Such an accomplishment - Morris' approach - probably says more about Reagan than any historical recounting could. If we are interested in knowing Ronald Reagan as a man, how he thought, how he grew and how changed to understand, and eventually, how he would come to shape the world, then Morris' approach comes highly recommended. This is, first and foremost, a study of character. The ambitiousness of his work, the sheer gall to flaunt such convention is surely worthy of high praise. If the central short-coming of Ambrose's work on Nixon is a failure to learn about the man himself, then Morris' work suffers from a lack of historically situating Reagan's grand personage.
Perhaps Morris - and Reagan - are right in their estimation of the actor-cum-President's role in the American psyche. Reagan has always existed more in our imaginations than the reality of his actions have formed our opinion of him. The casting of such a character adds a weight of meaning to the performance of Reagan's public life and Presidency. It helps us better understand the world-as-stage ethos that can infuse the biggest of lives. It gives the onset of Reagan's dimentia and alzheimer's a more potent reality and, eventually, allows us to agree that we can never really know him. Morris' analogizes Reagan to the planet Jupiter: a large mass of extreme gravitational force, inexorably altering all objects around it, looming large in the sky, and, eventually, revealed as without center. Ronald Reagan was a point of arrival; a creative novelty of performance at every moment drawing all of us towards him and the world of his creation; whether we wished it or not. Morris seems to think that Reagan never cared to realize this; was never much for introspection. Maybe it all really is just a big picture show.
