Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  “Political critics characterize him as banal and shallow, a mouther of right-wing platitudes, delight in recalling that he co-starred with a chimpanzee in ’Bedtime for Bonzo,’ ” said a prince among Washington’s Beautiful People, Howell Raines of the New York Times.27

  The Style section of the Post was even harder on Mrs. Reagan.

  Within a short time, Mrs. Reagan was telling jokes in private at the expense of the media, including her personal favorite. Playing on the long established stereotypes of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, Mrs. Reagan would ask her guests if they know how each would report the impending end of the world. “The headline of the New York Times would say, ’World Ends Tomorrow. See page 37 A for details.’ And the headline of the Wall Street Journal would say, ’World Ends! Stocks Plunge!’ and the headline of the Washington Post would say, ’World Ends Tomorrow. Poor and Minorities Hardest Hit.’ ” Mrs. Reagan always got big laughs at her tweaking of the unctuous Post.

  The attempted obliteration or rewriting of Ronald Reagan and his legacy continues. Many in the mass media and academia continue the assault on the legacy, attacking both Reagan personally and his accomplishments. Liberals like Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia have vowed for years to take the Gipper’s name off of the airport there, and Congresswoman Dina Titus of Nevada has been working overtime to prevent a mountain there from being named after Reagan, even as dozens of mountains throughout the United States are named after other presidents.

  What is remarkable about Moran and Titus is their un-remarkableness. Both came from the casting call for clichéd, knee-jerk liberals. A pattern emerges. The more unoriginal the liberal, the more calumny they heap on Reagan’s legacy. Some have gone so far as to call him an occultist and during the frenzy over the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of JFK, two enterprising conspiracy theorists suggested that because Reagan had given a speech critical of Kennedy’s policies, this somehow contributed to a “right wing climate of hate” that inspired the pro-Soviet, pro-Castro, procommunist Lee Harvey Oswald to pull the trigger.

  Reagan haters have falsely smeared him so many times, it bears reminding that even years after his death Reagan still stirs passions. But some more remarkable on the Left such as Mikhail Gorbachev praised Reagan even as he was bringing Gorbachev and the collectivist state of the Soviet Union to its knees.

  Few can underestimate the personal relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev. When he was being briefed for the summit in Geneva, Reagan started asking Dimitri Simes about Russian soccer and Simes thought to himself, “This was not a good use of his time.” But afterward, Gorbachev told his people how impressed he was with Reagan because he even knew Gorbachev’s favorite players. After that meeting, Gorbachev told people he’d “underestimated” Reagan.28 The Soviets—who know about such things—said the American media vastly underestimated Reagan’s negotiating skills.

  The contempt among the elites for Reagan is national and international. Millions across the globe live in freedom because of him and yet Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for losing the Cold War. This was akin to Cornwallis being given the game ball even though Washington beat him at Yorktown. However, Reagan’s reward was more long lasting than a simple medallion gathering dust in a forgotten antechamber.

  Reagan from a longer perspective is important. History up close is often myopic. After their tours of duty, aides such as Larry Speakes and Don Regan wrote books about Reagan that were sometimes harsh and imbalanced.

  He remains one of the most misunderstood men in American politics. The week of the Reagan funeral, guest after guest on the cable and network shows fell back on the he-was-a-nice-guy-who-told-funny-jokes oratory. Of course, he had a sense of humor, best when it was aimed at himself. “Preparing me for a press conference was like reinventing the wheel. It’s not true. I was around when the wheel was invented, and it was easier.”29 Years before he told an audience that Al Smith was once an actor. “What a president he would have made!”30

  His humor goes to the deeper issue of his character and geniality though he had a temper, too, and was known to swear although almost never take the Lord’s name in vain. That was another commandment he abided by. Dr. Kiron Skinner, who edited several important books of Reagan’s correspondence, understood the man as well as anyone and better than most. “I think there’s a political evolution between 1975 and 1979. And you see his ideas and his themes becoming increasingly more sophisticated over time. His understanding of the Cold War, of the Soviet Union, of U.S. grand strategy, of the economic challenges. He becomes increasingly more sophisticated, and thoughtful, and elegantly reductionist over those years.”

  Concerning his views on the Soviets she said, “They seemed like heresy at the time. Many Sovietologists disagreed straight through his presidency until the Soviet Union fell apart.”31 Reagan, she said, believed the American system was economically, technologically, and spiritually superior to the Soviet system. Part of his new sophistication was an understanding that to defeat the Soviets the United States had to defeat the Soviet system, not the Soviet people.

  A former Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov confirmed Dr. Skinner’s views. “Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal. Reagan’s SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] was a very successful blackmail. The Soviet Union tried to keep up pace with the U.S. military buildup, but the Soviet economy couldn’t endure such competition.”32

  Unlike his hero Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan was able to see the world he’d changed and made infinitely better. Roosevelt—and Winston Churchill—truly saved the world by leading the Allies in the defeat of the evil of Nazism and Japanese Imperialism. The Soviet Union was no less evil, but while FDR passed away in April 1945, just weeks before the German surrender and months before the Japanese surrender, Reagan was able to witness shortly after his presidency the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism. The wall fell and the evil empire surrendered because of Reagan, and he knew it and was proud of it.

  Ron Pearson, an official with the Young America’s Foundation and lifetime Reaganite, said,

  President Reagan’s love of his Rancho del Cielo shows how he was a practical man and solid conservative. His working the land shows his love of the land and the importance to him of individual responsibility from building fences on his ranch to clearing brush. For Reagan his love of his ranch was much like his love of the United States: places to preserve, protect and improve.33

  The ranch was no act for Reagan, despite the critics. He did some of his “best thinking” there, said longtime aide Peter Hannaford.34

  He was pro-life and said so repeatedly. He wrote an essay in 1983, “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation,” that spelled out in crisp and concise detail why he believed in life. He quoted the British philosopher Malcolm Muggeridge who said, “However low it flickers or fiercely burns, it is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives ever so humane and enlightened.” It was overlooked in his famous “Evil Empire” speech, but in addition to denouncing the Soviet Union, he also denounced abortion in America. After his presidency, he confided to his old friend Bill Clark that he wished he could have done more to advance the pro-life cause during his presidency.35 Let there be no mistake: Reagan believed in the sanctity of all human life.

  John Hinckley was never sentenced to death or a prison term because he successfully mounted an “innocent by reason of insanity” defense. So he was institutionalized at what was once known as the St. Elizabeth’s Government Hospital for the Insane. Hinckley, thirty-four years after the attempt on Reagan’s life, continually and successfully petitioned the court, which granted him more and more freedom. Hinckley was never declared cured, never showed any re
morse, and to this day is still obsessed with actress Jodie Foster. Further, Hinckley was caught lying to his psychiatrists over seeing prohibited movies and was only caught because he’d been under surveillance by the Secret Service. All this in the face of letters signed previously by Mrs. Reagan asking that Hinckley not be granted parole, calling his actions “atrocious.”36

  Where does Reagan rank in the history of the American presidency? Most polls of university professors are dubious because they have become so politicized that some ranked Barack Obama higher than Reagan, even though Obama had only been in office a couple of years. When Reagan left office, a 1990 Siena Research Institute sampling of professors and historians put Reagan twenty-second out of forty, in the bottom half. But twelve years later—after the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton—these same academics placed the Gipper at sixteenth, a giant leap forward.37 Even so, this only puts him in the middle of the pack. Most academic polls are useless because the professors are hopelessly liberal and anti-intellectual.

  But according to liberal historian John Patrick Diggins, Reagan was one of the four greatest presidents because like Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, Reagan saved or freed many, many people. James MacGregor Burns, a leading FDR historian, said he would put Reagan in the great or near-great category.

  Presidents are often known for their famous lines—government is a “terrible master”; “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights”; “four score and seven years ago”; “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself ”; “ask not what your country can do for you.” With Reagan, there are many lines associated with him, etched deeply in the American psyche, from “you and I have a rendezvous with destiny . . .” to “community of shared values” to “there you go again” to “government is the problem” to “There is no question I am an idealist, which is another way of saying I am an American” to “Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall!”

  As has been noted by historians, the true measure of a great president is whether the problems he was elected to solve still existed at the end of his term of office. When Reagan was elected inflation was out of control, interest rates were out of control, the economy was spiraling down, the national mood was described as a “malaise,” and the West was losing the Cold War to the East.

  When he left office, inflation had been all but eliminated, interest rates were low, the economy was booming, unemployment was at 5.4 percent,38 gasoline prices had fallen dramatically, the national mood was confident once again, and the Soviet Union was in the final stages of losing the Cold War. “Ronald Reagan needs no one to sing his praises,” said Antonin Scalia.39 And yet thousands and maybe millions did.

  “They wrote Truman off as a little haberdasher from Missouri and they wrote Reagan off as a B-grade actor, but in reality both have done a huge amount to lock in the freedoms that so many countless tens of millions . . . take for granted around the world,” said John Anderson, Australian transportation minister.40

  French president François Mitterrand told German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, in his best Gallic snobbery but also insight: “This is a man . . . without culture . . . But beneath the surface you find someone who isn’t stupid, who has great good sense and profoundly good intentions. What he does not perceive with his intelligence, he feels by nature.”41

  On the other hand, of the American presidency Mitterrand also said it is not just a job, “it is a role.”42

  And the better ones like Ronald Reagan understood this.

  CRAIG SHIRLEY

  LANCASTER, VIRGINIA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost all gratitude to my wife and my best friend, Zorine, to whom I turn for all advice, all counsel, and all criticism. All I have, all I am, I owe my beloved Zorine. She and our children are my Alpha and Omega. Mitch, Taylor, Andrew, and Matt, thank you.

  Thank you to Mrs. Ronald Reagan for all her support and encouragement. Her letters over the years, kind invitations to participate in Reagan Library events, and making sealed files at the Library available to me for exclusive research purposes has been both tremendous and invaluable, and I am forever grateful.

  Thank you also to John Heubusch, Joanne Drake, Fred Ryan, Melissa Giller, Barbara Garonzik, Kirby Hanson, and Jennifer Mandel of the Reagan Library. They are all wonderful friends, have been very supportive, and are magnificent stewards of the Reagan legacy. I will always be in their debt.

  Thank you to Dr. David Arnold, president of Eureka College, and also John Morris and Mike Murtagh of Eureka for their friendship and appreciation for the importance of Eureka to the development of Reagan. Thank you deeply to Ron Robinson, Frank Donatelli, Andrew Coffin, Ron Pearson, and Marilyn Fisher with the Reagan Ranch, who also cherished the Reagan legacy. Also thanks to Lou Cordia, president of the Reagan Alumni Association Project. And to Mark Joseph and to Mike Reagan, thank you as well. Chuck Muth has been laboring for several years to name a mountain in Nevada after Reagan, but he still found the time to offer advice. Thank you, Chuck.

  Borko Komnenovic has been at my side for years, working tirelessly on all four Reagan books as well as my other books Citizen Newt and December 1941. His dedication is only surpassed by his faith and his patriotism. He has become almost like family to Zorine and me. Thank you, Borko.

  My friends Chris Ashby, Teresa Hartnett, and Bridget Matzie are always there to give valued counsel and advice. Stewart McLaurin is in a category all his own, as are Gay and Stanley Gaines, Joanne Herring, and, of course, my cherished friend and business partner Diana Banister, who is first among equals.

  Lou Cannon, who is as much the official Reagan biographer as anybody, is my friend and my inspiration. Each time we speak I learn something new, and for an historian that is a wonderful thing. Newt Gingrich, to whom I often turn for frank advice, has also been generous with his time and advice. Thank you, Newt.

  A special thank you goes to Candy Gadke Bhappu for her extraordinary research work at the Reagan Library and Foundation. Candy spent a week at the Library, thanks to the gracious support and help of Joanne Drake, going through box after box of confidential files, and came up with terrific heretofore unseen material for this book. I owe her a lot and not just because she is my sister-in-law, but also because Candy is the consummate professional researcher. Thank you, Candy.

  Some of Reagan’s men and women, including Tom Pauken, Jeff Lord, Roger Stone, Ed Meese, Jim Baker, Dick Allen, Stu Spencer, Jim Hooley, Ernie Angelo, Jim Pinkerton, Rick Reed, Pat and MJ Pizzella, Rick Ahearn, Robbie Aiken, Michele Davis, Larry and Judy Kudlow, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Tom Reed, Dennis LeBlanc, Jim Lake, Marty and Annelise Anderson, Ken Cribb, Andrew Littlefair, Gary Foster, Faith Whittlesey, Peggy Noonan, Dan Quiggle, Haley Barbour, Landon Parvin, Becky Norton Dunlop, Ed Feulner, Jim Watt, Don Hodel, Ed Rollins, David Bufkin, Alex Castellanos, Gary Hoitsma, Jim Burnley, Tony Dolan, Jim Pinkerton, Peggy Grande, Stephen Colo, Mark Tapscott, Jim and Linda Cherry, Ken Duberstein, Clark Judge, Robert Higdon, Linda Bond, Karen Roberts, Eileen Doherty, James Kuhn, Mark Weinberg, Cindy Tapscott, and others have been very supportive.

  My publisher Thomas Nelson, ably manned by Brian Hampton, Kristen Parrish, Belinda Bass, Katherine Rowley, and Janene MacIvor, has been just great as have friends and writers Joel Miller, Jed Donahue, John Persinos, Jennifer Harper, Quin Hillyer, Peter Hannaford, Vic Gold, Steve Bannon, Lee Edwards, Howard Fineman, Fred Barnes, Margot Morrell, Fred Barbash, Tucker Carlson, Matt Lewis, Pat Dorinson, Tony Lee, Bill Kristol, Carl Cannon, Jen Kuznicki, and Maureen Mackey.

  Also thanks to historians Jon Meacham, Doug Brinkley, Michael Beschloss, Michael Duffy, Paul Kengor, Jane Hampton Cook, Curtis Patrick, and Kiron Skinner for their friendship. American historical scholarship is better because of them.

  And my family, including my mother,
Barbara Shirley Eckert; my in-laws Roshan and Perin Bhappu; my brother-in-law Ross Bhappu and his and Candy’s daughters, Katie and Elizabeth; my brother and sister-in-law Dan and Soonalyn Jacob and children, Jinnyn, Dan III, Corey, and Raymond; my brother-in-law Manek Bhappu; my sister and brother-in-law Rebecca and Humam Sirhal and their children Michelle, Stephanie, Laura, and Ethan; and my sister-in-law Ellen Shirley and my nephews Nathan, Eric (with his wife, Margaret, and their son Lincoln), and Todd (with his wife, Ruth, and their children Dylan, Evan, Blake, and Timothy); my step-sister and her husband, Elaine and David Eckert. Thank you.

  And in no particular order but all friends, including Paul and Carol Laxalt, Tom Loringer, Adam Laxalt, James Golden, Dick and Lynn Cheney, Gary Maloney, Chris Ruddy, Brent and Norma Bozell, Shannon and Sheldon Bream, Jenny Beth Martin, James Rosen, Georgette Mosbacher, Christian Josi, Bill Pascoe, Ed Jenkins, Callista Gingrich, John Sacharanski, Chuck Todd, Torrance and Buff Harman, Rick and Sue Johnson, Bruce and Rhonda Baker, David Patten, Susan McShane, Jay Test, Mark Allen, Kevin McVicker, Dan Wilson, Tish Leonard, Linda Emery, Ryan Hughes, Mike Rudin, Mike Wagner, Kevin and Chris Kabanuk, Sam Harrod, Peter Wehner, Nikki West, Jim and Sue Scarborough, Tom Cole, Bob and Elizabeth Dole, John McLaughlin, Jim McLaughlin, Pattye and Tom Meagher, Cheri Jacobus, Mark Rosenker, Steven Scully, Neil Freeman, Richard Viguerie, Fred Barbash, Becki Donatelli, Garrett Graff, Tim Hyde, Karen Spencer, Paul Bedard, John Schmidt, Ken Rudin, John Grotta, Grover Norquist, Stuart Stevens, General Galen Jackman, Wayne and Lilly Holland, Jeff and Patty Goodman, Kyle and Stephanie Fugate, Hank and Carol Steininger, Michele Woodward, Kathleen Patten, Dr. Roger Peele, James Rosebush, Larry Cirigano, Fran Coombs, Jennifer Hickey, General P. X. Kelley, Dave and Lynn Swenson, Marc and Kristen Short, Tom and Lyn Finnigan, Jeff and Alethea Haas, Sameer and Shirley Shammas, Jim and Dana Jarvis, Chris and Peggy White, Mary Snyder, Jack and Dorian Schramm, David and Margaret Mary Howell, Charlie Pratt, Mary-Beth Cooper, John White, Fred Eckert, and Karin Andrews.