Transcript: Chapter 07

Narrator: On January 2, 1967, Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as governor of the State of California. He had not only beaten Brown. He had beaten him by one million votes.

Reagan: I do.

Judge: That you take this obligation freely, without mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that you will well and faithfully discharge...

Patti Davis: I was hysterical when I found out that my father had been elected Governor. The Vietnam war was going on. Berkeley was going on. The, you know, the one place I wanted to be if I hadn't been 14 years old and at a boarding school in Arizona was on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, braiding flowers into my hair. I mean, this was my goal in life. And now my Gover-, my father was Governor of California. So this was, this was, I just didn't think it was a good image for me, you know?

Narrator: Patti was not the only Reagan facing an image problem. Her mother drew the attention of the press when she refused to live in the governor's Victorian mansion -- an historic landmark.

Nancy Reagan: I have to translate everything into being the mother of an eight year old. You are right on a busy corner. I love old houses I'll start with that. And I love old things and I love tradition. I don't think there has ever been a governor with an eight-year-old child before.

Narrator: Nancy moved her family to an exclusive Sacramento suburb becoming the target of criticism. She was devastated when writer Joan Didion called her actress smile "a study in frozen insincerity." The governor too raised a few eyebrows with his talk about biblical prophecy.

The Reverend Billy Graham had stirred Reagan's interest when he told him that judgment day was near. Reagan would repeat Graham's warning adding: "for the first time ever everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon." One sign was what he called "the Communist takeover of Libya."

With no experience, Reagan faced the task of running the State of California. When a reporter asked what kind of a governor he would make, he quipped, "I don't know. I never played governor."

Cannon: He faced an enormous challenge, because Reagan really didn't know anything about politics or governments and, and he had a lot of people around him who arguably knew even less. I mean, I remember Lyn Nofziger once said, you know, we weren't just amateurs. We were novice amateurs.

Narrator: Reagan's first decision, designed to reduce the size of government proved a disaster.

William Hauck, Speaker's Staff, California Legislature: He decides that in his naiveté; about running state government that you could just do a 10 percent across-the-board cut, and that would be easy to accomplish. Well, he found out that it was not easy to accomplish and that it probably wasn't equitable.

Narrator: Announced at a time of growing campus unrest, the cuts pitted the governor against students at the University of California. They would be required to pay tuition for the first time.

Reagan: "I'm going get out. I don't care. Let's go outside. Okay. Now."

Narrator: After years of playing the hero, Reagan found himself cast as the villain.

Nofziger: We were down at the University of California campus in Santa Barbara and all of the students were all mad at him. We'd come back from lunch, to go back to where they were having the meeting and the students just kind of lined up along the pathway and they all gave him the silent treatment, you know, and nobody said hello, nobody waved, nobody did anything. They just stood and stared at him. So, he walked through this gauntlet of people, very nonchalantly, got up to the doorway where we're going, turned around and he said, Shhh -- everybody broke out laughing and he walked on in.

Narrator: Reagan struck a chord with Americans nationwide who were becoming fed up with the radical '60s.

Man: When I saw him make a speech in 1964 for Goldwater, I said there's the man that should be running for president and there's the man we need for president.

Woman: I like the way he takes a firm stand on things and the way he goes about them.

Man: I think his views agree with mine.

Woman: He has the same type of feeling with the people that John Kennedy had, I think.

Man: He's the hope of America.

Archive Reagan draft montage song: "Ronald Reagan he is the one. He is the one to beat. He's the leader of the GOP... "

Narrator: A Reagan draft initiative caught fire. When the Republicans gathered in Miami in 1968, Reagan, after only eighteen months in elected office, was the choice for president among conservatives. By then, former Vice President Richard Nixon had a lock on the nomination.

Reagan: I hereby proudly move on behalf of my fellow Californians that this convention declare itself as unanimously and united behind the candidate Richard Nixon as the next president of the United States, and I so move.

Nofziger: Reagan was not upset. He told me "Lyn, I just didn't think I was ready for it." So, you know, he knew it himself very well and he'd obviously, he'd have taken it if there been this great demand for him but, but he knew that he would be better off waiting.

Narrator: Reagan returned to California to face the first true crisis of his governorship. The student revolt which had begun in 1964 reached its climax at Berkeley in the spring of 1969. The university was paralyzed by a student strike, which was joined by members of the Black Panther Party and even some professors.

Morris: There was a spellbinding moment when he was governor confronting a bunch of Berkeley University profs. He suddenly recognizes in their midst a radical from his Hollywood days, his name was I think Popski.

And he said, "You, Popski, I know you and I know what you stand for." Lost his cool. There was a direct connection there, the anarchy that prevailed on the Berkeley campus in 1969 with the anarchy that he saw immediately after World War II outside the gates of Warner Brothers.

Narrator: When the police failed to break the strike, Reagan sent in the California Highway Patrol. That only heightened tensions.

Reagan: I believe that where any group's rights are being imposed upon, or any individual's rights, by any others, it is the obligation of government to protect those constitutional rights at the point of bayonet if necessary.

Narrator: The National Guard descended on Berkeley replete with bayonets. It occupied the city for seventeen days. Most Californians regarded Reagan as a hero for restoring the peace at Berkeley. Others felt he had acted as a trigger happy extremist.

The following year Reagan ran for re-election with little to show for his first term. He had promised to lower taxes but they had increased. And he had failed to curb the growth of government.

Reagan: Some of the things they've said about me and education, this may get you expelled.

Narrator: Reagan won in November and launched a new initiative to cut back government spending.

Reagan: Welfare is the biggest single outlay of public funds at three different levels of government: federal, state and county. And welfare is adrift without rudder or compass.

Narrator: In his first term Reagan had governed through confrontation. Now he needed to collaborate with the Democratic controlled assembly if he wanted his welfare bill to pass.

Hauck: Reagan was beginning to think about his own legacy. He was beginning to think about the accomplishments that he would be looked back on when he left the governorship, and I'm sure that people would argue that Reagan was also beginning to build or try to build a record, to run for president for a second time.

Narrator: The bill passed. Reagan saved taxpayers two billion dollars and learned an important lesson.

Michael K. Deaver, Aide to Governor Reagan: He proved to himself that he could make some changes that he could not only talk about and move people to get things done but he could actually move the mechanics of government to get things done and I think that confidence that it gave Reagan was more important than most people realize.

Edwin Meese, Chief of Staff to Governor Reagan: And so when he left with a kind of a groundswell of approval in the state, and a great deal of interest throughout the country among many people that he go on, and perhaps run for the presidency in the future.

Reagan: Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, hold it. You are all asking the same question and you are all going to get the same answer. So we might as well do it once. No, I've made no change whatsoever. I've said repeatedly, and I repeat again. I have a decision to make. I don't know what that decision will be. When the time comes I will announce it. Yes or no. And I assume that that will be sometime before the end of this year.

Maureen Reagan: That summer, I had everybody over to my house for dinner and we were playing charades and uhm ... I've forgotten exactly how it happened but I guess it was a book title and my father was the one doing it and he ... and finally he just stood there and just went like this. You know like it's me and we all screamed "Making of a President."

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