Poor Reagan was the only president to religiously keep a diary every single day. When it was published critics received it as a mild disappointment seeing it as too pedestrian. The only example I remember was that upon meeting Mother Teresa Reagan wrote “quite a little lady.” Reagan was no Carl Sagan or Thomas Mann or Proust nor a Camus. They say that after he miraculously survived an assassin’s bullet he became convinced that he was spared by God’s special will to be an instrument for great change. At least Reagan took his job and himself seriously even if his take was a bit naive and idealistic.
King Solomon said it all in a nutshell in the Old Testament when he said (more or less paraphrasing) that everything happens by chance and random circumstance; so therefore a righteous man such as Job suffers while the wicked spread their evil arms of power “as a greenbay tree” (Psalms.) Even Jesus brings up the collapse of the tower of Siloam in which 18 people died
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Siloam
hinting that there was no causal relation between their sinfulness or virtue and their untimely end. We may contrast this view of the universe as random chance with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_of_San_Luis_Rey Thornton
Wilder’s novel where some underlying logic is sought in the lives of the victims.
