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What is Ronald Reagan’s Legacy?

Reagan Remembered
THINK TANK with Ben Wattenberg
TTBW 1217
PBS feed date 6/10/2004

Funding for Think Tank is provided by:

At Pfizer we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have twelve thousand scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer. Life is our life’s work.

Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

ANNOUNCER: The following program was broadcast in April 2000, prior to former President Ronald Reagan’s death.

WATTENBERG: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg overlooking Simi Valley California and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. We’re here to revisit the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Think Tank is joined by Lou Cannon, veteran journalist who covered Reagan for over 25 years and is the author of the newly updated biography, President Reagan, The Role Of A Lifetime, Kiron Skinner, assistant professor of history and political science at Carnegie Mellon University, and a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, as well as the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and Martin Anderson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, author of Revolution, The Reagan Legacy, and a key domestic and economic policy advisor in the White House. He is currently working with Kiron Skinner on a book tentatively titled The Reagan Papers, due out in February of 2001. The topic before the house, remembering Reagan, this week on Think Tank.

(Musical break.)

WATTENBERG: Most Americans are familiar with the story of Ronald Wilson Reagan. He was born in Tampico, Illinois in 1911. In his first public incarnation Reagan was a Hollywood movie star, appearing in about 50 films.

(Video clip.)

WATTENBERG: Then from 1954 to 1962 he traveled as a spokesman for General Electric, many believe it was during those years that Reagan shrugged off his Democratic Party loyalty in favor of conservative ideals, though Reagan himself denies ever having gone through such a radical transformation. Reagan burst onto the political scene in 1964 with a nationally televised address in support of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. In 1966 he ran for Governor of California and won. He served two terms as governor, until 1974. Reagan made a half-hearted run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968. He tried again in 1976, and gave President Ford a run for his money before losing narrowly. In 1980 Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination and beat incumbent President Jimmy Carter to become the 40th President of the United States.

WATTENBERG: Welcome, we are in the private quarters of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Welcome to you, Kiron Skinner, Marty Anderson, Lou Cannon. Let me begin by reading something from Peggy Noonan’s book called, What I Saw At The Revolution. And it goes like this, he gleams, he is a mystery, he is for everyone there, for everyone who worked with him. None of them understand him. In private they admit it, you say to them, who was that masked man? And they shrug and hypothesize. James Baker said he is the kindest and most impersonal man I ever knew. Do you buy that?

CANNON: Up to a point. It seems to me that on one level everybody knew Ronald Reagan, the country knew Ronald Reagan, the world knew Ronald Reagan, he contained America inside of him, the way de Gaulle contained France inside of him. You had that quality in Reagan, and he gave it out to people. But, he was a reserved and private man, and he understood a little bit of, I think, the importance of keeping your distance, keeping your emotional distance from people. So I don’t think he was quite a masked man, but he was a reserved guy.

ANDERSON: Yes, I think that what Peggy says is true. For someone who was working for Reagan in the White House, this was a typical reaction. But, I don’t think he was a mystery at all. I think the reason most people thought he was a mystery, they started off with a basic assumption that the guy wasn’t very smart, and yet everything he did baffled people, how does he do this. For some guy who’s not that smart, how does he accomplish all this. Now, if you change your premise, which I think is an accurate one, that he’s highly intelligent, and when you work closely with him, you show complex data and complex information, and go through theories with him, he’d grasp it immediately and quickly. But, it is true that in dealing with people, he was aloof, he was private, and he was quiet, he never argued with people.

SKINNER: I think Reagan was subtly theoretic, and I think as a result almost no one had the right lens to understand what he was doing or what he was saying. Many would focus on the rhetoric, like the evil empire, but not look at the strategy beneath the rhetoric. And if you used more theoretical lenses to understand Reagan, what he was saying, you’d realize that there was as great grand strategy there in what he was doing to transform the international system the way it happened after 1989.

WATTENBERG: I met Reagan a few times, interviewed him and sat with him, and Peggy’s book and your book particularly, just on the personalistic, wasn’t there some sort of a personal shield? I mean, his children say it. You have a little line in your book where you say, even Nancy Reagan feels it, that there was sort of this -

CANNON: She told me that there is this barrier, and there is a barrier to Reagan at some point, and I’ve done two things with that in my thinking and writing about it. One, which I’ve discussed with Mr. Reagan is his experience as a child, being the son of an alcoholic. Now, my father was also an alcoholic, had the same ancestry, same first name, and you see things, and there’s been a lot written about this that’s not just pop psychology, when you’re in that circumstance that the way you survive it is that you pull out of it.

ANDERSON: Doing some research on this book, I came across a screen magazine, 1937 or ’38, where someone had interviewed Reagan, and he was talking about things. And he said he had discovered when he was a kid that he had many dreams and ideas and things that he loved to talk about, and people made fun of him. And he said, I just stopped talking about that stuff. I think that Reagan had a very private life, I think he had very private thoughts, things that he felt strongly about, he was highly intelligent, he didn’t argue, and he did not share that with people. Now, some people saw that as a screen.

WATTENBERG: Including people like, from what you read, from his children.

CANNON: Can I jump in on that point, because it’s right on this point, and it’s also a Nancy Reagan insight. Because of his father, partly because of the alcoholism, but also partly because those were tough times in Illinois, the family moved around a lot when Reagan was very little. He was very nomadic. So his close friend was his brother, but if you think about yourself as a child, and you go and you’re in a strange school, and you’re in a strange place in your formative years, which he was for like 8, or 9 of his first 10 or 11 years, you don’t have a lot of playmates.

WATTENBERG: I’m a stranger, and I’m only passing through.

CANNON: So if you have an intellectual life, I have some disagreement with Marty on this, and we can get into it, but we’re basically in agreement, but if you have an intellectual life it’s going to be a private one.

WATTENBERG: Let’s forget the personality for a moment, and play by the rules of the road in Washington, which is, what was he trying to do? What did he accomplish, and what happened anyway, but according to the rules of the road in Washington you say, it was on his watch, he gets the credit or the blame? You’re digging into the international stuff, and I know you have.

SKINNER: I think it’s surprising for many, but it’s emerging in discussions about Reagan, I think Reagan really wanted to transform the international system peacefully, with one side shedding power voluntarily, and that’s what happened. And I think it’s getting stronger and stronger in the record that he wanted that to happen, but he was thinking about this decades before he assumed the presidency. He really was working toward a grand strategy for the U.S. He believed that the international system should be universally free, and that free markets and democracy should prevail, and he really pushed for that. And so although much of it happened on his watch, I think it’s not just luck, there’s as much strategy there as there is luck.

CANNON: Do you know how you get proof, I think, of this, I absolutely agree with you Kiron, in 1980, I remember the date, it was June 18th, 1980, Ronald Reagan came to the Washington Post, he was campaigning for the presidency. And we had one of our editorial board meetings there, our free for alls with reporters and editors, and the publisher, and anybody who can mangle an invitation, so he’s being questioned all these things. He’s asked if you build up the military, which he’s advocating, aren’t you going to accelerate the arms race, and make things more dangerous? He says, it would be good if there was an accelerated arms race. I remember there was an aid of Reagan sitting there and he was just so worried, because he could see these headlines. But, what he said, he didn’t say it in a particularly eloquent or even articulate fashion, but he said it quite clearly that if we increased our military strength, the Soviets would not be able to compete with us economically, and they would come to the bargaining table. Coming to the bargaining table is a really important part of that, because Reagan was not one of these cold warriors who believed in the Cold War for its own sake, or in increasing arms for their own sake. He believed there was an end to this.

WATTENBERG: Lou, that’s one of those fictitious things that the Washington Post likes to think of as cold warriors, that there were people who were for the Cold War for its own sake. Trust me no one was for the Cold War for its own sake.

CANNON: Don’t be sensitive about it.

WATTENBERG: I’m being very sensitive, as a cold warrior, I’m being sensitive.

CANNON: Don’t be sensitive, because you’re fine, you’re a cold warrior, you’re okay. But, the reason, by the time Reagan came along there were plenty of people, liberals and conservatives and everybody else, who thought that this mutually assured destruction, which is this balance of terror which appalled Reagan, appalled Reagan the first time he learned about it, appalled him every day he was president, led him to the Strategic Defense Initiative. There were a lot of people who thought this was going to go on forever, or into the foreseeable future. What I’m saying that was different about Ronald Reagan, I really think it was different, is that he saw somehow that the Soviet Union didn’t have the capacity to compete with the United States.

ANDERSON: Four years before he came to the Washington Post meeting. At the ’76 convention, remember Reagan came down suddenly from upstairs, President Ford waived him down and he suddenly gave a speech. I came down with him, I was standing on that platform, he did not prepare that, he may have thought about what he was going to say, but he didn’t have any notes, he had nothing. And he stood up suddenly in front of the convention, and you go back and read that speech, and he laid out what he thought was the most important thing he thought a president had to deal with, and that was the threat of a nuclear war, how do you stop that from happening, how do you prevent what he used to call privately Armageddon? And I think that’s what drove him. And when you look at all these other elements that they’re talking about, they do fit.

SKINNER: I think there’s something missing, though, from what Lou was saying. He’s right that he saw the arms race as something that the Soviets could not win if we really pushed them, but Reagan also signaled to the Soviets. It wasn’t just a strength strategy, he also signaled that he wanted mutual cooperation, and that part of the Reagan story I think is not being told enough. He was doing both things simultaneously. He was being strong, but he was also showing, in a way that no president during the Cold War did, that he wanted mutual cooperation. That happens early on in the Reagan presidency with the releasing the Pentecostals from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the quiet deal.

WATTENBERG: What year is that?

SKINNER: In 1983, the very month that he is announcing SDI and giving the evil empire speech he’s working in the back channel to get the Pentecostals out, and he agreed to the Soviets that he would not crow about this. That was a very important kind of opening.

CANNON: I think there’s no question about that, he wasn’t signaling this in 1980 before he was president.

SKINNER: No, but I really think that he was, because if you look at his 1980 campaign, some of the speeches he gave, his first major foreign policy speech, which I think was in March of 1980, he was really running on a peace plan, he talked about strength but he always said he wanted peace, and he wanted cooperation. So I think that he was strong, but he was also saying that the strength is the strategy, the preference is cooperation.

CANNON: There’s no disagreement on that.

WATTENBERG: All the hawks believe in peace through strength. I mean, that’s how hawks define themselves.

CANNON: How many hawks thought that the Soviet Union would collapse if you pushed them, that was the key?

WATTENBERG: Not very many.

SKINNER: And that you could get it without a hegemonic war. I think that was what distinguished Reagan, he really believed that the international system could transform itself without a war.

WATTENBERG: That’s a good point. And there’s something I want to come back to. Now, Marty Anderson, you’re an economist, you were head of the domestic policy staff?

ANDERSON: I was domestic and economic policy advisor the first year and a half.

WATTENBERG: What was he trying to do?

ANDERSON: Well, what he was trying to do, he was not trying to cut taxes or lower interest rates, he was trying to do two things. He was trying to get stable economic growth, and more and better jobs, that was the goal. Now, the way he did that, unlike a lot of stuff in the press, he knew exactly what he wanted to do, he had all the elements of that policy set in place. He then brought together a group of people, during the campaign of 1980, we had 74 economic advisors. Every single word that he put out on his economic policy was read and approved by Alan Greenspan, and Milton Friedman, and Paul McCracken and a whole crew of them. And they advised him during the campaign, they advised him during the transition, and then when he became president they set up the economic policy advisory board, George Shultz was the chairman, Alan Greenspan was a member, Friedman, the whole crew, they worked with him all during the time implementing that policy, and opening doors.

WATTENBERG: What was that phrase that they threw, voodoo economics?

ANDERSON: Voodoo economics, yes.

CANNON: George Bush’s phrase.

ANDERSON: George Bush’s phrase, yes, it was voodoo economics during the campaign, then later on when the recession started and everything was in bad shape for the economy they called it Reaganomics. And I remember one day, after I left the government and came back and went over to the economic policy advisory board, Reagan walked in smiling and said, I think it’s finally working. He said, do you know how I know, they’re not calling it Reaganomics anymore.

WATTENBERG: Tell me again, he was for more jobs and?

ANDERSON: The two things he wanted were steady economic growth and more and better jobs. That was the goal, now how do you do that? You control spending, you cut taxes, you have regulatory reform, you have a stable predictable monetary policy, you reappoint Volcker, you appoint Greenspan, all those are elements of a comprehensive economic plan.

WATTENBERG: Where does the deficit come in?

ANDERSON: The deficit came in the following way. During the campaign he said, look, I want to reduce that deficit -- and by the way, during the campaign, in the fall of 1980 -

WATTENBERG: I hit him in the right spot, he’s rolling now.

ANDERSON: No, in the fall of 1980 there was no deficit, all the economists were predicting, as they are today, large increasing surpluses, as far as the eye could see. And what Reagan did in his tax plan was spend 90 percent of that projected surplus in a tax cut. He also said during the campaign that if there are deficits, something goes wrong with the economy, and the choice is between national security and running a deficit I will run the deficit. He made that explicit during the campaign and during the transition, and that’s what he did. And that’s what all his economic advisors told him to do. They said, first take care of national security, run the deficit.

CANNON: Well, I certainly agree with Marty on what Reagan wanted to do, I can also remember that you, Marty, as well as many other people who worked for Ronald Reagan weren’t as sanguine about those deficits at the time.

ANDERSON: We were terribly worried, we wanted to control spending, you’re right.

CANNON: And Ronald Reagan himself said, near the end of the term, of his second term, that that was the greatest disappointment of his presidency. He thought that Democrats, congressional Democrats were addicted to spending, which of course they were. He didn’t realize, and as Newt Gingrich and others have since found out, that the Republican members were just as addicted to spending in their districts as the Democrats were.

ANDERSON: David Stockman used to come back, and he would moan, and he would groan, and he would be just as angry at the Republicans as the Democrats in terms of spending control. Now, that did get out of control, but Reagan said, even with that happening, his first priority is national security.

CANNON: There’s a useful phrase in David Frum’s, and that is to treat the deficits, I used it in this last book I’ve done on Reagan, to look at these deficits, as horrendous as they were, you can’t make them into a wonderful thing, but to look upon them as wartime deficits. We ran big deficits during the Civil War, we ran big deficits during World War II. I mean, you run deficits during wars, typically.

WATTENBERG: Kiron, I want to ask you something. I had lunch once in the mid-1980s with Barber Conable, who was then the president of the World Bank, and had been the ranking minority member of the Ways and Means Committee, was a real tax maven. We were eating lunch at the World Bank in Washington, so there were all these diplomats around the room, and I said to him, to Barber, I said, what impact have the Reagan policies had on these people? And he paused for a minute, and he said, his policies have had very little reaction, but his rhetoric has changed everything. Do you buy that?

SKINNER: No, I think that his policies are really important. I think he’s put into the public view both for scholars and for policymakers, a way of thinking about cooperation that we hadn’t thought about before.

ANDERSON: I don’t think it was the words at all, I don’t think it was much personality either. I think it’s what he did. When he got in and he took care of the air traffic controllers, that was a powerful message. It’s what he did.

CANNON: I think it’s a false dichotomy to put the rhetoric versus the policy, because I think it’s both. FDR did things because he was able to reach the American people. Ronald Reagan did things because he was able to reach the American people. It’s no accident that Ronald Reagan was the first conservative governor of a major state. At the time in 1965, when I started covering him, it didn’t seem possible that a Republican or a conservative could get elected. And what Ronald Reagan did is something that I think is kind of ignored in his history, because it’s so long ago, the conservatives and the moderates in the Republican party hated each other then more than they hated the Democrats, the day after Ronald Reagan got the nomination, the day he got it, the next morning he called George Christopher who he’s beaten, and asked him to join his campaign. He worked just as hard that fall for the moderates on the ticket, which there were, as he did for the conservatives. He was a party unifier, he brought his own party together at a time his own party was completely divided, and some of that was rhetoric, and some of it was Reagan’s character.

SKINNER: I disagree with Lou a little bit here, I think Reagan’s rhetoric really has gotten in the way of understanding the impact of his policies. I think it did serve him forward as a communicator in real time, to reach people. But, the rhetoric was so offensive to so many, so say things as he once said in the 1970s, Castro is a liar, or to call the Soviet Union an evil empire in the 1980s, that many are so tied to that rhetoric that they can’t see the policy part under there. So it’s very difficult, I think, to get clear assessments of Reagan from people who would naturally be Reagan critics. They can’t disentangle him from his own rhetoric, and so the rhetoric really hurts him.

CANNON: We haven’t had any criticism of Reagan on this program, really. There were things that Ronald Reagan did that were unwise, selling arms secretly to Iran. You know, it’s interesting, if you go back and you look at it, it was the Contra part of it that interested the press, including me, at the time. The Contra thing didn’t work out that badly, but the Iran arms sales were a disaster, we were telling Europe not to sell arms to Iranians, and he was doing this. And Ronald Reagan did this, just as he did most of the good things that we’ve been talking about on this program, it wasn’t his advisors it was Ronald Reagan, this was Ronald Reagan, too. Both Cap Weinberger and George Shultz advised him not to do it.

WATTENBERG: Okay. I want to read you something from the Reagan Library handout material, from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, it says, it’s dedicated to developing and fostering President Reagan’s four pillars of freedom. And they are, individual liberty, economic opportunity, global democracy, and national pride. Just around the room once and then we leave, what letter grade, you’re an academic, would you give him if you combine those four, what’s Ronald Reagan’s final grade?

SKINNER: A.

ANDERSON: Yes, as he said when he left office, we meant to change a nation, and instead we changed the world. He didn’t mean to, but that’s what happened.

CANNON: I don’t know what the grade is, but I think the combination of the restoration of national pride, and keeping his eye on the ball versus the Soviet Union is the lasting legacy of Ronald Reagan.

WATTENBERG: Thank you very much, Kiron Skinner, Martin Anderson, Lou Cannon, and thank you. We at Think Tank depend on communications from our viewers, please write to us via email at For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg.

(credits)

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Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

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