Biographer Richard Reeves examines President Reagan, a masterful rhetorician

Wichita Eagle | 01/22/2006 | Biographer Richard Reeves examines President Reagan, a masterful rhetorician:

"Did Reagan's brainy White House staff members manipulate him? No way, Reeves says. As White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III commented, 'He treats us all the same, as hired help.' A later chief of staff, Donald Regan, told Reeves that everybody working in the White House 'thought he was smarter than the president.' Reeves responded, 'Including you?' Regan's reply: 'Especially me.' But it was Reagan, not Baker or Regan, who managed to persuade power brokers to more than double the federal tax dollars devoted to the military, to decrease taxation of the wealthy, and to substantially neutralize the Soviet Union's influence in a worldwide Cold War."