Diane Lorbiecki
"I, like many others, find Ronald Reagan to be a complete mystery. I remember seeing a video of "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" author, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt [who worked in President Reagan's Department of Education, which was SUPPOSED to have been disbanded under his leadership (but never was)], discussing how, before he was elected, the Californians who really knew him best, were warning people that he was not a true conservative -- or at least he didn't act as a true conservative while he was governor of California.
Why did he pick the despised (by rabid Reagan supporters) George H. W. Bush, of all people, as his running mate? At the time, we Reagan fans believed he picked Bush to "bring the party together" in order to win more easily -- but once Reagan was elected, we believed he would be a real Goldwater-conservative president. But why, then, was Reagan's administration, filled with "CFR types?"
When it comes right down to it, it seems very few people understood the real Ronald Reagan. Even Reagan's "official biographer," Edmund Morris, who had generous access to President Reagan, found him inscrutable.
From CBS News:
“He was truly one of the strangest men who’s ever lived,” says Morris. “Nobody around him understood him. I, every person I interviewed, almost without exception, eventually would say, ‘You know, I could never really figure him out.’”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/09/60II/main622051.shtml
Did Ronald Reagan's administration, then (and the subsequent Bush Dynasty that sprang from this administration), send us spiraling away from what we THOUGHT would be Goldwater conservatism?"
