reagan was not a great actor maybe old hopalong is not a bad way to describe him in western eyes. but he was a very sophisticated writer and editor. i want to say something about. the importance of academic objectivity at this point. the ideal of it. when i first started writing about reagan more than years ago, the press told me that he was been a bad actor, that he didn't know much, he was a mouthpiece. he was a threat to the world. and he was this radical anti-god, conservative and i studied reagan and i studied reagan. my personal personally, a lifelong liberal democrat. but when i studied reagan, that's not what i found. what i found, as in that editing there, was that reagan was a gifted writer and even a better editor. i found that he was actually not a warmonger, but very afraid of war that. he didn't put forces in danger. i found that he genuinely believed in real arms reductions, and that's why he did a buildup to create leverage that. the funny thing about reagan is he'd learned to negotiate dealing with the studio chiefs in hollywood when was the president of the scree