In the biopic, Reagan comes across as a larger-than-life figure, a romanticist, a communicator who could out-talk any political opponent in the US, the crusader against communism who brought about the fall of the USSR.
Moviegoers loved the movie. Critics panned it. Why? First, the movie leaves out important episodes in his life. And second, it adds nothing new to what it covers.
There is no discussion of his relations with Pakistan, which were an important element of his crusade against communism. Soon after he assumed office in 1981, Reagan became an instant favourite in Pakistan. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, President Carter offered $400 million to Pakistan. General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military ruler, dismissed it as “peanuts.” That was an acerbic play on words designed to demean Carter’s past as a peanut farmer in Georgia.
Republican presidents were always viewed in Pakistan as being much friendlier than Democratic presidents such as John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. The Republicans had bonded well with Pakistan’s military rulers: Dwight Eisenhower with General (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan and Richard Nixon with General Yahya Khan. Such, indeed, was the case with Reagan General Zia, and it would again be the case decades later, when George W Bush would bond with General Musharraf.
The omission of Reagan’s dealings with General Zia or the Mujahideen is not the only problem with the biopic
Reagan offered an aid package of $3.2 billion to Zia, and invited him to visit the White House, which he happily did. The two became best friends, or so it seemed. Mystery still surrounds Zia’s death, with more than one analyst pointing the finger at the US.
Reagan went a step further than having Zia over. He invited the leaders of the Afghan Mujahideen, who were fighting the Soviets, to the White House. When they arrived, he praised them to the hilt by comparing them to the founding fathers of America, which seems more than a little ironic today, since the Taliban grew out of the Mujahideen and became America’s primary combatants for 20 years in Afghanistan.
The movie is largely based on a book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. His numerous interactions with Gorbachev are the focus of the movie, which reaches its climax when Reagan, standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate, asks the Soviet leader to “tear down the Berlin Wall.”
The omission of Reagan’s dealings with General Zia or the Mujahideen is not the only issue that is wrong with the biopic. While it has some new information about his childhood and the time he spent in Hollywood, and while it devotes some time to his post-presidential life, it contains virtually nothing new about his tenure as Governor of California, from 1967-74, or as President of the US, from 1981-87.
The primary reason he won against Carter in 1980, apart from the hostage crisis in Iran, was that the economy was in terrible shape. The so-called misery index (the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates) had hit 19.9% during the Gerald Ford presidency. In 1976, Carter defeated Ford primarily for that reason.
Unfortunately for Carter, the misery index reached an all-time high of 21.98% during his tenure, enabling Reagan to defeat him. Reagan used his debating skills to belittle Carter during the debate, saying “There you go again!” so often that it became the most memorable line of the debate.
Once in the White House, he began implementing policies that would later be called Reaganomics, enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor. He sanctified the Laffer Curve, according to which the economy would grow faster if taxes were lowered. He had done the very opposite when he had governed California: raised taxes and reduced the budget deficit.
Among his foreign policy mishaps was the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the 1986 bombing of Libya and the secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras.
Yet, in the movie, Reagan comes across as a man who could do no wrong. It is true that he spoke effortlessly in a language that everyone could understand. But he was not infallible, not the Teflon President portrayed in the film. Because of these shortcomings, one reviewer called it “a shallow hagiography.”
As noted earlier, the biopic does have its redeeming features. It covers his childhood and his post-presidential period. He was born and raised in Illinois, where he graduated from Eureka College. He served as a lifeguard but was a mediocre student. At age 26, he moved to Hollywood. While his acting skills were average, his skills as a communicator were far above average. Soon enough, he found himself in the middle of the politics of Hollywood.
In his post-presidential period, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 83. Even then, he stayed active on his ranch in California, riding horses, cutting logs and making fences out of them. He refused to delegate such “manual labour” to others.
With a length of 135 minutes, any movie would drag, and this one is no exception. Reagan is brought to life through a flashback, a technique that is often used in biopics. A retired KGB agent is talking with a younger colleague in present-day Russia. The younger colleague is asking the senior colleague about why the Soviet Union collapsed. The retired agent says that even though he had been tracking Reagan for years, at some point he had concluded that Reagan “would bring us down, not with missiles or guns or even politics, but with something much greater … people give their lives for one another, for the freedom to live their lives as they choose and for God. We took that away. The Crusader gave it back to them.”
It would be hard to imagine a more adulatory comment coming from an acolyte, least of all an arch enemy’s spy. The movie would like us to believe that Reagan had cast such a spell on the KGB agent that he had become his biggest fan, in a phenomenon even more striking than Stockholm Syndrome.