The Reagan Diaries

Howard Kurtz has some excerpts from Douglas Brinkley's article on his editing of The Reagan Diaries, the journals that President Reagan kept from his years in the White House. It sounds like this will be a great source for historians writing about the Reagan years. What is a true shame is that since the Clinton years, presidents will be afraid to put down anything in writing that could be subpoenaed later and so that historians will not have this insight into what a leader was thinking at a particular time in history. Granted that a diary can become a president's first draft of CYA, there is still a benefit to knowing what a president was thinking or even what he wanted posterity to believe what he was thinking. Historians have learned more from reading such diaries as James K. Polk's while we went to war against Mexico. I wish more presidents had left behind diaries. Wouldn't you love to read what Lincoln or FDR had written on a daily basis?

Here are some of the excerpts that Kurtz has in the Post today.

The earnest entries are marked by a spare writing style in which Reagan reduced complicated matters to their essence. In 1982, when he accepted Haig's resignation from the Cabinet and Haig said they had had disagreements over foreign policy, Reagan wrote: "Actually the only disagreement was over whether I made policy or the Sec. of State did."

A 1981 entry on Cuban leader Fidel Castro said: "Intelligence reports say he Castro is very worried about me. I'm very worried that we can't come up with something to justify his worrying."

The former actor was well aware of his public image, and tweaked the Fourth Estate after he deliberately reversed the order of the opening sentences of his welcome at the 1984 Olympics: "The press having a copy of the lines as written are gleefully tagging me with senility & inability to learn my lines."

When his former chief of staff, Donald Regan, disclosed that Nancy Reagan had consulted an astrologer for advice on her husband's travel schedule, the president remained in denial:

"The press have a new one thanks to Don Regan's book. We make decisions on the basis of going to Astrologers. The media are behaving like kids with a new toy -- never mind that there is no truth to it."