Of Reagan, Thompson, and Writing

A new book, THE REAGAN DIARIES, will be released on May 22nd.

ABC News has a story on extracts being published in an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair.

The publication in Vanity Fair is rather ironic. While on the one hand the magazine often offers interesting excerpts from new nonfiction books, Vanity Fair has become rabidly left-wing over the last few years, regularly publishing not just critical but downright nasty columns and articles on the Bush Administration. So the choice of this magazine to publicize a book about our greatest conservative President is rather curious.

Regarding President Reagan's writing, the other night I happened to be reading about actor Robert Taylor (a man director William Wellman called "One of the finest men I've ever known") and learned that then-Governor Reagan was a close friend of Taylor's and delivered Taylor's funeral eulogy. Curious, I searched the Internet for further details and came across this lovely 2004 Weekly Standard piece by Fred Barnes, "The Gipper's Eulogies."

Some are comparing Fred Thompson's radio commentaries to those once given by President Reagan. One of Thompson's writers says:

"In fact FDT writes many of his commentaries on his own, and has done the initial drafts on his three, major upcoming political speeches [one of which is the address to the Lincoln Club of Orange County that Thompson will deliver this Friday]. These are his ideas, his words. He gets some help, but not much. He thinks this stuff through carefully, his Federalism article two weeks ago being a [sic] exhibit A."

A former Reagan speechwriter, Peter Robinson, is impressed.