As I wind up my two weeks on Dangerous Minds, my last two posts consist of my favorite observations by others, offered during his presidency:

“Ronald Reagan is merely an anthology of the worst of American popular culture, edited for television.”
     —Media critic Mark Crispin Miller

“God, he’s a bore. And a bad actor. Besides, he has a low order of intelligence. With a certain cunning. And not animal cunning. Human cunning. Animal cunning is too fine an expression for him. He’s inflated, he’s egotistical. He’s one of those people who thinks he’s right. And he’s not right. He’s not right about anything.”
     —Director John Huston

“I would never refuse an assignment unless it completely repelled me. ... A national magazine asked me to go to Santa Barbara to photograph the President at his ranch. Well, I hate Santa Barbara and, far worse, I hate Reagan. I can’t ignore my feelings and just make a pretty picture.”
     —Photographer/environmentalist Ansel Adams

“It takes deep bravery to be fearless about one’s own hypocrisy. Politicians of average duplicity cower at being found out. Not Reagan.”
     —Columnist Colman McCarthy

“Look at the Reagan of the 1930s: a no-talent jerk with looks, charm, and a line of blarney who talks himself into one cushy job after another ... Then come the 1950s. In return for his manful anti-communistical efforts in the screen actors’ union, the pimps, procurers, and purveyors of popular culture who own stage, screen and radio arrange for him to be paid off with a job selling General Electric toasters on TV and smarmy right-wing politics on the chicken-croquette circuit. How humiliating to think of this unlettered, self-assured bumpkin being our president.”
     —Journalist Nicholas von Hoffman

“If we told Reagan to walk outside, turn around three times, pick up an acorn, and throw it out to the crowd, we’d be lucky to get a question from him asking, ‘Why?’”
     —Unnamed White House aide

“He’s melting. No one’s noticed yet, but he is melting. We’re talking about a semi-solid mass with dark hair. If the Democrats had come out and just said, ‘He’s melting,’ I think they would have done much better.”
     —Actress/writer Carrie Fisher

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.