The first full-dress, generally sympathetic biography of the 40th president of the United States is prefaced by the author's declaration: "... I like and respect Ronald Reagan while remaining skeptical that his actions will achieve the results he intends." A considerable majority of Americans, if we are to believe the polls, have shared that view—and many still do, even though the election results at midterm indicated that the amiable Californian's personal popularity was no longer impervious to declining confidence in his programs and policies.

Mr. Reagan's remarkable career is the sum of such contradictions. His political appeal is populist, yet his life style is unabashedly elitist and his philosophy archconservative; he came to fame as a crusader against the Left, but the rightwing ideologues who hailed him as a candidate have found him less than satisfactory in office. "His ignorance was his armor, shielding him from the harsh realities which might have discouraged some of his boldest initiatives&.hellip;," Lou Cannon writes in Reagan. "Reaganomics was less a program than a joyous secular theology not susceptible to examination by statistical data. Reagan believed in Reaganomics and was convinced that his untried combination of programs would lead to a new prosperity. The Reagan inner circle believed in Reagan. And the others, whether believers or not, went along."

Under the circumstances it is understandable that there has not yet been a coherent political debate on the radical changes foreshadowed by the administration's shifts in budgetary priority. But, whether they hailed the new dispensation or deplored it, most economists agreed with the Nobel