"Why him?" Garry Wills says that was the question most often asked him when people found out that John Wayne [right] was the subject of his latest project. People understood why he wrote about Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan, but why John Wayne - he was just an actor?

Even a casual dowser of twentieth century America realizes John Wayne was much more than just an actor. In John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity, Garry Wills demonstrates Wayne was not like other actors who held political beliefs. "He embodied a politics." "It was a politics of large meanings," Wills writes, "not of little policies - a politics of gender (masculine), ideology (patriotism), character (self-reliance), and responsibility." And, I might add, of right and of wrong.

Wills claims he sets out to "trace the history of 'John Wayne' as an idea, not of John Wayne (or Marion Morrison) the man." But in fact Wills sets out to defame the "idea" as well as the "man." John Wayne's America is strewn with inconsistencies and blatant contradictions for the simple fact that Garry Wills cannot escape the reality that Wayne the "idea" and Wayne the "man" are inseparably intertwined.

Really, Wills grasps at straws throughout his book. Wayne "'put on' his cowboy persona, learned to say 'ain't,' and feigned a liking for horses." To top it off, Wayne never served in World War II. Wills comes close to calling Wayne a draft dodger (though he was never drafted) because he did not enlist after Pearl Harbor -- after all, he was only thirty - four and married with four small children, the typical serviceman. All of this is supposed to prove something, but as far as I can tell it proves nothing.

Perhaps it is because Wayne never served in the War that it is so vexatious to Wills that Sands of Iwo Jima and Sergeant Stryker (Wayne's character) were successes. It wasn't factual, Wills whines - it glorifies the second Suribachi flag raising and ignores the first. One must of course remind oneself that Sands of Iwo Jima wasn't a documentary. No matter, "The movie merged the legend of the Marines and the legend of John Wayne," Wills laments. "From now on, the man who evaded World War II service would be the symbolic man who won World War II. Its contagious delusions were registered not only in the lives of Ron Kovic, Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, and Oliver North, but of countless unknown Wayne surrogates who strut about with a need to be tough, to think of life as warfare."

Wills avers that by "'winning the World War II' in 1949 [in Sands], Wayne was really waging the Cold War." In many respects Garry Wills is correct; however, he seems incapable of forgiving (as though there is anything to forgive) Wayne's crusade against Communism, so he disparages Wayne's credentials. "From 1938 to 1947," Wills points out, "Wayne's name does not appear on any side of the struggle. A noncombatant during the physical shooting of World War II, he was also a noncombatant in the ideological war." The ideological war, Mr. Wills, was over Fascism not Communism.

Nevertheless John Wayne became president of the Motion Picture Alliance in 1948, an organization that cooperated with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Wills accuses the Alliance of blacklisting people. "There was no blacklisting at that time," Wayne assures. "The only thing our side did that was anywhere near blacklisting was just running a lot of people out of the business."

Wayne later said, "The Alliance thing was used pretty strongly against me in those days." Wills scoffs at that idea. The left would never begrudge those who led the fight against Communism, would they?

But John Wayne's biggest contribution to the anti-Communist crusade came during the 1960s when he produced and directed The Alamo and The Green Berets. These were two films he felt he had to do for his country.

The message of self-sacrifice for the cause of right was shown in The Alamo. Wayne's character, Davy Crockett, established this. "When I came down to Texas, I was looking for something, I didn't know what. . . . Had me some money, had me some medals; but none of it seemed a lifetime worth the pain of the mother that bore me. It's like I was empty. Well, I'm not empty anymore. That's what's important. I feel useful in this old world - to hit a lick for what's wrong, or to say a word for what's right, even though you get walloped for saying that word. There's right and there's wrong, you gotta do one or the other. You do the one and you're living, you do the other and you may be walking around but you're as dead as a beaver hat."

In The Green Berets, Wayne tried to show, in his own words, "a brave little country defend[ing] herself against [a] Communist invasion." He tried to show the atrocities that the Vietcong were perpetrating every day. He tried showing what a good job "our boys . . . were doing." He tried to show that Vietnam was a noble cause.

When asking President Johnson for Defense Department aid in making the movie John Wayne quoted The Alamo. "Perhaps you remember the scene from The Alamo, when one of Davy Crockett's Tennesseans said: 'What are we doing here in Texas fighting - it ain't our ox that's getting gored.' Crockett replied: 'Talkin' about whose ox gets gored, figure this: a fella gets in the habit of gorin' oxes, it whets his appetite. May gore yours next.' Unquote. And we don't want people like Kosygin, Mao Tse-tung, or the like, 'gorin' our oxes.'"

Needless to say, Wayne got lambasted by Garry Wills and the critics for The Alamo and The Green Berets. Wills points out the historical discrepancies in The Alamo and says that Wayne was miscast in The Green Berets. In 1968, The New York Times called the latter, "vile and insane." Wills calls it a "propaganda film" and a "make-believe. . . . memory of American greatness."

Irrespective of Garry Wills' venom, and that of the liberal establishment, John Wayne remains America's favorite movie star eighteen years after his death. That is a tribute not to a myth, but to a man. A man who loved his country and demonstrated what it meant to be an American.

John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity is readable, provocative and iconoclastic. It tries to tear down THE American. It cannot, because, in Ronald Reagan's words, "There is no one who more exemplifies the devotion to our country, its goodness, its industry and its strengths than John Wayne."