Remembering Ronald Wilson Reagan

The beatification of Ronald Wilson Reagan by American conservatives is itself a grisly affair but at least he was their President. The tendency of some on the British right to elevate Reagan to saintly status is just embarrassing. This does not mean he was not a fine President – in many ways he was – merely that all these years later it still seems impossible to achieve a balanced appreciation of Reagan’s record in office. For many years, at home and abroad, he was under-rated, patronised by a complacent oppposition bamboozled by Reagan’s style into thinking there was no “there” there; now the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction and we’re asked by some to believe that Reagan was the greatest President in the history of the United States of America. This won’t do either.

Perhaps the most mysterious of all recent Presidents, Reagan’s legacy is more complicated than the duelling cartoons of Cowboy or Rushmore-status suggest.