Chapter:
Part two of a biography of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president.
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Transcript: Chapter 14
Announcer: Miene damen und herren -- Mr. Ronald Reagan und Mrs. Nancy Reagan.
Narrator: As a boy, Ronald Reagan inherited the values of the American heartland at the time of Calvin Coolidge -- a clear sense of right and wrong and self-reliance. His experience as a lifeguard left him with a sense he could rescue those in need. In the movies he played the hero who came to the rescue; he felt he was playing himself. As president, the world was his stage. The script was his own. The possibilities of rescue were enormous.
Reagan: General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.
(applause)
Narrator: Ronald Reagan had almost no experience in foreign policy, little knowledge of history and a capacity to be disengaged that grew worse as he grew older. But he never lost his sense of America's mission.
Reagan: Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Richard Norton Smith, Former Director, Reagan Library: Reagan had a very old fashioned patriotism, which accepted unquestioningly American exceptionalism and America's role as a moral, as well as, a geographical beacon for the rest of the world. Reagan believed the evil empire was evil and Reagan believed that the United States was put here by God to combat the evil empire and to prevail.
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