax he hasn't thought of." The crowds loved it and chanted, "Four more years, four more years."[lxxxiv]

When campaign consultant Roger Ailes warned the president that the age issue would probably be raised in the second debate, Reagan thought for a moment, smiled, and said, "I can handle that."[lxxxv] Thirty minutes into the debate, Henry Trewhitt of the Baltimore Sun, a member of the journalists' panel, stated that Reagan was the oldest president in U.S. history and noted that some members of the president's staff had said he was tired after the first debate in Louisville. "I recall," said Trewhitt, "that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?"

"Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt," replied Reagan calmly. "And I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign." Absolutely deadpan, he added, "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."[lxxxvi] Everyone laughed, including Mondale, and the election, for all practical purposes, was over.

Rather than lapsing into lameduckism in his second term, as had many of his predecessors, Reagan achieved his greatest accomplishments in foreign policy and sustained an unprecedented economic expansion. Little wonder, then, that by 1988, liberalism had all but disappeared from the national political landscape, replaced by conservatism as the new standard. A philosophical realignment, a turn to the Right, was clearly taking place in American politics.

However, the conservative movement faced a dilemma in 1988: for the first time in forty years, it could not agree who should carry its banner. In 1948 and 1952, it had been Robert Taft. In 1960, it had been Richard Nixon, with scattered support for Goldwater. In 1964, it had been Barry Goldwater. In 1968, it had been Nixon, with some strongly preferring Reagan. In 1976, 1980 and 1984, it had been Ronald Reagan.

But in 1988, there was no consensus, even after Reagan had tacitly endorsed the man who had been at his side for eight years -- Vice President George Bush. Bush was not conservative enough for either the New Right or the Old Right. And so conservatives went their separate ways, thereby ensuring Bush's nomination. National Review and Human Events endorsed Jack Kemp, with the latter arguing that "Kemp is part of the conservative movement."[lxxxvii] Among Kemp's supporters were fellow Congressmen Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott. Former YAF chairman David Keene and Reaganaut Donald Devine went to work for Bob Dole, and the Christian Right backed televangelist Pat Robertson. Facing a divided opposition, Bush had only to win the right primaries to gain the presidential nomination.

As expected, Midwesterner Dole won the Iowa caucuses with 37 percent while Robertson unexpectedly finished second with 25 percent. Bush was third with 19 percent while Kemp was a disappointing fourth with 11 percent.

Robertson's strong showing was evidence of his ability to mobilize and organize born-again Christians and other first-time conservative voters. Many voters said that moral issues were their primary concern and Robertson addressed them more convincingly than anyone else. "Americans for Robertson," says Tom Atwood, who served as the organization's controller, "trained thousands of religious conservative activists who are still active today, showed the way for many other religious conservative candidates to follow, assembled a database of millions of religious conservatives, and was the precursor of the most powerful grassroots organization in the conservative movement, the Christian Coalition."[lxxxviii]

By running a series of TV ads that accused Dole of "straddling" on the issues and with a last-minute endorsement from conservative icon Barry Goldwater, Bush defeated Dole in New Hampshire by 38 percent to 28 percent. With Kemp a distant third and Robertson last in New Hampshire, the Republican contest was essentially reduced to a two-man race. Although Dole achieved solid victories in South Dakota and Minnesota, George Bush swept all sixteen Republican primaries on Super Tuesday, March 8, receiving fifty-seven percent of the popular vote and eighty percent of the delegates. Reflecting the conflicted state of the conservative movement, Dole even finished behind Robertson in Louisiana and Texas.

Kemp bowed out of the race and also announced he would not seek reelection to Congress where he had served for eighteen years. Conservatives attempted to sort out why the man who columnist Patrick Buchanan wrote "ought to be the Republican nominee" had done so poorly. There were references to the difficulty of running for president from the House of Representatives, Kemp's pro-union stance, his constant outreach to non-Republican groups like blacks and Hispanics, and his failure to spend enough time in the South, "the stronghold of traditional conservatism."[lxxxix] In short, Jack Kemp neglected his political base and ran for president before he had even won the nomination.

Bob Dole formally withdrew on March 29, having won fewer than 200 delegates to Bush's 800. He had been badly managed, spent money poorly and flubbed a pledge against taxes in a key New Hampshire speech. On May 16, Pat Robertson followed suit and endorsed Bush. He declared he would attend the Republican convention as "the true conservative voice" and would seek to influence the party's platform.

Robertson also revealed that he had filed papers to create a new political action committee -- Americans for the Republic -- to train and fund conservative Christian political candidates. The PAC quietly died, but a year later, Robertson formed the Christian Coalition and named as its executive director twenty-eight-year-old Ralph Reed, who had the face of a choir boy and the political instincts of a Green Beret.

George Bush was easily elected that fall because he gave the electorate, in effect, one more opportunity to vote for Reagan. American presidents are not always so successful in transferring their popularity, as even a widely admired president like Eisenhower learned in 1960. It helped Bush enormously that his Democratic candidate was the frozen-faced Michael Dukakis, who had a liberal record that only Americans for Democratic Action could love.

Dukakis had once led the legal fight against prayer in public schools; he had vetoed, as governor of Massachusetts, a death penalty bill; he had invoked the First Amendment to justify killing a bill requiring that school children recite the Pledge of Allegiance; he supported gun control; and he had a "soft" record, as Bush biographer Herbert S. Parmet put it, on national defense.[xc]

Bush campaign aides Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes determined to go on the attack early and stay there. With the help of Las Vegas advertising executive Sig Rogich, they produced and aired the most effective negative ads in presidential campaigning since the Democrats in 1964. One of Bush's attack ads panned across the littered, polluted waters of Boston Harbor, directly challenging Dukakis's reputation as an enlightened, efficient administrator. Another, filmed in black and white, showed a silent procession of men in prison garb moving through a prison gate, in and out, and right back into society. The announcer stressed that the governor had vetoed the death penalty and given furloughs to "first-degree murderers not eligible for parole."[xci]

The latter ad made no reference to black Massachusetts convict Willie Horton because, as Rogich later explained, "We very carefully elected not to show him or mention his name because we knew we'd be hit for racism."[xcii] The controversial Willie Horton ad was, in fact, the work of Americans for Bush, an independent PAC headed by conservative activist Floyd Brown.

Although it was not a Reaganesque landslide, George Bush received 53.4 percent of the popular vote and carried forty states, giving him a decisive 426-112 triumph in the electoral college. He swept the South, the Rocky Mountains, much of the farm belt, and every large state except New York. There were some encouraging signs for Democrats. Dukakis came within five percentage points of carrying seven states with 125 electoral votes, including Illinois, California and Pennsylvania. If a more attractive and moderate Democrat with appeal in the South came along, some experts speculated, he might do very well.

Democrats increased slightly their margins in Congress, picking up one seat in the Senate and two in the House. Congressional Quarterly suggested that election day ought to be renamed "incumbent appreciation day" -- ninety-eight percent of the House members seeking reelection in 1988 got their wish.[xciii]

Most conservatives chose to stress the positive, accepting George Bush as a born-again conservative. After all, he had pledged "no new taxes" in his acceptance speech. He had emphasized in the campaign a conservative position on almost every issue that mattered -- from abortion to school prayer to putting criminals behind bars. He had been Ronald Reagan's sturdy, reliable right-hand man for eight years.

In the initial flush of victory, at least, most conservatives looked forward to the Bush years. National Review "heartily" congratulated Bush on "his ascendancy," noting his accomplishments and courage while reserving the right to "reproach as well as applaud."[xciv] And conservatives looked backward with fondness and appreciation on the Reagan years.

The conservative movement had generally flourished during the 1980s: National Review and The American Spectator, for example, reached new circulation highs of 200,000 and more; the American Conservative Union drew 1,000 activists to its annual Conservative Political Action Conferences; and new organizations like the Family Research Council and the Competitive Enterprise Institute gathered strength. The Heritage Foundation doubled its annual budget during the 1980s to nearly $18 million, and the Cato Institute moved to Washington in 1982 and laid plans for a national headquarters. Conservative think tanks sprang up in a dozen states. Four conservative economists -- Friedrich A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and James Buchanan -- had received Nobel Prizes.

Under Reagan, communism had been checked and then defeated. Conservatives now concentrated on the other great challenge of the late 20th century -- rolling back the federal government. They felt that just as the New Deal revolution of the 1930s laid the foundation for the Great Society of the 1960s, so the Reagan revolution of the 1980s prepared the way for a conservative, limited government in the 1990s and beyond. And they expected George Bush to lead the way.

[i]. "Start of the Reagan era," U.S. News & World Report, January 26, 1981, pp. 18-20.

[ii]. Ronald Reagan, An American Life, p. 267.

[iii]. Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994), p. xiv.

[iv]. Ibid.

[v]. Ibid., p. xv.

[vi]. Dinish D'Souza, Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (New York: The Free Press, 1997), p. 140.

[vii]. Cannon, Reagan, p. 314-315.

[viii]. Ibid.

[ix]. "Ronald Reagan's Flower Power," New York Times, June 9, 1982.

[x]. Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994), p. xv.

[xi]. Ibid.

[xii]. D'Souza, p. 180.

[xiii]. William F. Buckley Jr., "So Long, Evil Empire," National Review, July 8, 1988; Dinesh D'Souza, Ronald Reagan, p. 134.

[xiv]. See Eugene Lyons' Our Secret Allies: The Peoples of Russia (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1953).

[xv]. Peter Schweizer, p. 126.

[xvi]. Peter Schweizer, Victory, p. 131.

[xvii]. Charles Krauthammer, "The Reagan Doctrine," Time, April 1, 1985, p. 54.

[xviii]. Lou Cannon, President Reagan, p. 372.

[xix]. Ronald Reagan, An American Life, p. 479.

[xx]. Mark Lagon, The Reagan Doctrine, p. 4.

[xxi]. Mark P. Lagon, The Reagan Doctrine: Sources of American Conduct in the Cold War's Last Chapter (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1994), p.4.

[xxii]. Mark Lagon, The Reagan Doctrine, p. 93.

[xxiii]. Jay Winik, On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 80-81.

[xxiv]. Winik, On the Brink, pp. 83-84.

[xxv]. Winik, On the Brink, p. 100.

[xxvi]. Ibid., p. 102.

[xxvii]. Ibid., pp. 105-106.

[xxviii]. Ibid., p. 108.

[xxix]. Ibid., p. 114.

[xxx]. Edwin Meese II, With Reagan, pp. 169-170.

[xxxi]. Meese, With Reagan, p. 170.

[xxxii]. See Ronald Reagan, An American Life, pp. 568-571, for Reagan's discussion of the phrase.

[xxxiii]. Vaclav Havel, "Words on Words," New York Review of Books, January 18, 1990, p. 58; Dinesh D'Souza, Reagan, p. 135.

[xxxiv]. "Goliath in Grenada," editorial, New York Times, October 30, 1983.

[xxxv]. Constantine Menges, Inside the National Security Council, p. 89.

[xxxvi]. Ibid., p. 158.

[xxxvii]. Andrew E. Busch and Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, "1983," Policy Review, Fall 1993, p. 72.

[xxxviii]. D'Souza, p. 148.

[xxxix]. Busch and Spalding, "1983", Policy Review, Fall 1993, p. 72.

[xl]. Howard Phillips, New York Times, December 11, 1987; George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 1006.

[xli]. Lou Cannon, President Reagan, p. 739; Geoffrey Smith, Reagan and Thatcher (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 146.

[xlii]. Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace (New York: Warner Books, 1990), pp. 293-294; Caspar Weinberger, "U.S. Defense Strategy," The Reagan Foreign Policy, edited by William G. Hyland (New York: New American Library, 1987), p. 185.

[xliii]. Edward Teller in Recollections of Reagan, edited by Peter Hannaford (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1997), p. 169; D'Souza, Reagan, p. 174.

[xliv]. Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, p. 296.

[xlv]. Daniel O. Graham, Confessions of a Cold Warrior (Fairfax, VA: Preview Press, 1995), p. 103.

[xlvi]. Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 319.

[xlvii]. Ibid.

[xlviii]. Ibid., p. 320.

[xlix]. George A. Keyworth, interview, September 28, 1987, Oral History Project, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California.

[l]. Cannon, President Reagan, p. 332.

[li]. New York Times, March 27, 1983.

[lii]. "High Frontier Launched," Human Events, May 22, 1982, p. 15.

[liii]. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, p. 327.

[liv]. Ibid.

[lv]. Graham, Confessions of a Cold Warrior, p. 165.

[lvi]. Daniel O. Graham, Confessions of a Cold Warrior, p. 153.

[lvii]. Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor: The History of American Anti-Commnism (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 429.

[lviii]. Carl Bernstein, "The Holy Alliance," Time, February 24, 1992, pp. 28-35; Lech Walesa, Proceedings of "The Failure of Communism: the Western Response," an international conference sponsored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 15, 1989, p. 47.

[lix]. Jay Winik, To the Brink, p. 227; D'Souza, p. 167.

[lx]. Peter B. Levy, Encyclopedia of the Reagan-Bush Years,, p. 234.

[lxi]. See Burton Yale Pines, "The Ten Legacies of Ronald Reagan," Policy Review, Spring 1989, pp. 16-20.

[lxii]. See Ronald Reagan, An American Life, pp. 680-683.

[lxiii]. Reagan, An American Life, p. 708.

[lxiv]. Alexis de Toqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1856), p. 214.

[lxv]. Cannon, President Reagan, p. 786.

[lxvi]. Ronald Reagan, An American Life, pp. 713-714.

[lxvii]. Cannon, President Reagan, p. 786.

[lxviii]. Reagan, An American Life, p. 715.

[lxix]. Cannon, President Reagan, pp. 656, 661.

[lxx]. Reagan, An American Life, p. 513.

[lxxi]. Cannon, Reagan , p. 653.

[lxxii]. Quoted in James Schlesinger, "Reykjavik and Revelations: A Turn of the Tide?" America and the World 1986,ed., William G. Hyland (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1987), p. 441.

[lxxiii]. Meese, With Reagan, p. 271.

[lxxiv]. Cannon, Reagan, p. 704.

[lxxv]. Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor, p. 411.

[lxxvi]. "Contras Can Win," Human Events, March 22, 1986, p. 17.

[lxxvii]. Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor, p. 411.

[lxxviii]. Meese, With Reagan, p. 286.

[lxxix]. Constantine C. Menges, Inside the National Security Council: The True Story of the Making and Unmaking of Reagan's Foreign Policy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 317.

[lxxx]. Select Committee of the House and Senate, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair (Washington, D.C., 1987), p. 21.

[lxxxi]. Ibid., pp. 437-438.

[lxxxii]. Cannon, Ronald Reagan, p. 831.

[lxxxiii]. Reagan: The Next Four Years, CQ, p. 15.

[lxxxiv]. Cannon, p. 549.

[lxxxv]. Cannon, p. 548.

[lxxxvi]. Ibid., p. 550.

[lxxxvii]. Why Conservatives Should Rally Around Jack Kemp," Human Events, January 23, 1988, p. 1.

[lxxxviii]. Thomas Atwood to the author, August 12, 1997.

[lxxxix]. Patrick J. Buchanan, "Jack Kemp and the Conservatives," Human Events, January 2, 1988, p. 8.

[xc]. Herbert S. Parmet, George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 335.

[xci]. Parmet, George Bush, p. 350.

[xcii]. Ibid.

[xciii]. 1988 CQ Almanac (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1989), pp. 9A-10A.

[xciv]. "The Week," National Review, December 9, 1988, p. 10.