Reagan the actor was in charge
The truth is, as his various biographies show, Reagan was chosen by calculating power-hungry businessmen because he was an actor with a photographic memory who could be trusted to issue carefully-scripted soundbites, first for General Electric, and then to help the Republican Party to gain two terms in California and in Washington.
Gifted with a photographic memory, he was also so burdened by it that he was the political equivalent of a ventriloquist's dummy.
