Reagan: The Political Chameleon

1976, possibly first edition, from Praeger Publishers
Edmund G. (Pat) Brown & Bill Brown (I don't know if any relation)
Reagan: The Political Chameleon
Original price unknown, purchase price $2.00
Good condition hardcover with worn dustjacket
B-

Let me start with a confession.  I used to hate Reagan.  For a long time after he left office, I could see/hear a recording of one of his speeches and get mad.  I never felt this way about any other president.  It's partly due to what he did in office and partly due to the age I was at the time, almost 13 to almost 21, roughly my adolescence.  I could've saved this confession for when we actually get up to the 1980s, but I need to tell you now because of my odd reaction to this book.

Over the past decade, I've become more apolitical, not only paying less attention to current politics, but mellowing on the past.  So when I started this book, which I haven't read more than once or twice before, and that probably shortly after Reagan left office, I didn't have any strong feelings about the subject.  I was curious to see how Reagan's time as Governor of California (from a couple years before my birth in So Cal till shortly before my seventh birthday) looked to his predecessor.  I vaguely remembered that when I read the book before, I kept thinking, Why didn't anybody see what kind of president he'd be?  All the evidence was there!  But I didn't remember specifics.

So for maybe the first half of the book, I was mostly amused, both at Reagan's quotes (many of them as contradictory as Nixon's in I Want to Make One Thing Perfectly Clear) and at Brown's failed attempts to try not to talk about his own experiences or personally attack Reagan.  But as I went on, I got pissed off at Reagan, just like in the old days!  Yes, Brown is biased, understandably, and it is funny when he can't help praising Reagan's successor, none other than Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr.  But I can't help it, Brown is right that Reagan was callous, particularly towards the poor.  I do disagree with the back cover quote, that "Ronald Reagan's election to the Presidency would be a national disaster."  It was more like an international disaster.

Reagan didn't get the nomination in '76, but that was probably just as well for him.  By '80, the wounds of Watergate were partially healed, so a Republican could be elected president, especially one as charismatic as Reagan.  And his time as governor was an accurate preview, except that Brown couldn't have predicted how much Reagan's anti-feminism would grow.  I wish this book was longer and went into more detail, but as it is, it's still a good early look at a candidate that Brown himself didn't take seriously enough back in '66.