Editor's note: A look back at President Reagan, from the February 5, 2001 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Ronald Reagan, 1911 - 2004

Reagan, In His Own Hand

The Remarkable Writings of Ronald Reagan that Show How He Created a Revolutionary Vision for America

edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson

Free Press, 544 pp., $ 30

IN TIME FOR HIS NINETIETH BIRTHDAY, the Free Press is bringing out the writings of Ronald Reagan--nearly 550 pages worth, heavily annotated in very small type--and the inescapable question that confronts the reader as he slogs along is, "Why?" A readable and judicious selection of Reagan's writing, drawn from different sources over a span of many years, would have been welcomed, probably, by Reagan's friends and foes alike, as a window into his political and intellectual development. But Reagan, In His Own Hand is what journalists call a document dump.

From early 1975, when he left office as governor of California, until late 1979 (not counting a year-long hiatus to run for president in 1976), Reagan rode the circuit as a speechmaker, published a twice weekly newspaper column, and syndicated a five-minute, five-day-a-week radio commentary. Ghostwriters took care of the newspaper columns, but as an old broadcaster Reagan enjoyed writing most of the radio scripts himself. According to the editors of Reagan, In His Own Hand, he wrote two thirds of the more than one thousand commentaries delivered in those years, scribbling away at his desk at home or as he traveled, in the first-class compartment of airplanes and the backseat of chauffeured cars. The handwritten drafts were retrieved not long ago from Reagan's personal papers.

And here they are. More than two hundred and fifty of them. A very long parade of four-hundred word essays, meticulously recreating in typescript Reagan's own crossovers, rewrites, marginalia, and emendations. Some of the pieces are charming, even touching in a way a politician's words seldom are. Some are compelling for their arguments or foresight. Others are mortally repetitive or too dated to be of interest to anyone but historians, and many are not only dated but dross. The editors give the general reader no hint as to which is which, and for most people the book will be tough sledding.

Why are they all here then? You can't help but suspect that the editors wanted to impress their audience with the sheer mass of Reagan's late-1970s prose. The madness in their method comes clear in the first few pages of the introduction, whose reverential glow sometimes approaches parody: "When Reagan wrote, he didn't scribble or scrawl, he wrote in a clear script. When he reached the bottom of the legal pad, he carefully flipped the page over, tucked it in on the back side of the pad, and proceeded onto the second page."

Wow. No wonder America loved him. The introduction continues over the next eight paragraphs with comments from other Reagan employees:

He was constantly writing. . . . But all the time he was writing. . . . He'd turn on his reading lamp and would constantly be writing. . . . Reagan would sit in the backseat with his legal pad, writing. . . . All the way up, Reagan would be writing. . . . He would be writing in the backseat when we drove back. . . . He was always just writing. . . . When I woke up, he'd still be working, just writing away. . . . You know, everyone's got things to do. And his thing was writing. . . .