Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War

I just started reading and am looking forward to complete. I am simply amazed at Fitzgerald’s talent as a writer. Her prose is top shelf. Rare to find an author with this engaging and competent style.

Reading this book, my overriding thought was, "Thank God for the Balance of Powers!" It is not a big national security secret that Ronald Reagan is a likeable guy. Despite what other reviewers imply, I did not get the impression that FitzGerald dislikes the former president or is out to belittle or poke fun at him. In places, her portrait of the man is even endearing. Where she does point out his shortcomings, she uses documented quotations from those who worked in the Reagan White House or on his campaigns. I can't see how that is controversial, especially since all of the critical comments she relates are from conservatives. Reagan may have had a hands-off management style, but clearly he was a shrewd politician. As an actor, he knew the power of image, and how to use it. Reagan also had a genius for making the small move that gave big returns, like the "impromptu" fireside chat at Geneva with Gorbachev. FitzGerald relates these events but underplays Reagan's good moves and emphasizes his disinterest in policy and micromanagment. Carter micromanaged and I can't say America was better for it.It's interesting to me that the reviews here are of a piece with the on going debate over military and nuclear strategy. Some claim that FitzGerald doesn't know the subject. FitzGerald herself often claims that many of the principal policy makers in the story didn't know the subject. The game rule seems to be that anyone who doesn't share your opinion doesn't know what he or she is talking about and is a radical of the opposite camp.Of the cast of characters, the US Congress, particularly Sen. Sam Nunn and Rep. Les Apin come off best. On the White House team, George Shultz appears as a reasonable and decent man, probably the best of the bunch. Cap Weinberger seems an insecure bulldog who doesn't think much for himself. Paul Nitze is more human than I remember him. Richard Perle, well, is Richard Perle; and Bill Casey is the American Brezhnev: an old Cold Warrior who was not keeping up with the times. Lastly, George Bush is largely quiet and off camera (doing God knows what).In retrospect all this blather about arms control came to naught. The Soviet Union imploded from its own dead economic weight. It had nothing to do with the arms race. SDI would have been no help on September 11th. Nor would it be any help against chemical or biological weapons. (Ironically, Reagan gave $300 million, arms and training to the dogs that returned to bite America's hand: the Afghan mujaheddin, and their leader Osama Bin Laden. So much for defense.)My opinion (fwiw): SDI is a boondoggle. Still is. It will never stop a terrorist. It will only stop domestic programs, create budget deficits and (listen up you conservatives!) cause Congress to raise our taxes to pay for it (for which Bush, Sr. was denied re-election). The only real reason I can see to support SDI is if you are a defense contractor. Profit is good, but let's be honest about our motives.The book is timely for today,

First.....don't listen to any right-wing types who try to portray Frances Fitzgerald as some sort of liberal hack. Second.....buy this book and read it. "Way Out There in the Blue" is an amazingly detailed and straightforward discussion of the Reagan Administration and its foreign policy, specifically in regard to nuclear weapons, anti-missle defense, and strategic arms limitation. While it is true that Fitzgerald has no love for throwing money away on unproven and impractical defense schemes, the book is a fascinating depiction of the chaos and back-stabbing within the Reagan Administration, an administration in which policy advisors were left to make policy and defend their turf because the president would not or could not assert any leadership. As John Sears has said, Reagan's detachment gave his staff enormous powers. "You could do almost anything you wanted and you didn't have to check with anybody. You could do all these amazing things...Reagan wasn't involved...." Although different in focus, this book is far superior to Morris' "Dutch" in its grasp of the real Ronald Reagan.Third, the depictions of Ronald Reagan (despite what his worshippers on the Right may claim) are not those of Fitzgerald, but are the commentaries made by those within the Reagan Administration itself, the people who had to work intimately with him and had to deal with the frustrations of having no leadership at the top. For example; "I had never known anyone so unable to deal with close personal conflict." (Michael Deaver) "There's a generation gap between what Reagan thinks he knows about the world and the reality. His is a kind of 1952 world. He sees the world in black and white terms." (John Sears) "There were a lot of ideal worlds in Reagan's mind, and sometimes he lived in them." (John Sears) In regard to policy decisions, Reagan would say, "That's your business. I'm out here selling it. You tell me." (John Sears) "It's very unusual to have a president who is not interested in policy at all." (Henry Kissinger) "I went all through this reasoning, but he did not understand my investment strategy. For him the idea of anti-missle defenses had an appeal in itself. My own concepts for leveraging Soviet behavior were lost on him." (Robert McFarlane) "I feel you people are leading the president out on a limb." (George Shultz) "Reagan totally believed in the science-fiction solution he had proposed without consultation with his secretary of state or his secretary of defense...." (Lou Cannon) "He was never the initiator." (Helene von Damn) "He made no demands, and gave almost no instructions. Essentially, he just responded to whatever was brought to his attention.... At times he would just change the subject, maybe tell a funny story...." (Martin Anderson) Reagan "chose his aides and then followed their advice almost without question. He listened, acquiesced, played his role and waited for the next act to be written." (Donald Regan) "An imperceptible bobbing of Reagan's he

Having read Ms Fitzgerald's well researched account of the history of Reagan's SDI initiative, I came away with awareness of the naivete of our former president's ill conceived proposal to build a shield offering total protection against the intrusion of an atomic weapon. To be sure her account is going to rattle Reagan idolaters, (as is obvious from some of the one star customer's reviews), but anyone who approaches this crucial policy question with an open mind will be impressed by Ms Fitzgerald's documentation, research and candid findings. Frankly,there is no book which can hold a candle to it. When all is said and done, former President Reagan, a man short on scientific knowledge but able to deliver prepared remarks in a convincing tone, stands before us like the Emperor who was not wearing any clothes.

The more I read into this book, the more fascinated I became by Frances FitzGerald's portrayal of Ronald Reagan as a man others have mis-defined. She describes how wonderfully Reagan represented the American can-do story, spirit, and roots, then tapped into it to become president, and then represented it in developing the Strategic Defense Initiative. That SDI, the missile shield, then took on an expensive ($60 billion so far) and, thus far, successful political life of its own without very much technical success to show for itself, is as intriguing (if depressing) alook at Washington politics as one can find. This book isn't the polemic that some conservatives are so quick to call it. From careful reading, I see not the author's criticisms or conclusions but her reporting of other peoples'-- including those in the Pentagon, CIA and the defense diaspora. This is thorough reporting, not book-length punditry. Having remembered Ms. FitzGerald's Vietnam book, "Fire in the Lake" as anti-war book, I re-read it to find a study of Vietnamese society that was just as thoroughly researched. Dismissing her as a left-winger is dangerous. I did a little research and discovered that her father used to be Deputy Director of the CIA.

At 592 pages, this book was more about Reagan himself, althought the context was the Star Wars project and the Cold War. I wanted to read it though because from browsing a few pages of the book in the bookstore, I knew that the book could not be any worse than Dutch, a poorly written book that should be displayed only as an example of what not to do when writing a presidential biography. Although the author does poke fun at the monumental waste of Star Wars, a small comfort to me and my spent tax dollars, the author does give the Reagan credit for winning the Cold War. There a lot of interesting stories in this book that you cannot find in the dry history textbooks my child complains about reading. The prose is crisp and clean and the author stays on track. In short, Way Out There in the Blue is a book with substance and content that most anyone can read. I hope you find it as entertaining as I did.