- Hayward, Steven F.
Greatness.
New York: Crown Forum, 2005.
ISBN 0-307-23715-X.
-
This book, subtitled “Reagan, Churchill, and the Making of
Extraordinary Leaders ”, examines the parallels between the
lives and careers of these two superficially very different
men, in search of the roots of their ability, despite having
both been underestimated and disdained by their
contemporaries (which historical distance has caused many to
forget in the case of Churchill, a fact of which Hayward
usefully reminds the reader), and considered too old for the
challenges facing them when they arrived at the summit of
power.
The beginning of the Cold War was effectively proclaimed
by Churchill's 1946
“Iron Curtain”
speech in Fulton, Missouri, and its end foretold by Reagan's
“Tear
Down this Wall” speech at the Berlin wall in 1987. (Both
speeches are worth reading in their entirety, as they have
much more to say about the world of their times than the
sound bites from them you usually hear.) Interestingly, both
speeches were greeted with scorn, and much of Reagan's staff
considered it fantasy to imagine and an embarrassment to
suggest the Berlin wall falling in the foreseeable future.
Only one chapter of the book is devoted to the Cold War; the
bulk explores the experiences which formed the character of
these men, their self-education in the art of statecraft,
their remarkably similar evolution from youthful liberalism
in domestic policy to stalwart confrontation of external
threats, and their ability to talk over the heads of the
political class directly to the population and instill their
own optimism when so many saw only disaster and decline
ahead for their societies. Unlike the vast majority of their
contemporaries, neither Churchill nor Reagan considered
Communism as something permanent—both believed it would
eventually collapse due to its own, shall we say, internal
contradictions. This short book provides an excellent
insight into how they came to that prophetic conclusion.
January 2006 