Light of the Right

One of the more disappointing episodes in the recent history of political books occurred in 1999, when the long-awaited authorized biography of Ronald Reagan, Dutch, was published. Its author, Edmund Morris, had been granted extensive access to the former president, in large part by virtue of his exceptional biography of Theodore Roosevelt. Fourteen years lapsed between the project’s commissioning and its publication – which was an enormous disappointment. Morris had found Reagan dull and inscrutable, so, to spice up the biography, he created a fictional alter ego who was an occasional participant in the book’s events. One reviewer called it “the most disappointing book of the decade”, another “an act of bad faith”. It was certainly a wasted opportunity.