My Response to the Reagan Critics and Haters

The makers of our new movie Reagan (based on one of my books on Ronald Reagan) posted a graphic that speaks volumes about the film’s early critics. It quotes various hysterical, disturbing, and frankly kind of deranged assessments torching the film as “wretched,” “ugly,” “execrable,” and “the worst movie of the year.” One review was so unhinged that I actually laughed out loud at its ridiculousness, especially as the reviewer unbelievably rated the film a “1.”

That review itself was like a caricature, a parody of a wild liberal raging at a film that dares to be positive about an American icon who happened to be a conservative Republican. This poor progressive seemed to go barking mad — perhaps he even began barking at the movie screen and causing a ruckus right there in the theater. I wonder if the authorities were summoned. I would assert that the editors who published that review should be ashamed of themselves, but I’m glad they ran it. It exposed the reviewer and the newspaper for the ideologues they are. They shouldn’t be taken seriously. And no, I’m not linking to the review. It’s unnecessary.

Some of the more vicious reviews are so strikingly ill-informed that I can’t imagine the reviewers actually sat through the film. They showed a clear ignorance of the subject they inveigh against.

Particularly baffling, and, in fact, saddening, is that the film’s core message is one so badly needed for our time — for liberals and conservatives alike: that is, unity. To repeat: unity. Positive, unifying UNITY.

I not only studied Ronald Reagan’s 1980s but also lived through the decade. It was a wonderful time, a bygone era when Americans on both sides of the aisle didn’t hate each other’s guts. They found ways to work together. This film seeks to bring that unity to our day. The makers strove to avoid anything resembling cheap political shots at modern Democrats, at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, or, conversely, at Donald Trump. You see in this film. At one point, the liberal Democrat Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, and the conservative Republican president, Ronald Reagan, are literally holding hands, praying, and jostling about having a beer together. They both loved their country. Best of all, those scenes are genuine.

I actually thought that some liberals would embrace the Ronald Reagan of this film as a means of weaponizing it against Donald Trump, informing Americans that in the 1980s there existed a unifying conservative Republican president that everyone liked. I certainly didn’t desire such a weaponization, but I thought it might happen. Alas, some modern leftists don’t appear that smart.

The Daily Beast critic, who dubbed Reagan “the worst movie of the year,” strangely asserted: “You may have suspected that this MAGA-tinged hagiography would be absolute trash, but it turns out you didn’t think low enough.”

That’s an astonishingly ill-informed observation; the reviewer clearly doesn’t understand the differences between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Maybe our pal David French at the New York Times could set him straight, or Bill Kristol. That statement is an ad hominem smear.

One marvels that certain liberal critics seem so consumed by partisanship that they can’t think rationally enough to even exploit the film to their own ideological advantage. Their passions prohibit them from getting there. Instead, they lash out at the latest Republican enemy put before them on their screen: Reagan, bad. Like Trump is bad.

Love That Hate

Some of the angriest reviewers of Reagan seem taken not only by partisanship but by hate. The Reagan filmmakers noted precisely that in their Instagram graphic, writing of the film: “With all this HATE it must be GREAT!”

That graphic is paired with another graphic that’s even more revealing. It notes a dismal 17 percent rating of the film by critics compared to an astounding 98 percent approval by audience members. The latter are the very folks that Ronald Reagan considered the heart and soul of America, whereas the former reflect the sneering judgment of the elite liberal media class.

It’s fitting, actually. The contrast is not unlike the 1980s. Ronald Reagan knew it well. What made him the Great Communicator was his ability to circumvent the biased, partisan mainstream media and speak directly to the American people, not from the distorted print pages, but through the unmanipulated screens in front of them. He came to them through their TV screens directly from the Oval Office, knowing how awfully liberal elites framed him.

The film itself captures this contrast very well.

At one point halfway through the film, namely, rightly before Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, the filmmakers flipped the lid off 1980s activist hell and showed every incendiary attack on Reagan, from nuclear warmonger to AIDS enabler. That montage is shocking to behold. One of my students asked how a man so vilified managed to win 49 of 50 states, nearly 60 percent of the vote, and the Electoral College 525 to 13, receiving millions of votes from Democrats. The answer is that there was always a small percentage filled with rage toward Ronald Reagan and any conservative Republican.

And as we can see today with certain venomous reviews of the Reagan movie, those voices still exist. Yes, even decades after Reagan peacefully won the Cold War and left office with the highest approval of any president since Eisenhower.

In my previous column, I quoted no less than CBS News anchor (and liberal) Walter Cronkite, who marveled: “Ronald Reagan is even more popular than [Franklin] Roosevelt, and I never thought I’d see anyone that well-liked…. Nobody hates Reagan. It’s amazing!”

Well, that wasn’t totally true. There’s always an element of haters, and unfortunately, they’re vocal. Still more unfortunate, there seem to be more hate-filled liberals in the 2020s than in the 1980s.

Why Is a Great Victory “Hagiography?”

With all that said, I want to pause here to calmly address a criticism the film is getting, including from more honest detractors who aren’t merely angry ideologues. It’s a criticism I received regarding my book that this film is based on: The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

The attackers assert that Reagan is hagiographic (“Saint Ronnie,” as the Boston Globe critic zinged it), and a canonization of our protagonist. I’ll respond to that charge by repeating what I said emphatically in defense of my book. Dear critics, please listen carefully:

The film and the book are about Ronald Reagan’s lifelong peaceful crusade to undermine Soviet communism and win the Cold War. He pursued that path when no one else deemed it possible. And at last, by the end of the 1980s, in an epic development for humanity and the cause of freedom, precisely that transpired. It was glorious. Everyone who lived through it was astounded. We had been raised to expect nuclear Armageddon. We got just the opposite by 1989.

That Ronald Reagan helped accomplish such a feat is something not debated among historians. It is almost impossible to find unanimity among historians on anything, but in the case of Reagan and the Cold War, it’s close. Trust me, I know this. I’ve written eight books on the man and I’m a longtime presidential historian consulted in presidential rankings and all that stuff. I could list refereed journal articles I published in the late 1990s and books I edited for publications like Harvard University Press (among others) on the rising consensus among scholars (most of them liberal) that Ronald Reagan unquestionably deserves credit for peacefully winning the Cold War. He’s credited along with Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and others. The Reagan movie commendably grants credit to those other figures. It’s very good to Gorbachev.

What’s the lesson here, dear critics? Well, think about it. It should be obvious.

A movie focused on Ronald Reagan’s lifelong effort to peacefully end the Cold War will be positive. It must be positive because the story is positive. It is a historical reality. This truly is a story with a happy ending. To show that in a film or a book does not constitute “hagiography.”

I’m left wondering how the malcontents would have preferred that we end the film. Should we have fabricated a nuclear Armageddon that never happened? A fictional World War III with the Russkies? The Berlin Wall not falling? Maybe old Dutch Reagan clubbing a homeless guy on the streets of San Francisco?

On the other hand, maybe the left-wing ideologues hating on the film detest its central message of anti-communism. I’m sure they guffawed at the many references to God and at Ronald Reagan’s belief in what he, his mother Nelle, and central characters like Bill Clark called “the Divine Plan.”

They also scoff at the “hagiographic” ending of the film that shows Reagan riding off into the sunset at his Rancho del Cielo while audio plays of him describing his final years of Alzheimer’s disease as “the sunset of my life.” But here too, that actually happened. John Barletta, the Secret Service rider with Reagan in that scene, wrote about it often, including in touching memoirs. And yes, Reagan used that “sunset” description in his November 1994 goodbye letter announcing his Alzheimer’s. The guy was that much of an optimist.

Incidentally, anyone who watches the “hagiographic” film will see ups and downs and peaks and valleys and dark night-of-the-soul moments in Ronald Reagan’s life. It even includes the Iran-Contra scandal, which unfortunately extends the length of the movie and is confusing younger viewers. The fact is that Iran-Contra is a separate issue from the specific matter of Reagan’s multi-pronged effort to take down the USSR. Nonetheless, it was included, surely to show potential critics that the film isn’t completely one-sided.

By and large, the critics blast the film for not highlighting this or that gripe they have about Reagan. But the movie isn’t about their litanies. It aims to stay on message. It’s about Reagan’s crusade to undermine Soviet communism. Professional critics ought not to lambaste a film for being something it was never intended to be. That would be akin to bellyaching that a film about President Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis doesn’t include his womanizing or sending military advisers to Vietnam.

The Haters Hate Unity

I’ll wrap up by returning to the crucial matter of unity.

The movie Reagan offers a rare gift for Americans — liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, political or apolitical. It’s a positive story about a time of genuine unity, a historical account of one of the great triumphs in American history: the peaceful end of the Cold War. That was a good thing. Be happy about it. Like what is good.

But what some critics seem to like (or want) is division. They seem stuck in this awful modern mindset of pitting people in opposing hostile camps. For them, Republicans are the enemy. That makes Ronald Reagan their enemy today, no matter what he did for unity and peaceful victory. Hate on him they must.

I plead with them to journey back to a better time when we didn’t all do that. And when we were led by a good president and good man who didn’t do that either.

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