But the angry young people in the audience didn’t feel that way. Things in America were not fine. They weren’t fine under President Johnson, just like they hadn’t been fine under President Kennedy, or Presidents Eisenhower, Truman, or Roosevelt, for that matter.
So Reagan gave them what they wanted. That night in San Diego, he delivered a version of the standard political speech he’d been giving in recent years. That speech was a stirring tale of an America in deep trouble, a land desperately in need of salvation before it was too late. It evoked the grandest themes: good struggling against evil, pernicious darkness trying to cover the light. Good was America and its honest, hardworking people. Evil was the totalitarian Communism of the Soviet state. This communism, he told his audiences, sought either to enslave the free world or to destroy it. And it might well succeed unless the creeping socialism of the liberals in Washington was named, condemned, and stopped.
Reagan would name it. He warned his San Diego audience of the dangerous folly of the country’s foreign aid program. America was now sending millions of dollars to some hundred and seven countries, including countries that were on the Communists’ side. As was his custom, he made his point with vivid proper nouns and precise statistics and facts:
“Our money in Bolivia was simply a means by which the Bolivian government nationalized the economy and went socialist …
“We can’t justify foreign aid funds which went for the purchase of extra wives for some tribal chiefs in Kenya …
“Just as we can’t justify the purchase of dress suits for some undertakers in Greece.…
“Or just as we cannot justify the purchase of a two-million-dollar yacht for Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia simply by calling it a command vessel.”
All of these embarrassments were part of a broader foreign policy that was veering “dangerously close to appeasement.” The wise men in Washington, he implied, were making the same mistakes as the men who had appeased Hitler at Munich. They wanted the country to believe that everything was fine, that the days ahead were placid, that peace for all time was at hand. But, Reagan suggested, just as at Munich, the choice between fight and surrender was coming, far sooner than those men could see.
When he finished talking, the room filled with applause. They were all watching him.
LATER IN LIFE, Reagan would give a pithy assessment of his career in Hollywood: “I was the Errol Flynn of the Bs”—the low-budget B movies that ran as the bottom half of a double feature. Performing for the crowd in San Diego that night, he captured his audience’s imagination, worked his listeners up, and sent them home happy, just like an A-list heartthrob. But the program itself was unimpressive. In February 1964, a gathering of conservatives in Southern California, or a gathering of conservatives anywhere in America, was a B movie, little loved or seen.
The main attraction was running on the other side of the continent, a sweeping epic of action and triumph starring President Lyndon Johnson. Like many big-budget productions of the era, it was best not to watch it too closely lest you catch the flaws in the script, even the actors wandering in and out of focus. Better just to sit back and take in the feel-good extravaganza for a while:
President Lyndon Johnson Takes Washington
SCENE ONE
INT. THE HOUSE CHAMBER IN THE U.S. CAPITOL: Midday in early January, THE PRESIDENT, Lyndon Baines Johnson, delivers his State of the Union address.
THE PRESIDENT: Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty.
JUST OFFSCREEN: After the speech the president calls the columnist DREW PEARSON.
THE PRESIDENT: I got eighty-one applauses, in twenty-nine hundred words. It was a twenty-five-minute speech and it took forty-one because of the applauses.
WAY OFFSCREEN: Senator BARRY GOLDWATER, campaigning for the New Hampshire primary, pulled off to the side of a snowy highway near the town of Amherst, eats a cheeseburger while listening to Johnson’s speech on the radio. With national reporters looking on, he grows outraged over the scale of federal ambitions THE PRESIDENT is articulating:
GOLDWATER: He has out Roosevelted Roosevelt, out Kennedyed Kennedy, and … made Truman look like a piker.
SCENE TWO
INT. THE WHITE HOUSE: On the afternoon of February 1, THE PRESIDENT announces he has tapped Peace Corps head and JFK brother-in-law SARGENT SHRIVER to lead the War on Poverty.
OFFSCREEN: Two hours before the announcement THE PRESIDENT calls SHRIVER.
THE PRESIDENT: Sarge, I’m going to announce your appointment at that press conference.
SHRIVER: What press conference?
THE PRESIDENT: This afternoon.
SHRIVER: God! I think it would be advisable, if you don’t mind, if I could have this week and sit down with a couple of people and see what we could get in the way of some sort of plan …
WAY OFFSCREEN: Dressed in a tuxedo, GOLDWATER appears before the Economic Club of New York.
GOLDWATER: We are told … that many people lack skills and cannot find jobs because they did not have an education. That’s like saying that people have big feet because they wear big shoes. The fact is that most people who have no skill have no education for the same reason—low intelligence or low ambition.
SCENE THREE
INT. THE WHITE HOUSE: THE PRESIDENT conducts a sit-down interview with anchors from the three major networks for a special broadcast.
ANNOUNCER (V/O): Mr. Ed will not be seen tonight.
Close-up on a dark leather chair with an engraved inscription. It reads “The President, November 22, 1963.” It is THE PRESIDENT’S chair in the Cabinet Room which, by custom, bears the date the sitting president came into office. Cut to THE PRESIDENT, seated, taking questions from DAVID BRINKLEY, NBC, ERIC SEVAREID, CBS, and WILLIAM LAWRENCE, ABC.
BRINKLEY: Is there any one particular memory that is more vivid than the others for you from those four horrible days?
THE PRESIDENT: (carefully measuring his words) Yes, I have rarely been in the presence of greatness. But as I went through that period I observed Mrs. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, I saw her greatness, her gallantry, her graciousness, her courage, and it will always be a vivid memory and I’ll always appreciate the strength that came to me from knowing her and associating with her.
OFFSCREEN: JACQUELINE KENNEDY, widow, taping a confidential interview with the historian ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, discussing PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S time in office. The interview will not be published for nearly fifty years.
SCHLESINGER: What sort of a vice president was Lyndon?
MRS. KENNEDY: It was so funny because Jack, thinking of being vice president and how awful it would be, gave Lyndon so many things to do. But he never did them … I mean, I think it’s so pathetic when all you can find to do with a President who’s dying to give you a lot to do, is take a state trip to Luxembourg and Belgium …
SCHLESINGER: The story has been printed to the effect that there was some consideration of dropping Johnson in ’64.
MRS. KENNEDY: Not in ’64. But Bobby told me this later, and I know Jack said it to me sometimes. He said, “Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was President?”
INT. (CONTINUED). Meanwhile, back in the network anchors’ interview with the president, Johnson has grown animated, talking about his domestic program.
SEVAREID: Mr. President, administrations come to have a handy label: the New Deal or the Fair Deal or the New Frontier. Does any idea come to your mind for the Johnson administration?
THE PRESIDENT: I’ve had a lot of things to deal with these first one hundred days, I haven’t thought of any slogans. But I suppose all of us want a better deal, don’t we?
OFFSCREEN: In the White House pool, THE PRESIDENT floats with BILL MOYERS and DICK GOODWIN. Fog the wat
er to obscure the fact that all three are naked. In speeches he is writing, Goodwin has begun trying out a new phrase—“The Great Society”—to describe the Johnson vision. THE PRESIDENT likes the phrase.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, boys, you let me finish the Kennedy program. You start to put together a Johnson program, and don’t worry about whether it’s too radical or if Congress is ready for it. That’s my job …
As the men towel off outside the pool, THE PRESIDENT’s mind drifts away.
THE PRESIDENT: They’re trying to get me in a war over there. It will destroy me …
Goodwin looks confused, not sure where THE PRESIDENT is talking about when he says “over there.”
SCENE FOUR
EXT. University of Michigan, May 22. THE PRESIDENT, wearing an academic robe, addressing graduates of the university, urges them to join with him in changing the world.
THE PRESIDENT: The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
OFFSCREEN: GOLDWATER campaigns like mad in California before the state’s Republican primary on June 2. The primary is his chance to knock out his chief moderate rival, Governor NELSON ROCKEFELLER of New York, once and for all. Goldwater has a hard time connecting with audiences. They seem to prefer his warm-up act, the well-known face from Hollywood RONALD REAGAN, who greets the right-wing crowds with a knowing wink to their reputation in the mainstream press.
REAGAN: Good morning to all you irresponsible Republicans!
WHO WAS THIS man—Ronald Reagan the actor, or Ronald Reagan the politician? In The New York Times that year, he was described as “Ronald Reagan, the youthful-looking former Hollywood actor who has moved to the right wing of the political stage.” And he was, in fact, appearing on political stages for Goldwater that spring. But he was not, as we have seen, a former actor. He had wrapped production on Johnny North only a few weeks before his San Diego speech. Viewers of the program Kraft Suspense Theater would see him in several new teleplays that spring.
Later in life, Reagan would claim there was little difference between the jobs of a politician and an actor. Again and again over the course of his political career, he would poke fun at the flimsy line between his two chosen vocations:
Candidate Ronald Reagan, asked what kind of governor he would be: “I don’t know, I’ve never played a governor before.”
Newly elected governor Reagan, to California senator George Murphy, like him a former Hollywood star, at Reagan’s midnight inauguration: “Well, George, here we are on the late show again.”
President Reagan, reflecting on the demands of his job: “How could you do the job if you hadn’t been an actor?”
But in the spring of 1964, the difference between politics and acting would have been a meaningful one to Reagan. His future on the screen looked even bleaker than it had a few months before. NBC executives, concerned by the violence and racy content of Johnny North, had decided to pass on the film. Wasserman’s plan to produce the first full-length feature made specifically for television had fallen apart. With the film already shot, he repackaged the film for distribution in theaters, giving it a new title. That summer, Americans would see squeaky-clean Ronald Reagan appearing as the least likable character in a film called The Killers.
Reagan’s chances of a third run at Hollywood stardom were slim. But his ambition and his need to play the hero had not died. He’d been working, that winter, on his midlife autobiography. The book’s title, borrowed from a line spoken by his character in King’s Row, was revealing: Where’s the Rest of Me? Staring out at admiring crowds, like the Young Republicans in San Diego, he must have wondered if the world of politics offered a happier future. Maybe the rest of him would be on these political stages, not just as a speaker but as the star.
He had long since learned that the political arena could offer the same pleasures as movie stardom—the “heady wine” feeling he got when the eyes of the world were on him. He had found that feeling in his days at GE when he’d gotten reacquainted with the pleasures of a live crowd. “Two of the eight years were spent traveling,” Reagan would later calculate, “and with speeches sometimes running at fourteen a day, I was on my feet in front of a ‘mike’ for about 250,000 minutes.”
A routine like this can change a man. Making his way from unglamorous hotel to unglamorous hotel in unremarkable city after unremarkable city, a man with a famous face must learn how to connect quickly with strangers. In Reagan, it awoke his old talent for feeling and understanding a room. The actor, said Earl Dunckel, a GE executive who traveled with Reagan, possessed an “almost mystical ability to achieve an empathy with almost any audience.” At events, Dunckel would watch as the handsome man from Hollywood was mobbed by the female workers asking for autographs. On the side, Dunckel recalled, the men would stand “together obviously saying something derogatory. ‘I bet he’s a fag,’ that sort of thing.” If Reagan knew what they were saying, he ignored it, continuing to chat with the ladies. After a while, though, he would walk over to the men and seamlessly draw them into conversation. “When he left them ten minutes later,” Dunckel said, “they were all slappin’ him on the back saying, ‘That’s the way, Ron.’ ” Reagan, said Dunckel, simply “would not leave a department with the men over there scowling and snarling.”
It was on the road for GE, as he learned how to win over anonymous crowds in short periods of time, that Reagan the conservative politician was born. GE had no requirements for the content of his speeches, simply that they generally promote free-market principles. At first, Reagan—alias Mr. Norm—would offer his audiences a defense of the moral values of the movie business. (Did you know that Hollywood has one of the lowest divorce rates in the country?) But the more he was on the road, the more he felt his audiences respond when he talked about the Cold War menace. The men and women in Reagan’s crowds were eager to hear Reagan’s story, for he was offering them a kind of clarity that was otherwise in short supply. The official pronouncements from Washington in the early Cold War were full of frustrating ambiguity. The Soviets were the enemy, of course, but the pragmatists in power counseled that that enemy should be confronted only when strategically necessary. Where the officials dwelled on qualification and complexity, Reagan’s message was refreshingly unconditional: America must either vanquish the Soviet threat or perish from the earth.
Soon, international politics was the subject Reagan was talking about the most. In his youth, Reagan, like Lyndon Johnson, had idolized Franklin Roosevelt. He was a devoted listener to the president’s Fireside Chats. Roosevelt’s genius was for distilling the world’s complex problems as vivid moral struggles: the honest Everyman against corrupt big business, the free world against global fascism. Here were stories of the world that Reagan believed in—a world filled with good and decent people, people who needed a leader to stave off insidious conspiracies of evil. And here was a voice speaking directly to the individual listener—“the forgotten man”—making it clear that the president knew that that listener was there, and that he cared. During those broadcasts, Reagan heard the most powerful man in the country doing the thing that Reagan most longed to do: comforting, pleasing, and inspiring people. People he did not know, faces he could not see.
The young Reagan thrilled to Roosevelt’s gifts—he crafted an impersonation of FDR, complete with imaginary cigarette holder—and for a time to Roosevelt’s politics as well. The world would long note that Reagan started his adult life as a Democrat. When asked to explain his political evolution, he would usually give a variation on the same answer: “I di
dn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.” It was a good line. It captured not just Reagan’s journey but also the journey of millions of Americans who had grown up with pictures of Roosevelt and Kennedy on their walls but would nonetheless vote for Reagan and the Republicans in the later years of the twentieth century.
But that line left a false impression of Reagan as a creature of the center, watching in dismay as his party lurched to the far left. That was never the real Reagan. Throughout his life, Reagan’s natural preference for clear drama caused him to view politics as a matter of moral certainty, in which one side was right and the other wrong. Mr. Norm understood the New Deal consensus and was careful to stay within its bounds. But like Johnson, who was capable of operating in a world of compromise and contradiction but fantasized of only total glory or total doom, Reagan saw no beauty in gray areas. For him, the simple was always preferable to the complex. He could find that simplicity only on the edges of consensus politics. And so that was where he felt most comfortable, first on the left edge, then on the right.
In the 1940s in Hollywood, he was a committed New Deal Democrat, a liberal who used his celebrity to point out the corrupt practices of big business and the mortal threat that moneyed interests posed to the forgotten man. Campaigning for Democratic candidates, he played up their noble virtues and sought to expose the greedy interests and secret agendas of their opponents. He had no great affection for Roosevelt’s less media-savvy successor—he called Harry Truman “as inspiring as mud”—but in the election of 1948, he headed up the Labor League of Hollywood Voters for Truman all the same. That same year, he spoke out against Minnesota’s incumbent Republican senator Joseph Ball, “the banner carrier for Wall Street,” and urged the election of the liberal lion Hubert Humphrey, mayor of Minneapolis. “Mayor Humphrey,” said Reagan, “is fighting for all the principles advocated by President Truman, for adequate low-cost housing, for civil rights, for prices people can afford to pay and for a labor movement free of the Taft-Hartley law.”
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