"Even when he's working, top administration officials describe a disengaged president, who spends one third of his time shaping policy, two thirds on ceremonies and public relations."
"He lives, I think unfortunately, in a world of Norman Rockwell and the Reader's Digest and a world of 40 years ago that he remembers nostalgically, and it's not the real world today."
It was frustrating how woefully incomplete this documentary was about Regan's time as President, 1981-89. Relying exclusively on archival footage, the filmmakers did not exercise good judgement on when to exclude mundane scenes in areas already covered, or understand history enough to broaden the scope of what they were presenting as The Reagan Show. They allowed footage of reporters at the time, such as Sam Donaldson, to ask a few critical questions, but were not at all good at following the threads of these questions, or of asking any themselves. The result is a small taste of the "dumbing down" of American politics, particularly within the Republican Party, but a terrible documentary if you want to learn about this President, or how the decisions he made are relevant today.
Oddest of all was the complete omission of Reagan's domestic policies, focusing on narrow aspects of his foreign policy instead, and the style which leveraged his career as an actor. The main threads followed are (1) Regan's reliance on PR as much or more than digging into the complexity of problems, (2) Reagan's nuclear escalation and SDI ("Star Wars") program under the guise of maintaining the peace, (3) a side journey into the Iran-Contra scandal, and (4) Reagan and Gorbachev ultimately hammering out the INF arms reduction treaty. It ends with a rousing rendition of Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA being performed at the 1988 Republican National Convention, with flags waiving, like a success story.
That's kind of a far cry from the nuance we get glimpses of in seeing Reagan and his team carefully crafting propaganda in ways reminiscent of what they'd criticize was happening in the Soviet Union. Seven years after the Reagan years, the country would of course have its own Pravda in Fox News, which may seem like a digression, but these were the wheels that were set in motion in this period. The documentary was made during the beginning of Trump's presidency, and comparisons to Trump are inevitable, especially when we hear Reagan promising to make America great again, we see how disconnected he was on issues and on vacation quite a bit, and how to him quite a bit of the job was a show. If this was the reason for the documentary's existence, it should have done a much better job at showing how style over substance coupled with conservative policies had real consequences. Seeing him flub John Sununu's name repeatedly while making a campaign spot for him was such a small thing it felt cheap to include, even if it did show the hypocrisy of him espousing lowering government spending.
You wouldn't know it from the documentary that this was hypocritical though. Unfortunately, there is no attempt whatever in at covering Reagan's disastrous "trickle-down" economic policies, tripling the national debt when he said he would balance the budget, and starting the nation off on its long trend towards an enormous wealth gap between rich and poor. There is no mention that to pay for the fantasy of SDI - something Reagan actually believed was operational - he slashed social programs across the board, including the EPA, saying things like "trees produce more air pollution than automobiles". There is no mention of him firing the Air Traffic Controllers, greatly amplifying the trend towards weakening unions in America, or the homophobia evident in his statements on gay people, and blatant disregard for the AIDS crisis. There is no mention of him abolishing the FCC fairness doctrine, which required broadcasters to present differing viewpoints for controversial issues. Even in the realm of foreign policy, missing are his policies in Central America, his aid to Sadaam Hussein in Iraq and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, or his being against sanctions on South Africa for its Apartheid State.
Obviously, a documentary can't cover everything, but there are far too many holes here. Conservatives may dislike this for the embarrassing outtakes they see of a man performing for the cameras, but my god, liberals should dislike it for how shallow it is.
