Word: reaganism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...however, the fact/fiction bipolarity erodes some of the book's brilliance. The reader begins to doubt Morris even when he describes events without resorting to dramatic trickery. His account of Reagan's summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland is so vivid as to make it seem Morris sat with the two leaders. In fact, Morris admits he was not there; he went to Iceland later and, relying on interviews, "enjoyed the scribe's traditional advantage of being able to recollect emotions in tranquility." Morris' brilliant portrait of Teddy Roosevelt's rise to the presidency was of course built from...
...Morris had a President who moved events. He seems to want to believe that to be true of Reagan as well. Morris says as much in the final, cloying scene of the book. He tells the reader that he himself was one of the people lifeguard Dutch saved from the river, and concludes: "Some day, I hoped, America might acknowledge her similar debt to the old Lifeguard who rescued her in a time of poisonous despair...
...what is truth, anyway? The new Reagan biography features a fictional character, bearing the author's name (Edmund Morris) but with a fabricated past, who encounters Reagan at various junctures. Fiction--with supporting footnotes, no less--in the authorized biography of a living President...
...with a ground-based rocket - the latest in a string of successes that have the idea of a nuclear "umbrella" edging closer to approval by the Clinton administration. For TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson, it?s a dubious triumph of lowered expectations. "It?s not Reagan?s ?Star Wars,' which was space-based," he says. "This is the so-called ?thin shield,? which consists of a smaller amount of interceptors [100] from a single site, rather than a full umbrella. Technically, it?s easier to build, but it also wouldn?t defend against a full-scale assault...
...Russians, scrap the whole treaty and start building the system." And there?s a certain logic to that - when it comes to nuclear defense, all or nothing always trumps a compromise. "One site in Alaska means the system wouldn?t work as well against Iran," Thompson says. President Reagan, who rode the Iran hostage crisis to election and bluffed the Soviets with big-idea Star Wars, would have appreciated that...