An American Life

by Ronald Reagan

  May 22

  Last night the Senate budget bill passed 49 to 43. Now it’s up to the House where there are seven budgets, only one of which is any good . . . they’ll begin voting on them Monday. Ours first, but then according to the rules . . . even if [ours] passes, [it] will be replaced by the last one to pass.

  May 24

  I hate Mondays. One of those days with meetings, briefings and interviews overlapping to where I couldn’t even read a memo and my desk was full of them. . . . We had a session on sanctions [over the crackdown on freedom in Poland], limiting Soviet credit and the Versailles [economic summit] meeting. There was a lot of talk about not having a set to with our allies. I firmly said to h—1 with it. It’s time to tell them this is our chance to bring the Soviets into the real world and for them to take a stand with us, shut off credit etc.

  May 25-30

  Since last Tuesday, it’s been Calif. . . . Wednesday through Saturday at the ranch. I called Congressmen re the budget which we lost, but so did the Dems so there is no budget. Rode Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Never saw the sun till Saturday afternoon. . . .

  June 22

  A day without a break. [Met with] Congressional leadership, maybe that paid off because the House passed the conference budget bill, 211 to 208. . . . Meeting Sens. [Richard] Lugar and [Jake] Garn re bill to subsidize home mortgages. They are both good friends and supporters but I’m afraid I have to veto their bill. . . . Hinckley was found innocent by reason of insanity. . . . Quite an uproar has been created.

  June 29

  Economic indicators are up, showing the beginning of an upturn. It will be slow and not too robust.

  July 12

  We announced our go ahead on getting an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget.

  July 21

  . . . A really tough problem not yet resolved has to do with defense budget and the projections Dave Stockman must give to Congress re deficits for next five years. Cutting defense sends a message I don’t like to allies and enemies alike. But Dave’s reports of deficits are too high and send shock waves to the world just when we seem to be gaining ground.

  Aug. 4

  We won on the Constitutional amendment to balance the budget, 69 to 31. Russell Long gave us the deciding vote. Met with Jack Kemp (alone) and then in leadership meeting. He is adamant that we are wrong on the tax increase. [I had finally approved an increase of $98.3 billion in business and excise taxes over three years in return for a Democratic promise of $280 billion in budget cuts over three years.] He is in fact unreasonable. The tax increase is the price we have to pay to get the budget cuts.

  Aug. 6

  Well, we won’t go to the ranch next Wednesday—the Congress will still be here and probably voting on the tax bill. But the good news is we’ll be going a week from Wed. and get an extra week added on until after Labor Day.

  Aug. 7

  At the W.H. No Camp David. Spent most of day working on a tentative speech re the economy and explaining my support of the tax increase bill. It’s a price we have to pay to get more budget cuts.

  Aug. 8

  Again at W.H. More of Saturday’s work plus a long letter I feel I have to write to Loyal. I’m afraid for him. His health is failing badly. [As a young man, Nancy’s father had an experience that had made him question his faith in God; I believed strongly in a supreme being and wanted to convince him he was wrong and should see a minister before he died and acknowledge a belief and faith in God, so I could not resist writing and urging him to do so.]

  Aug. 9

  . . . Nancy in tears when I came home. Her father is back in the hospital. She’s going out there Wednesday. I wish I could bear her pain myself . . .

  Aug. 10

  Most of the day spent in meetings with Congressmen and ladies re the tax bill. We’re up against a strange mix, it isn’t going to be easy . . .

  Aug. 15

  Worked on speech. About 30 R. congressmen and women plus our own staff came up for lunch meeting on tax bill, which came out of conference committee at about 2 a.m. Think it was good meeting and some progress made. Back to the speech. Talked to Nancy. She’s very low, thinks the end may come to Loyal in next few days. How I wish I could be with her and help her.

  Aug. 16

  Spent morning phoning business leaders and meeting with Congressmen one on one re the tax bill. . . . tonight did my 20 minute speech on national TV explaining the tax bill and why it should be adopted. The phone calls are coming in almost three to one.

  Aug. 17

  Best reaction to last night’s speech was the market. . . second biggest jump in history, 93 million shares traded, almost a record. Citibank joined the others at 14 per cent prime rate. Housing starts in July reported as going up 34 per cent—savings rate went up to about 7.9 per cent after 10 years of declining.

  Aug. 18

  Tomorrow is D-Day in the House. Most of the day with Congressmen, in groups and singly. Met with the hard core conservatives in the state dining room. Met with about 20 boll weevils. They are pretty much with me. Then a series of one on ones. Last night or the night before, Nancy says Loyal asked for the chaplain at the hospital in the middle of the night.

  Aug. 19

  Dr. Loyal died this morning. Nancy wasn’t alone, thank heaven. Ron and Doria [Ron’s wife] were there. But it seemed awful to be here and not be with her. All day I sat at my desk phoning Congressmen on the tax bill and tonight it passed with 103 Republicans and more than half the Democrats, 225 to 207. Tip O’Neill made a speech to Republicans telling them why they should support me. It seemed strange. Both of us on the same side. The Senate took it up tonight and it won 53 to 47. Again some of our ultra pure conservatives deserted. Now I’m packing to leave for Phoenix and my sweetheart. [The compromise tax package had been passed, but our economic problems weren’t over yet by any means.]

  Sept. 23

  Had an economic rundown in Cabinet. Not bad, not good. One thing sure, the recession has bottomed. Price index for August, .3 of 1 per cent, that would be an annual rate [of inflation] of less than 3.3 per cent.

  Oct. 1

  Supposed to leave early for Camp David but House was playing games with balanced budget amendment. First they introduced a straight statute which was overwhelmingly defeated as it should have been. Then came the constitutional amendment which required a two thirds vote. It got a sizable majority but failed to make the two thirds. I appeared in the press room and laid it on the House Democratic leadership where the blame properly lies.

  Oct. 16-17 Camp David

  . . . Saturday’s radio broadcast was on the economy. I cited FDR and said our greatest problem now was fear itself.

  Nov. 2

  Election day!

  I didn’t have time to think about the election today. An N.S.C. briefing . . . on the MX, then an N.S.C. meeting . . . then a briefing on our upcoming budget situation. We really are in trouble. Our one time projections, pre-recession, are all out the window and we look at $200 billion deficits if we can’t pull some miracles. Speaking of miracles and such the market went up more than 20 points . . .

  Election: Lost 25 in House and had to expect that; it could have been worse. Held the Senate 54—46. Millicent Fenwick lost, I’m sorry. But high spot, we won governor and senator in California. Bye bye Brown.

  Nov. 3

  Did a press appearance in Rose Garden re the election returns. I’m sure they were worried I was so happy. P.M. [Giovanni] Spadolini of Italy arrived. I like him. We had a good meeting and then lunch. . . . Italy has become under him a dependable ally. . . . A lengthy budget meeting. We really face some tough decisions if we are going to reduce the deficits. . . . Meanwhile, the economy continues looking up. Today broke all time record on Wall Street for increase in a single day and all time record high—1065. Credit is given to election results, that Dems did not win enough to change our direction.

  Nov. 12

  Spent most of the afternoon in another budget meeting. I
t’s going to be a battle but we must make deeper budget cuts.

  Nov. 18

  Met with Sen. Baker and Rep. Bob Michel. They weren’t as upset as I was prepared to see them re the economic situation and the election. Still they predicted tough going for much of what I feel we have to do in view of the continuing unemployment and the projected budget deficits.

  Nov. 19

  Back to Cabinet meeting on the budget. Our deficits are structural as well as recession-caused. We have a built-in increase in the budget which is automatic; we must deal with it.

  Dec. 14

  Spent most of the afternoon in a dismal economic briefing about the deficits and the little chance we have of getting further budget cuts. . . .

  Maybe it’s true, as some people say, that it’s always darkest before dawn. Although I didn’t realize it, when I wrote those last few entries the country had already begun the longest sustained economic expansion in peacetime history. Economic researchers say the turnaround began in November 1982, exactly one year after the first phase of the three-year, twenty-five-percent tax cut went into effect.

  It took another year for the expansion to gain full momentum, but we were on our way: We had started the process of getting government off the backs and out of the pockets of people and business, and they were responding with a burst of economic activity that would bring down unemployment, inflation, and interest rates.

  As the economy started to take off, I started joking around the Oval Office: “Do you notice they’re not calling it ‘Reaganomics’ any more?” Until the recovery began, “Reaganomics” had been a term of derision.

  I regarded the 1984 presidential election as pivotal—not because I wanted to live in the White House for four more years, but because I believed the gains we’d made during the previous four years were in jeopardy. Although she never brought it up, I think Nancy would have preferred that I not run for reelection in 1984. But I never doubted I would. I wanted to preserve what we had accomplished, and there were a lot of things I still wanted to do that I hadn’t been able to do yet. Foremost among them, domestically, were cutting the deficit and balancing the budget.

  Although an economic expansion was under way, I thought we could do more to stimulate the economy by making our tax system fairer and simpler. I wanted to persuade Congress to cut more waste out of the budget and continue the process of making government smaller and less intrusive in our lives. I still thought I had a shot at balancing the budget during the next four years.

  To me, former Vice-President Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1984, was another classic tax-and-spend liberal from the new school of the Democratic Party—the one that had parted company with its founders, Thomas Jefferson and his friends who believed that the least government was the best government and that “governments are not the masters of the people, but the servants of the people governed.” The new school of Democrats thought of government in exactly the opposite way. In 1984, it had become a conglomeration of blocs and special-interest groups, each with narrow special agendas directed at grabbing more of the national wealth for their own interests. Thomas Jefferson’s party had become the party of big promises, big government, and big taxes—the bigger the better.

  Yet, when I watched Mondale’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in San Francisco, it almost seemed (with one important exception) that he was trying to sound like a Republican. Apparently sensing that the public was in a conservative mood and fed up with big government, he talked about old-fashioned values and improving the efficiency of government, and promised the people he wanted to do some of the very same things we were already doing—but he made it sound as if he had to do it to cure an economic crisis. Mondale reverted to type once, when he pledged to raise taxes on the rich to reduce the deficit—after being introduced by a millionaire, Senator Edward Kennedy, who had assailed me as a friend of the rich.

  Mondale tried to make it sound as if he had undergone a metamorphosis. But I knew that the first thing he’d do as president was revert totally to form and join with Congress in enacting huge tax increases that would abort the recovery and destroy everything we’d spent four years trying to build.

  A few days after the Democratic convention ended, I drew an assignment to help officiate at the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. While I was there I sensed a renewed national pride in America that made me feel warm inside. The spiritual rebirth I had hoped for was under way, as vigorous and as robust as the nation’s economic turnaround. America was coming back, becoming proud of itself again, becoming confident again about the future. More than ever, I thought, we had to stay the course and not turn back.

  After leaving Los Angeles, Nancy and I spent almost two weeks at the ranch, a summer vacation that was the longest uninterrupted time we’d ever spent there. The weather was terrific except for one foggy day, but even that day we had our regular morning ride and I spent every afternoon pruning trees and fixing things around the ranch.

  At the time, the papers were full of reports that I was planning to raise taxes if reelected. “They find every excuse to say I’m really hedging,” I wrote in my diary one day. “Well d—m it, there will be no new taxes on my watch and Mondale is stuck with his campaign promise to raise the income tax.”

  After George Bush and I were nominated a second time amid a tumultuous celebration in Dallas, I said in my acceptance speech that voters had their clearest choice between the two national parties in fifty years: Despite the Democrats’ attempts to change their tune during their four days beside San Francisco Bay, the choice was between a government of “pessimism, fear, and limits and [one] of hope, confidence, and growth.” After the speech, Ray Charles sang “America the Beautiful” and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.

  I believe that someday we are going to have a woman president, possibly during my life, and I’ve often thought the best way to pave the way for this was to first nominate and elect a woman as vice-president. But I think Mondale made a serious mistake when he picked Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. In my view, he guessed wrong in deciding to take a congresswoman that almost nobody had ever heard of and try to put her in line for the presidency. We have had many successful woman governors around the country who have demonstrated the potential to serve as president, but he overlooked them. I think if the Republicans had done this with a Jeane Kirkpatrick (our UN representative), for example, there would have been a lot more sense to it. I don’t know who among the Democrats might have been a better choice, but it was obvious Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro simply because he believed there was a “gender gap” where I was concerned and she was a woman; I don’t think they picked the most electable woman.

  As each day of the general election campaign passed, I found myself getting angrier at Mondale, whose basic theme was that I was a liar: He claimed I said I was not going to raise taxes after the election when in fact I really intended to, already had a plan for it. I kept saying I wouldn’t raise taxes, but he kept saying I was lying and deceiving the public.

  Many of our key supporters said to George Bush and me that we had nothing to worry about from the Mondale-Ferraro challenge because the economy was booming and people always voted their pocketbooks. Inflation was down to 4.6 percent, unemployment had plummeted, interest rates were far below the level of four years before, and opinion polls said I had a solid lead over Mondale.

  Well, despite what they said, I told myself I was not going to get overconfident. I have never liked to lose and so I set out to campaign as hard as I could for a second term. By no means did I think of myself as a shoo-in, and throughout that summer and fall I was a little edgy.

  In a campaign, I always like to act as if I’m one vote behind; overconfidence is a candidate’s worst mistake. I knew anything can happen in an election campaign; it’s just as well I did run scared, because in the view of many people, I nearly blew the whole race during my first debate with Mondale that
fall.

  I wrote in the diary in early October after the debate in Louisville was over:

  I have to say I lost. I guess I’d crammed so hard on facts and figures in view of the absolutely dishonest things he’d been saying in the campaign I guess I flattened out; anyway, I didn’t feel good about myself. And yet he was never able to rebut any of the facts I presented and kept repeating things that are absolute falsehoods. But the press has been calling him the winner for two days now.

  I had spent too many hours poring over briefing books and in skull sessions and mock debates preparing for the encounter, and on the night of the debate, I think I was just overtrained.

  I don’t think anybody could have retained all the things pumped into my brain during the days leading up to the debate; I goofed a couple of times. Although I don’t blame them, in a way I was hurt by people trying to help me: A debate was coming up and everybody around me started saying, “You have to know this . . . you have to know that”; then they fill your head with all sorts of details, technicalities, and statistics as if you were getting ready to take an exam on those topics. Finally, when you’re in the debate, you realize you just can’t command all that information and still do a good job as a debater.

  I don’t feel low very often, but I take pride in my public speaking ability—after all, I’m an old performer. The verdict that I’d lost the debate didn’t make me feel very happy. A lot of supporters tried to make me feel better afterward. But I knew I’d stumbled two or three times while millions of people were watching, and I was embarrassed.

  After Louisville, I had some genuine reasons to feel nervous about the campaign. Several polls taken after the debate indicated that some of my supporters were having doubts about me, and some of the pundits in the press claimed my stumbles proved that I was too old to be president. One White House television correspondent even proclaimed that the Louisville debate had brought to the surface what he called the “senility factor.”