City Desk: A Village Voice

This gets pretty close to the heart of Reagan, and especially to how he was able to make conservatism a dominant political force. He understood himself not as an angry Jeremiah fighting a doomed rearguard action against insurmountable evils, but as a man lucky to be living in God’s own world and doing his part to make sure more of the world got to enjoy that same good cheer, in freedom and prosperity. Robinson’s chapter on religion shows that it’s simply impossible to understand Reagan without taking account of the man’s simple yet profound religious faith: He was able to balance the truths of predestination and free will—not, naturally, at the level of the discursive intellect, where it is probably impossible, but in the process of creative living. Reagan just knew that each life is the object of a personal God’s benevolent plan, and this gave him peace of heart; but he also knew that he himself had a role to play and choices to make, and he did these things with passion and conviction.

Robinson’s analyses of Reagan are highly impressive, but the best chapters of his book have to do with . . . his own wife and father. In his chapter on the Reagans’ marriage, he gives us some of his most moving passages of autobiography. In these pages his love of Edita Robinson is palpable; one gets the sense that the love he fell into many years ago is the same one he lives in today. And near the end of the book, he discusses how he came, finally, to appreciate who his father really was: the quiet American who lost part of a lung to asbestosis because he was cooped up for three years in a boiler room on a Coast Guard cutter. That sacrifice will not take up many pages in the history books, but it did help us win World War II. He, like Reagan, was playing the role to which Providence called him. Thanks to James Agee and Walker Evans, the opening words of Ecclesiasticus 44:1 are well- known: “Let us now praise famous men . . .” The conclusion of Robinson’s book almost uncannily echoes the rest of the verse: “. . . and our fathers that begat us.”

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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This gets pretty close to the heart of Reagan, and especially to how he was able to make conservatism a dominant political force. He understood himself not as an angry Jeremiah fighting a doomed rearguard action against insurmountable evils, but as a man lucky to be living in God’s own world and doing his part to make sure more of the world got to enjoy that same good cheer, in freedom and prosperity. Robinson’s chapter on religion shows that it’s simply impossible to understand Reagan without taking account of the man’s simple yet profound religious faith: He was able to balance the truths of predestination and free will—not, naturally, at the level of the discursive intellect, where it is probably impossible, but in the process of creative living. Reagan just knew that each life is the object of a personal God’s benevolent plan, and this gave him peace of heart; but he also knew that he himself had a role to play and choices to make, and he did these things with passion and conviction.

Robinson’s analyses of Reagan are highly impressive, but the best chapters of his book have to do with . . . his own wife and father. In his chapter on the Reagans’ marriage, he gives us some of his most moving passages of autobiography. In these pages his love of Edita Robinson is palpable; one gets the sense that the love he fell into many years ago is the same one he lives in today. And near the end of the book, he discusses how he came, finally, to appreciate who his father really was: the quiet American who lost part of a lung to asbestosis because he was cooped up for three years in a boiler room on a Coast Guard cutter. That sacrifice will not take up many pages in the history books, but it did help us win World War II. He, like Reagan, was playing the role to which Providence called him. Thanks to James Agee and Walker Evans, the opening words of Ecclesiasticus 44:1 are well- known: “Let us now praise famous men . . .” The conclusion of Robinson’s book almost uncannily echoes the rest of the verse: “. . . and our fathers that begat us.”