Golden Boy

'Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power' by Lou Cannon

GOVERNOR REAGAN: His Rise to Power
By Lou Cannon
PublicAffairs. 579 pp. $30

Right now, Ronald Reagan is unexpectedly casting a huge shadow in California, the place where his political career was launched. It was the Reagan wing of the California GOP that placed the recall initiative aimed at displacing Gov. Gray Davis on the ballot; its principal sponsor, and funder, was Congressman Darrell Issa, a longtime Reagan supporter.

In the sprawling field of candidates to emerge on the recall ballot, the most prominent conservative still in the race, State Sen. Tom McClintock, calls himself the rightful heir to the Reagan revolution. And the highest-wattage celebrity in the running, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is also quick to claim the Reagan pedigree, making sure that all reporters visiting his office take due note of the Reagan bust prominently on display. Schwarzenegger's campaign chairman, former governor Pete Wilson, has told the press that Schwarzenegger's status as an outsider would be an "asset," just as it was for Reagan in 1966.

But Reagan has fueled California's gubernatorial distemper in subtler ways, too. By stumping for tax cuts in the early 1970s, he sparked the fire that led to the passage of Prop. 13 in 1978. That initiative, which enacted a state cap on property taxes, has made California home to almost perpetual budget challenges, with political leaders frequently scrambling to meet the needs of the country's most populous state and the world's fifth-largest economy. In other words, Reagan has supplied the broad structural framework that triggered California's crisis as well as the political symbolism behind the "throw the rascals out" cry for new leadership -- no mean achievement for someone who has been out of public life for 15 years.

It's a characteristically Janus-faced legacy. Ever since his first victory in the gubernatorial election of 1966, students of politics have been seeking to explain how, as Garry Wills once asked, Reagan managed to "pull it off." Wills was referring to Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign, but the question applies just as well to the long arc of his career. How did a right-wing anticommunist win two terms as governor in an age of liberal dominance? How did a washed-up actor lead America's right wing out of the wilderness, spearhead a tax revolt and preside over the dissolution of the Soviet Union at a time when critics continued to dismiss him as a lightweight?

Few are better qualified to answer these questions than Lou Cannon. A former White House correspondent for The Washington Post, Cannon spent more than three decades seeking to explain the origins of Reagan's stunning success. He has written four books and countless articles about the man and his times; two focused on Reagan as president, another two on his years as governor. Now the fifth looks at the Reagan statehouse, an analysis Cannon justifies on two grounds: No one has written a comprehensive account of Reagan's governorship, and Cannon has unearthed documents that shed new light on Reagan's politics and policies.

This is a well-written book. It tells a fascinating story, and, most of all, it goes a long way to explain the secrets of Reagan's success. He "pulled it off," in essence, due to his uncanny ability to blend the politics of ideas with the politics of pragmatism. He never forgot his followers, and he never forgot his roots. He fed red meat to his acolytes when necessary -- and clung to bedrock beliefs about the virtues of small government, free enterprise and order in the streets. Equally important, he compiled a record that is at odds with the image imprinted on the minds of many.

Eager to erase a deficit, Reagan bent his beliefs in deference to fiscal reality. In 1967, he signed the biggest tax hike in the state's history. In 1967, he signed a bill that made it easier for women to get abortions. He hired a conservationist, Ike Livermore, to be his resources secretary and then worked to guard key rivers, such as the Eel, while taking a stand against developers when he helped to establish the National Redwood Park in a part of the state that was not rich with votes. When Reagan left office in 1975, he had amassed an environmental record that even some in the Sierra Club supported.

Reagan compromised on tuition hikes at the University of California and, according to Cannon, didn't damage the reputation of the state's higher education system. When the campuses quieted down in 1970, Reagan soft-pedaled the kind of anti-student rhetoric that had scored points for him in 1966. In short, he developed the ability to cater to his base while making a series of sensible decisions that appealed to moderates, Democrats and others crucial to his cause. He won a place in the hearts of millions of Californians and became an icon to many along the way. He negotiated. He compromised. He got things done.

Cannon shortchanges the passion of Reagan's conservative ideas and the degree to which he depended on that right-wing base for his support. He is right, for example, to point out that Reagan was not a racist. But he never quite captures the extent to which Reagan and some of his supporters used the intersection of race, riots and crime in the cities to pull ahead in the polls. There are other problems as well. The first 12 and the last four chapters appear, in modified form, in previous Cannon books; those who have read those books will find these sections repetitive. And the overlap makes it difficult to tell whether the new documents (including the full minutes of Reagan's cabinet meetings) confirm Cannon's views of Reagan or whether they alter them on some fundamental level. He fails to tell the reader one way or the other.

In the end, however, Cannon demonstrates that Reagan was neither a fool nor a fire-eater but an articulate, even eloquent, spokesman for the conservative cause. Reagan had a vision for where he wanted to go. He developed the skills that allowed him to lead. And these abilities produced a string of successes and a record on which he could run for president. Governor Reagan is an important if not altogether original book. It not only identifies the ingredients that made Reagan's success possible; it also offers a window onto the fascinating world of civic life in California -- a window that, in turn, offers an expansive view on the ferments behind our politics at large. •

Matthew Dallek, a former speechwriter for Richard Gephardt, is the author of "The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics."