You report that Barack Obama put a hefty biography of Ronald Regan, known as the Gipper after an early rôle in Hollywood, on his reading list for his Christmas holidays in Hawaii, and you wonder what he can and cannot learn from “Reagan’s blithe spirit” (“Studying the Gipper,” January 8, 2011). All the political and economic parallels you mention, such as the divided Congress and high unemployment, are not very convincing. America was a rather different place three decades ago. As you put it, “Reagan had a simple belief that nothing was impossible in America if only government got out of the way,” in which “he expressed a core conviction of the nation.” In addition, his repugnance of the “evil empire” resulted in a vast hike in military spending directed against the Soviet Union, mirroring another core conviction of the nation. And that was that as far as Reagan was concerned. Or the nation. Now, Obama’s problem is that he is not a simpleton. If there is anything he can learn from Reagan’s blithe spirit, it is that America cannot be guided by simple beliefs any longer. Facing the doldrums in the wake of the Great Recession, swift growth of China and India, as well as rapid climate change, core convictions of the nation will have to change, as well. Simpletons will not get very far in the coming years. Now, how do you get that message across?