Lessons My Father Taught Me

by Michael Reagan

  A Lesson in Ethics

  In 1960, when I was fifteen years old, Dad—who had been a lifelong Democrat—became involved in the “Democrats for Nixon” movement. (He would become a Republican two years later.) Through his involvement with the Nixon campaign, Dad became acquainted with leaders of the Republican National Committee.

  One night, Dad, Nancy, Maureen, and I were gathered at the dinner table. “A friend of mine at the RNC (Republican National Convention) told me about some photographs today,” Dad said. “The photos apparently show Senator John F. Kennedy entering and leaving hotel rooms with different women.” It appeared that Senator Kennedy was cheating on his wife, Jacqueline.

  After President Kennedy’s death, it became widely known that he had a number of affairs, both before and during his White House years. But at the time, as he was running for president, his infidelities were kept out of the national press. The outcome of the Nixon–Kennedy race was incredibly close. If Kennedy’s trysts with women had become a scandal during the election, he would certainly have lost.

  I said, “Dad, are the Republicans going to give those pictures to the newspapers?”

  “No,” my father replied. “We shouldn’t use those photos.”

  “Why not? Wouldn’t those pictures help Nixon win?”

  “Maybe they would, but it would be wrong to attack his personal life. Senator Kennedy isn’t running for husband of the year. He’s running for president of the United States, and we need to base the campaign on issues and a candidate’s leadership ability. There are bad husbands who are good leaders, and good husbands who are bad leaders. What he was doing in those hotels with those women is a matter between Senator Kennedy and his wife. It’s not part of the political discussion.”

  I didn’t understand at the time, but my father was trying to teach me a lesson in ethics. He wanted me to understand that people of good character set ethical boundaries that they will not cross. They want to win—but they don’t want to win at any cost. Dad wanted me to learn to guard my character, my values, and my moral principles.

  This is the same lesson my father tried to teach the American media and the American people during his first press conference on January 29, 1981. He took a question from Sam Donaldson of ABC News: “Mr. President, what do you see as the long-range intentions of the Soviet Union? Do you think, for instance, that the Kremlin is bent on world domination that might lead to continuation of the Cold War?”

  Dad replied that the Soviet leaders had “openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime—to lie, to cheat—in order to attain that. . . . We operate on a different set of standards.”1

  Whether he was speaking to his fifteen-year-old son or holding a White House press conference, Dad was influencing, teaching, and yes, preaching ethics and morality. Issues come and go, but principles are truly timeless. My father lived by his principles, and he taught those principles to me—and to the nation. That was the key to his enduring influence.

  Influence through Storytelling

  The world remembers Ronald Reagan as a storyteller. But before Dad told his stories to the world, he was telling them to his kids, including yours truly. At the time, I didn’t always appreciate and understand his stories. It took me years to realize that he used stories as a way of influencing people.

  Everybody loves a good story, but few of us have the ability to tell stories well. Dad learned the art of storytelling from his father, Jack. Dad also taught a boy’s Sunday school class in the church basement when he was fifteen years old. To keep things lively, he would mix Bible parables with sports stories.

  Dad’s most famous story is one that I heard him tell when I was a boy. It seems there were two brothers—an incurable pessimist and an incurable optimist. The boys’ father took them to a doctor in hopes of curing the one boy of his extreme pessimism and curing the other boy of his extreme optimism.

  The doctor took the young pessimist into a room filled with shiny new toys and said, “These toys are all yours to play with.” The young pessimist burst into tears. The doctor said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I just know that when I play with these toys, they’ll break and be ruined.”

  Next, the doctor took the young optimist into a stable filled with horse manure. “See that pile of manure?” the doctor asked. “You cannot leave this stable until you’ve cleaned out all this manure.”

  “Oh boy!” the young optimist shouted. Then he climbed to the top of the pile and began digging with his bare hands. The doctor shouted, “Young man! What are you doing?”

  The boy replied, “With all this manure, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

  Why am I retelling a story you’ve probably heard many times before? Because after hearing the story numerous times, you may have forgotten the point my father was making—and it’s the same point he tried to get across to me when I was a boy: attitude is everything. Optimists dig in, get things done, and succeed while pessimists never get started. Dad wanted me to grow up to be the optimist in the stable, not the pessimist in a roomful of toys.

  When you tie a lesson to a story, you make the lesson memorable. You increase the odds that both the story and the lesson will be remembered in years to come.

  Another story Dad often told was about a teacher who called a mother in for a parent–teacher conference. The teacher said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to discipline your boy, Irving.”

  “Oh, please don’t be too hard on Irving,” the mother said. “He’s a sensitive boy. All you have to do is slap the boy next to him, and Irving will behave.”

  Again, it’s a story with a point. The point might apply to parents being too lenient and permissive with their children—or to liberal, paternalistic government being too lenient and permissive toward criminals or terrorists. The point of the story is that when you coddle people who behave badly, you end up punishing the innocent.

  The overindulgent mother didn’t care that the boy next to Irving would be unfairly punished—just don’t lay a hand on her precious little snowflake. In the same way, when liberals make excuses for bad people—when they blame terrorism on global warming or when they blame the Tea Party for mass shootings—they excuse the perpetrator and blame the innocent.

  Isn’t it amazing how much insight Dad could squeeze into one of his little stories?

  Judge William P. Clark Jr. was one of Dad’s most trusted friends and advisors. Bill Clark was a rancher like Dad, and he served as my father’s national security advisor. I once talked to Bill about Dad’s unique gift for storytelling. He pointed out something I should have known but had never noticed before: “Michael,” he said, “your father was not just a storyteller. He spoke in parables.”

  The moment Bill told me that, everything snapped into focus. Instantly, I understood why my father told so many stories. Parables are stories that teach a lesson. During his early religious instruction, Dad had learned how to teach moral lessons through parables. Yes, his stories were entertaining—but if you really listened to what he was saying, you’d discover a deeper truth. Dad would never spell it out for you. He’d tell you a story and hope you’d get the point.

  Dinesh D’Souza describes an encounter my father had with Richard Nixon in early 1981. Nixon wanted to advise the newly elected president on strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union. Well, Dad already knew what his strategy would be—and he was not interested in pursuing the Nixonian policy of détente (meaning “a relaxation of tension”). So when Nixon came to the White House, Dad regaled him with jokes about how farmers in the Soviet Union weren’t producing crops under the Communist system.

  As Nixon listened to my father’s stories, he was horrified. He thought Dad was being flippant, that he wasn’t taking the U.S.–Soviet relationship seriously. Over the next few years, Nixon wrote several books in which he criticized my father’s lack of “realism” about the
Soviets. Nixon vehemently disagreed with Dad’s prediction that the Soviet Union would collapse—and he urged a return to détente.

  Two and a half years after my father left office, the Berlin wall came down. Soviet Communism collapsed. My father was vindicated—and Richard Nixon finally admitted that he had been wrong and Dad was right: “Ronald Reagan has been justified by what has happened. History has justified his leadership.”2

  Richard Nixon didn’t understand that my father spoke in parables. He didn’t realize that when Dad was telling jokes about farmers in the Soviet Union, he was actually making a serious point about life under the flawed Soviet system. An economic and political system that forces farmers to be unproductive is doomed to failure. My father knew that, and that’s why he could confidently predict the fall of the Iron Curtain. That was the lesson in Dad’s parable.

  Dad spoke in parables, while today’s politicians speak in sound bites. My father influenced people through stories because stories help us see the essential truth of a problem. If Richard Nixon had understood what Dad was saying to him through parables, he wouldn’t have had to eat his words. And if I had truly understood Dad’s parables, my early years might have gone a lot more smoothly.

  Influencing the Next Generation

  In March 1984, my father went to speak at Congress Heights Elementary School in Washington, D.C. At the end of his talk, he announced the winner of the school’s “Writing to Read” contest—an African American boy named Rudolph Lee-Hines. The prize? A pen-pal friendship with the president of the United States. Rudolph was selected on the basis of his excellent reading skills (though he was only six years old) and his ability to write letters with very little help from grown-ups.

  For years afterward, Dad and Rudolph maintained a correspondence. The boy asked the president about the acting profession, how to maintain friendships, advice about schoolwork, and how to ride a horse. Dad gave the boy advice, much of it based on his own boyhood experiences. Dad and Nancy visited the school a number of times and on one occasion even had dinner with Rudy and his mother at their apartment.3

  Dad and Rudy exchanged many letters. Here’s an excerpt from Dad’s letter to Rudy shortly after the space shuttle Challenger disaster:

  Dear Rudolph,

  It was good to get your letter and to hear about those grades, keep it up. You know we have something in common—I didn’t do well in science either but like you I kept trying. We have to do that. . . .

  I shared your feelings about the shuttle tragedy. I think most everyone in the country was saddened. Your folks are right about the debt we owe to those who have pioneered in our country. Each of the families of those who lost their lives told me we must keep the space program growing, that their loved ones would want it that way.

  Well I’m off to Grenada for a meeting down there. I’ll be back the same day which means a lot of hours in the air.

  Give my regards to your folks.

  Sincerely,

  Ronald Reagan4

  Dad was continually aware of his influence on people and his responsibility to be a good influence on the next generation. My friend Dana Rohrabacher, Republican congressman from the Forty-Eighth District of California, used to be a speechwriter for my father. Dana once told me about an incident he witnessed when Dad was running in the 1976 GOP primaries.

  Dad was speaking at a rally in North Carolina. During the speech, a woman came up to Dana and said, “I’ve brought a group of blind children to the rally. It would mean a lot to the children if they could meet Governor Reagan and shake hands with him after his speech. Would that be possible?”

  Dana conveyed the woman’s request to Dad, and he was happy to meet with the children. But he warned his staff, “Not a word to the press. I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to exploit these kids.”

  So Dana Rohrabacher brought five kids, ten to twelve years old, over to the candidate’s bus, and he introduced them to my father. Dad talked with them for a few minutes, then he had an idea. “Would you children like to touch my face?” he asked.

  As Dana concluded the story, he said, “I’ll never forget that moment. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to make that offer to those kids. But your dad understood that blind kids wouldn’t be able to ‘see’ him unless they could touch his face. As I watched those kids gather around him and place their hands on his face, I thought, Any politician in the country would pay millions to have his picture on the cover of Time with all those hands outstretched to touch him—yet that’s the last thing Ronald Reagan wants.”

  Dad refused to exploit kids for political gain. He genuinely cared about influencing the next generation. That’s the way he raised me, that’s the way he lived his life, that’s the way he conducted his presidency.

  Ronald Reagan, Teacher and Influencer

  The reality of my father was that he was the same man as an actor and a father as he was when he was governor of California and president of the United States. What was that reality? Simply this, Ronald Reagan loved America. He’d get a lump in his throat as he sang the National Anthem. He’d get tears in his eyes as he recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Maureen and I used to say that the presidency was Dad’s eagle badge, because he was truly a boy scout at heart. Love of God and love of country were woven into his being. More than anyone else I’ve ever known, my father absolutely loved America.

  When we’d drive out to the ranch, Dad would sing every military and patriotic song in the book. And he knew them all—“The Marines’ Hymn” (“From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli”), “The Air Force Song” (“Off we go into the wild blue yonder”), “The Army Goes Rolling Along” (“Over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail”), and on and on. He was a commissioned officer in the reserve corps of the U.S. Cavalry and was ordered to active duty from 1942 to 1945 (poor eyesight kept him stateside, working with the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army). That’s why the official flag of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is my father’s Cavalry flag.

  When I was growing up, I didn’t fully appreciate my Dad’s immense love for America. And I think it’s tragic that many people today don’t have that same love of country that Dad had—it hasn’t been passed down from generation to generation.

  A few years ago, I played golf with a young man in his twenties, a restaurant manager. As we played golf together, I mentioned that I had been asked to go to France the next day and raise the flag at the American cemetery at Normandy. This young man looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, “Why is there an American cemetery at Normandy?”

  Here was a guy who was bright, successful, and well-educated—yet he knew nothing about D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, or the liberation of Europe. He didn’t know why there is an American cemetery at Normandy. And because he didn’t know about the sacrifices Americans had made for the cause of liberty around the world, he didn’t have the kind of love of country that I learned from my father.

  Dad taught me to love America, just as he taught me so many other important values and truths. Dad was a teacher—and that’s why he had such a profound influence on me and on everyone he met. Whether you grasped his message or not, he was always teaching, always influencing, always telling his stories and sharing his parables.

  Dad wanted to teach the Soviet leaders about the greatness of America. During his time in office, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had four different leaders—Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Dad was eager to meet with the Soviet leaders and school them in the blessings of American liberty—but, he said, “They keep dying on me.” In his autobiography, An American Life, he wrote:

  One of my regrets as president is that I was never able to take Mikhail Gorbachev on a trip across our country: I wanted to take him up in a helicopter and show him how Americans lived. . . . We’d fly over a residential neighborhood and I’d tell him that’s where those workers lived—in homes with lawns and backyards, perhaps with a second car
or a boat in the driveway. . . . [I’d say,] “They not only lived there, they own that property.”

  I even dreamed of landing the helicopter in one of those neighborhoods and inviting Gorbachev to walk down the street with me, and I’d say, “Pick any home you want; we’ll knock on the door and you can ask the people how they live and what they think of our system.”5

  Dad’s autobiography was published in 1990. In May 1992, Mikhail Gorbachev—who had resigned as the leader of the collapsing Soviet Union in August 1991—arrived at the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport aboard a Boeing 727 jetliner, “The Capitalist Tool,” which had been loaned to Gorbachev by Forbes, Inc. Dad and Nancy went to the airport to meet Mr. Gorbachev, his wife Raisa, and their daughter Irina, and they rode with the Gorbachevs in a limousine to Rancho del Cielo.

  Colleen and I were at the ranch during Mr. Gorbachev’s stay. (In fact, I was the only person who dared to point out to Mr. Gorbachev that he was wearing his Stetson cowboy hat—a gift from my father—backward.) Though Dad never got to give Mr. Gorbachev the helicopter tour he envisioned in his autobiography, Dad did teach the former Communist leader about the advantages of living in the Land of the Free.

  During Mr. Gorbachev’s flight from the East Coast, he had noticed the checkerboard pattern of America’s farmlands. He asked my father who owned all of those fields. Dad said, “On each square of farmland there’s a farmhouse, and the family in the farmhouse owns the house and the land—just as I own this ranch and house.”

  When Dad gave Mr. Gorbachev a tour of the ranch, Gorbachev noticed that Dad had his own gasoline pump on the property. Dad used that pump to fuel his vehicles on the 688-acre ranch—including the blue Jeep Scrambler that Dad used to chauffeur Mr. Gorbachev around Rancho del Cielo. (That Jeep, with the personalized “GIPPER” license plate, is displayed at the Young America’s Foundation Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara.) Mrs. Gorbachev noted that there were severe fuel shortages and gas lines in Russia at the time. She marveled that the former American president had his own gasoline pump. Dad told Mr. and Mrs. Gorbachev that it was not uncommon for American ranchers to buy their fuel in bulk and to own their own pump. It was a benefit, he added, of living in a free country.