The ongoing Reagan

We are told that 960 books have been written about Ronald Reagan, which registers that he continues to be an object of consuming historical curiosity, 95 years after he was born. That emanation confounds liberal critics, who assessed him many years ago as a bumpkin with oratorical gifts pandering to American self-esteem.

But Reagan alive prevailed over that stereotype, and Reagan dead is airborne as never before. One recent book, "President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination," is by Richard Reeves, a skillful historian who got on to an enormously interesting device in his books on Nixon and Kennedy. He would take you to opening day of their presidential terms and recount what his subject did on that day, which of course was an opening to political, social and personal adventures, ending, in Nixon's case, arms akimbo, mounting the helicopter to avoid impeachment; for JFK, it ended in Dallas.

Reagan ended his eight years snug in the White House, though biographer Reeves judges him to have been less, in 1989, than the Reagan who took office in 1981, which is OK by Reeves as, on the whole, he prefers a diminished Reagan to a Reagan in his prime, who might have succeeded with his right-wing agenda.

William F. Buckley