A Son Pens a Charming Paean to Ronald Reagan

If you love Ronald Reagan, you will love Michael Reagan’s book. Even if you don’t particularly like either Reagan, this new “keepsake volume” is, like its subject, sometimes anachronistic, sometimes superficial, but always charming in a folksy, flag-waving way.

Although few of the quotations collected in “The Common Sense of an Uncommon Man: The Wit, Wisdom and Eternal Optimism of Ronald Reagan” (Thomas Nelson Publishers) are new--or even original Reaganisms (most were penned first by paid speech writers), the 40th president’s off-the-cuff remarks as recorded by his eldest son give the book a certain zest.

What is new comes from Michael’s own memory. As an eyewitness to some of the history Ronald Reagan made before, during and after his presidency, Michael--Ronald’s son with first wife Jane Wyman--offers a few surprising insider reports on how his dad felt at certain important moments in history.

In Kansas City in 1976 when the family gathered in Reagan’s hotel suite the night the Republican convention nominated Gerald Ford, Michael writes that his father looked at him with a “rueful grin” and said, “You know what hurts the most about not getting the nomination? I really looked forward to squaring off against the Russians at the SALT negotiations.”

According to Michael, losing the nomination meant Ronald Reagan wouldn’t get to act out this long-planned scenario: “I wanted to sit down at that big conference table with the Russian secretary general, and I wanted to listen to all the Soviet demands. . . . I was going to listen calmly, nodding and smiling--and then . . . I was going to get up from my chair, walk around to his side of the table, and whisper in his ear, ‘Nyet.’ ”

As Michael tells it, his dad was “really sorry” he wasn’t going to get to say “nyet” to the Soviets.

Although Reagan was known for seeing the world in black-and-white, good-and-evil terms, the Reagan that emerges from some of the later chapters of the book is a man surprisingly cognizant of the gray areas, a man even willing to change his mind--as he did about the Russians after cultivating his unexpected friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Reagan, who last week turned 88, appears to have been as young at heart in private as he was in public. Minutes before making his debut at his first inaugural ball, writes Michael, “Dad, looking dapper in white tie and tails, checked his hair in the mirror [and] then whirled about, jumped up in the air and clicked his heels. . . . ‘I’m the president of the United States!’ he announced with a wink.”

Michael’s 208-page tribute isn’t the only one to be issued in the wake of Reagan’s 1994 Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The first to appear at the Reagan Presidential Museum and Library Gift Shop was a tiny volume of personal recollections by Reagan’s youngest daughter, Patti Davis, who, until the diagnosis, had been very publicly estranged from both parents on and off for decades. Michael’s book is not as moving as Patti’s lyrical, from-the-heart homage, “Angels Don’t Die” (HarperCollins, 1995). But for those who’ve missed the Great Communicator’s unmatched storytelling and who can tolerate a bit of gushing, “The Common Sense of an Uncommon Man” is worth a look.

Back in 1966, when Reagan was defending his career change from actor to pol, he said, “Politics is just like show business. You need a big opening. Then you coast for a while. Then you need a big finish.”

As fate would have it, Alzheimer’s denied Reagan his big finish. Perhaps we should not fault his children for trying to write it for him.