The Right Moment.(Review)

The Right Moment By Matthew Dallek Free Press, 320 pages, $25

The Right Moment may be the seminal work on Reagan s first gubernatorial campaign. This much is certain: Matthew Dallek grasps the long-term importance of those early Reagan years and understands that Reagan personally was a vital, irreplaceable force within that period, and thus far beyond as well. This book, which was Dallek's doctoral dissertation at Columbia, will help shape the historical view of Ronald Reagan. It will do so to Reagan's advantage.

The book has its problems. Dallek is a liberal, and that bias leads him to occasionally misstate things. For example, prior to the gubernatorial run, Dallek says few California politicians were as "shrill and radical in their political beliefs" as Reagan. He follows with a quote from a Reagan speech in January 1962, that isn't especially shrill or radical. Of communism, Reagan asserted: "Whether we admit it or not, we are in a war. This war was declared a half-century ago by Karl Marx and re-affirmed by Lenin when he said that communism and capitalism cannot exist side by side." Reagan would be labeled shrill and radical in the 1980s when he made such statements. In reality, however, his 1962 assessment was correct. Far from radical, Reagan was bold and insightful. In that same vein, Dallek uses phrases like "excoriated," "mocked, and thundered ominously" to describe when Reagan merely defended himself and conservative ideals against attacks from liberal Rockefeller Republicans. That crowd made unfair, harsh charges against Reagan, once viciously (without merit) accusing him of racism--an attack so unfair that it sent Reagan charging off the stage cursing.

By and large, Dallek does a good job describing Reagan's beliefs and much of the conservatism of the time. He is quite fair, unusually so for a liberal scholar. Indeed, a big story here is that a major work by a rising liberal academic, one endorsed by top liberal academics like Alan Brinkley and William Leuchtenburg, is so fair and positive. This is the kind of work that will enhance Reagan's reputation among those who rank Presidents and who determine, for better or worse, how "history" remembers them.

The book's contribution is its focus on Reagan's early political career, where it breaks new ground. This period has been neglected. Not until this book did anyone comprehend the gravity of what Reagan did from roughly 1962-67. He was responsible, as much as or more so than anyone else, for the dominant new era in American politics, the conservative ascendancy that captured the last quarter of the ...