On February 6, 1981, at his first National Security Council
meeting, Ronald Reagan told his advisers: “I will make the
decisions.” As Reagan’s Secret War reveals, these words provide the
touchstone for understanding the extraordinary accomplishments of
the Reagan administration, including the decisive events that led
to the end of the Cold War.
In penning this book, New York Times bestselling authors Martin
Anderson and Annelise Anderson drew upon their unprecedented access
to more than
關於作者：
MARTIN ANDERSON and ANNELISE ANDERSON, husband and wife, are
coauthors of the New York Times bestsellers Reagan, In
His Own Hand; Reagan: A Life in Letters; and Reagan’s Path
to Victory. Both are Fellows at the Hoover Institution. Martin,
an M.I.T. Ph.D., worked in the Reagan White House as an economic
policy adviser and, more recently, sat on the Pentagon’s
defense-policy board. Annelise, a Columbia Ph.D., was a senior
policy adviser to the Reagan presidential campaign and was an
associate director within Reagan’s Office of Management and Budget,
where she was responsible for the budgets of five Cabinet
departments and more than forty other agencies.
From the Hardcover edition.
內容試閱：
Chapter 1
Reagan the Man
Ronnie became a loner.... He doesn''t let anybody get too close.
There''s a wall around him. -Nancy Reagan, 1989
The best clue to understanding Ronald Reagan is Nancy Reagan. She
is a graduate of Smith College in Massachusetts, a highly
intelligent woman, an actress who met Ronald Reagan in Hollywood
and married him in 1952. They were happily in love for more than
fifty years. Nancy was also his closest friend, perhaps his only
real friend, and she knew far more about him than anyone else in
the world.
In 1989, just after they had left office, Nancy wrote a book
about her life in which she told us more about Ronald Reagan than
anyone. She knew the key to his self-assurance-he was a loner. Here
is how she explained Reagan in her book:
It''s hard to make close friends or to put down roots when you''re
always moving, and I think this-plus the fact that everybody knew
his father was an alcoholic-explained why Ronnie became a loner.
Although he loves people, he often seems remote, and he doesn''t let
anybody get too close.
There''s a wall around him. He lets me come closer than anyone
else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.
Ronnie''s closest friends and advisers have often been
disappointed that he keeps this distance....
Ronnie is an affable and gregarious man who enjoys other people,
but unlike most of us, he doesn''t need them for companionship or
approval.
As he himself has told me, he seems to need only one other
person-me.
Despite all appearances, then, Reagan was a very private man. His
pollster, Richard Wirthlin, met with him one day in March 1983, to
give him the latest results. It was good news; the national polls
were showing that Reagan''s policies were widely supported. While he
was reporting the polls, Reagan interrupted in midsentence and
said:
You know what I really want to be remembered for?
I want to be remembered as the President of the United States who
brought a sense and reality of peace and security. I want to
eliminate that awful fear that each of us feels sometimes when we
get up in the morning knowing that the world could be destroyed
through a nuclear holocaust.
As far as we know he only said that once, in private. His usual
answer about his legacy was a response about restoring the American
economy.
Another foundation for Reagan''s actions, perhaps, was his high
intelligence-and his ability to hide it. He was an extraordinarily
bright pupil who even taught himself how to read a newspaper when
he was five years old. But as time went on, he seemed to quickly
learn something that most highly intelligent people learn as they
grow older: a child who seems to know all the answers soon has few
friends. So he spent more time playing ball and being a regular
student.
Unlike many intelligent people, Reagan''s self-confidence was also
great enough that he never felt he had to demonstrate his knowledge
or his quickness. Indeed, on the front of his desk in the White
House was a small sign that carried the words "There''s no limit to
what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn''t mind who gets
the credit."
One of Reagan''s key tactics while deep in long and arduous
negotiations was to accept what his opponent had offered. He never
crowed over what he was given; he just said thanks. As he explained
it one day in Fortune magazine:
I''ve never understood people who want me to hang in there for a
hundred percent or nothing. Why not take seventy percent or eighty
percent, and then come back another day for the other twenty or
thirty percent.
One of the few people who seemed to understand how Reagan managed
the White House was Washington Post editor Meg Greenfield. In 1984
she wrote an essay for Newsweek titled "How Does Reagan Decide?" As
a liberal Democrat, she observed something that even many of
Reagan''s closest conservative supporters failed to understand-that
he made decisions like a labor negotiator for a workers'' union. She
summed up part of his decision-making style like this:
The long waiting out of the adversary, the immobility meanwhile,
the refusal to give anything until the last moment, the
willingness- nonetheless-finally to yield to superior pressure or
force or particular circumstance on almost everything, but only
with something to show in return, and only if the final deal can be
interpreted as furthering the original Reagan objective.
Reagan was also an unusual boss. Those who worked for him liked
him. They did not necessarily agree with all of his policies, but
they still found him pleasant and friendly. He didn''t criticize his
advisers in front of others. He didn''t chew people out. He didn''t
reprimand them, he didn''t complain to them face-to-face-and he
never yelled at them. Sometimes he might look a little disappointed
when things went wrong, but you rarely felt a sense of failure or
humiliation.
When people first met Reagan, they often thought he was too
easygoing and friendly to be tough. The impression was like a soft
down pillow. What people failed to see was the two-inch-thick rod
of steel right down the inside of the pillow.
Perhaps the most important key to Reagan''s success was the
quality of his advisers and staff. Individually the men and women
in his staff were very different, and they all had skills that
matched the jobs they held. But the one thing they all shared was
that they were all smart and sensible. Some presidents have felt
uncomfortable with brilliant men and women; Reagan thrived on
them.
Even his political opponents noted that the group of advisers and
staff was unusual. Robert Strauss, perhaps the most savvy Democrat
around when Reagan was elected, called Reagan''s staff "simply
spectacular. It''s the best White House staff I''ve ever seen."
President Reagan''s management philosophy was best summed up when
a reporter asked: "Your friend Roger Smith, chairman of General
Motors, says that you''ve done a great job of focusing on the big
picture without getting bogged down in detail. How do you decide
which problems to address personally, and which to leave to
subordinates?" Reagan replied:
You surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate
authority, and don''t interfere as long as the overall policy that
you''ve decided upon is being carried out.
In the Cabinet meetings-and some members of the Cabinet who have
been members of other Cabinets told me there have never been such
meetings- I use a system in which I want to hear what everybody
wants to say honestly. I want the decisions made on what is right
or wrong, what is good or bad for the people of this country. I
encourage all the input I can get....
And when I''ve heard all that I need to make a decision, I don''t
take a vote.
I make the decision.
Then I expect every one of them, whether their views have carried
the day or not, to go forward together in carrying out the
policy.
All this does not mean that Reagan was some kind of superhuman
who could not be riled or upset. In fact, one of the most
unappreciated facets of Reagan''s character was his temper; it
flared rarely, but was memorable when it did. If Reagan was
crossed-crossed badly-he exploded into what could be called a black
Irish rage. His face darkened, his jaw muscles clenched and bulged,
and his lips got thin and tight. In public he might show sporadic
flashes of displeasure, but never real anger. It wasn''t that he did
not get angry, but rather that he usually covered it up.
During his presidential campaign, on one of those rare occasions
of real fury-a well-justified one, we might add-we watched him lean
back a bit, reach up and grab the right side of his eyeglasses, rip
the glasses off, and fling them across the room into the wall
closest to him. After he smashed his glasses into the wall, he
calmed down quickly and carried on. No one who was there can
remember what happened to the eyeglasses. That kind of outburst
didn''t happen often- but it did happen.
Once during the campaign in 1976 Reagan was holding an impromptu
press conference outside a building with a narrow alley. Some of
the reporters were asking questions that had an insulting tone.
After Reagan finished answering the last question, he turned and
headed through the alley into the building, with the Secret Service
clearing the way. When he was about halfway down the alley, one of
the reporters, a particularly provocative one, yelled: "What''s the
matter? Are you afraid to answer the question?"
Reagan stopped, his face turning red. Abruptly he turned and
headed back out through the alley. His eyes were blazing, focused
on the heckler waiting outside. As he moved through the alley, one
of the advisers was standing in the way. Reagan, with one swift
thrust of his arm, shoved him aside, slamming him against the wall.
Outside he angrily answered the reporter''s question, then turned
back and went into the building. The fellow he "moved" was
fine.
Another rare example of what could make Reagan upset was a
rewritten draft of one of his speeches. One day, Peter Hannaford,
one of his oldest and most valued speechwriters, handed him a new
redraft of a major speech for him to read on the plane. Reagan
smiled, slipped on his reading glasses, and started to read. After
two or three pages, his eyebrows narrowed and his jaw tightened.
Then, after reading the next page, he lifted it, raised it high in
the air, and slammed it down hard onto the small pile he had just
read. He continued to read, slamming each succeeding page down
harder and harder. It was clear he didn''t like the redraft of the
speech.
After Reagan had been in office for nearly six months, very few
people understood his foreign policy. It especially bothered some
of the reporters writing about him. They feared that he was on a
course that could be dangerous, even leading the United States to a
nuclear war. It was true that Reagan had never spelled out a
detailed picture of what he wished to do in foreign policy, but it
did not seem to bother him. A letter he dictated to a friend, John
O. Koehl...
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