(Many Reagan stories) illustrate what his fans and defenders might call typical Reagan, the mix of determination and optimism that led him to Hollywood, California’s governor’s mansion and the White House, ultimately making him an icon for conservatives.
The region where Reagan grew up — defined by the towns where his salesman father, Jack Reagan, could land a job — gave him a sense of what Reagan biographer Lou Cannon calls rootedness, while his mother, Nelle Reagan, saw to it that he viewed his glass as at least half full.
“Even the experience that was the most searing in his boyhood, which was his father’s drinking, it was almost relentlessly positive what she was saying to him,” said Cannon, who has written five books on Reagan and covered him as White House correspondent for the Washington Post. “‘It’s a sickness, don’t blame your father.’”
The reality? It's in this book http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Sold-World-Betrayal/dp/1568584423/ref=cm_cr-mr-title, The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America
From my review:
Since a lot of conservatives like to claim Reagan did so much to help small towns' Main Street, and since Reagan himself pitched myths about that, Kleinknecht starts the book off with a brilliant conceit.
He actually visits Reagan's small-town birthplace of Dixon, Ill., and talks to people there about how it has changed since 1980. That includes people who say they'll only talk to him if not asked to comment negatively on Reagan - which is, itself, an indirect negative comment on Reagan!
Kleinknecht then supplements that with data from the Department of Labor, Department of Commerce, etc., showing just what Reagan did do to, and NOT "for," Dixon and by extension, other small towns.
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