‘After a day of listening to Washington pundits praise the 90-year-old
Ronald Reagan as a “hero” — a verdict delivered with no discernible
dissent — we have decided to repost three past articles about the 40th
U.S. president: his real deeds and his real legacy.’ Consortium News And in Rehearsals for a Lead Role, the Washington Post writer proclaims that “Ronald Reagan was a liberal, an actor, a labor chief — but some unscripted plot twists forged a new character.”

Still, there persists the caricature of Reagan as a B-movie actor who used the talents he honed on soundstages in Burbank to attain high office where he stumbled into the end of the Cold War. Even his conservative supporters have perpetuated this view. Reagan national security adviser Robert McFarlane once remarked, “He knows so little and accomplishes so much.”

But a close review of the historical record, and recent interviews with those who knew Reagan best during the 1940s and ’50s, show a man profoundly affected by his experiences as a movie star and six-term president of the Screen Actors Guild. He emerges as a complex individual who — through what he once described as intense “philosophical combat” — changed his political ideology. Contrary to assertions (which Reagan himself often encouraged) that he became a Republican because the Democratic Party abandoned him, Reagan actually went from being a staunch liberal who participated in Communist front groups to a stalwart anti-communist because of his firsthand experiences dealing with Communist Party members. Washington Post