Its a review about this product
Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy (Paperback) For anyone who questions the anointing of Ronald Reagan as one of the greatest presidents in American history, this book provides ample evidence of an effort to manufacture a legacy beyond what he deserved. Journalist Will Bunch, and don't forget that this is a work of journalism and not of history, begins by asking why there are so many Ronald Reagan buildings, roads, etc., and argues that it is the result of a conscious effort to enhance Reagan's legacy by political operatives within the Republican Party. He then proceeds to analyze the claims made on behalf of Ronald Reagan, usually finding them overblown at best and fallacious at worst.
The most significant claim is that Ronald Reagan won the cold war, after 40 years of stalemate. His famous statement at the Berlin Wall in 1987, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," was eloquent but belied a subsuming set of initiatives on both sides and a crippling set of weaknesses in the Soviet Union that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was far from a magical event. Anyone seriously studying the subject realizes that the Soviet Union collapsed for internal reasons ranging from economic crisis to imperial overstretch to the incursion of knowledge that a better future might be achieved by pursuing a different political agenda more in synch with rather than in tension with the West. Mikhail Gorbachev was forced to pursue the new policies of glasnost and perestroika and in the process dismantled the Soviet empire and ended communism. Although no one person was responsible for this turning point, Gorbachev deserves much of the credit for transformations in the Soviet Union, especially its demise without a death struggle.
That is not to say that Reagan played no role. Both Bunch and numerous historians have observed that Reagan was astute to allow the internal situation in the Soviet Union to play out, that he was also helpful to the process by working with Gorbachev on arms control and the reduction of nuclear weapons. A legitimate claim to effectiveness for Reagan in this instance, however, is subverted by an outrageous claim on his behalf. Outrageous because it rests on the most egregious of all historians' fallacies, that of causation, especially "post hoc, ergo propter hoc," Latin for "after this, because of this." It is, according to David Hackett Fischer "the mistaken idea that if event B happened after event A, it happened because of event A" (David Hackett Fischer, "Historian's Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought" [New York: Harper, 1970], p. 166). Many events follow sequential patterns without being causally related. Historians commit the Post Hoc Fallacy whenever they assert a causal conclusion based solely on the supposed cause preceding its "effect." Assigning Reagan credit for ending the cold war because he talked tough is a stellar example of the Post Hoc Fallacy, as the case must always be made on the basis of the most circumstantial, and perhaps nonexistent, relationships.
Then there are the discussions of Reagan's economic policies, his tax and monetary policies, regulatory stance, and his emphasis on values and virtue. Will Bunch also spends considerable time on the Iran-Contra affair, a subject that has not received the attention that it deserves. He takes aim at them as well.
While I find "Tear Down This Myth" a useful corrective to all of the chattering about Ronald Reagan as saint, it was repetitious, sometimes pedantic, and too often given to hyperbole. Don't get me wrong, politically I agree with Bunch. As an historian, however, I would have liked a more judicious and dispassionate analysis. "Tear Down This Myth" has more of a patina of advocacy than of historical scholarship. It is, I believe, an important start in the scholarly analysis of Reagan administration in the U.S. in the 1980s, but it is a long way from being the ending point. Bunch has contributed a useful, thought provoking account, one that will serve as a major demarkation for future investigation.
