From Ronald Reagan’s entry in his diary for Sunday, February 1st, 1987:

Colin Powell called. In Teheran the Iranians arrested an American press man (Wall Street Journal) took his passport, accused him of being a Zionist spy & threw him in jail. He’s a Roman Catholic. I’m ready to kidnap the Khomeini.

I came across that entry while browsing through the new book, "The Reagan Diaries," which, to be honest, contains largely quite dry accountings of the events of each day during his presidency. Certainly, Ronnie comes across as being just the man he seemed to be: sincere, good-humored and gifted with a great and a stoic character. His humility is perhaps the most striking thing to emanate from the diary pages. However, I don’t think that this particular book is going to galvanize anybody. It’s very useful for historians, and a nice thing to have for dedicated admirers of the man, but it doesn’t illustrate his thought processes or beliefs as much as it just demontrates that this really was him — even in the most informal and private setting of his diary, he was the same man. The actor wasn’t acting.

The book "Reagan In His Own Hand," a collection of radio addresses which he himself wrote between 1975 and 1979, is far better at illuminating what he believed and why he believed it, because the purpose of each address was to make the case for one thing or another to a radio audience. It is therefore argumentative, though unfailingly charming.

In his diary, Reagan was arguing with no one, but was leaving a gift for posterity all the same. In a way, he was by-passing the middle-man once again — leaving a plain-spoken record of his presidency for history which will forever be a source of frustration to those revisionists looking to prove some perverse theory of their own.

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Addendum: And thanks to Lisa Ann who e-mails to recommend "I Love You, Ronnie: The Letters of Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan", for a glimpse into “the man’s true soul.”

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