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Despite successes both symbolic and real, Reagan becomes less engaged as president.
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Transcript: Chapter 23
Narrator: Reagan's prestige hit its high on the Fourth of July 1986 as he stood on the decks of the John F. Kennedy and pushed a button which sent a laser a mile across New York harbor to light the refurbished symbol of the American promise.
Liberty Weekend was the centennial of the Statue of Liberty and Reagan showed what Time magazine called his "genius for American occasions" with the biggest fireworks display in American history.
Reagan: The things that unite us, America's past of which we are so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much loved country. These things far outweigh what little divides us. Tonight we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom, the cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.
Narrator: "Ronald Reagan has found the American sweet spot," Time wrote with wonder. "Reagan is a sort of masterpiece of American magic ... apparently one of the simplest creatures alive ... yet a character of ... complexities that connect him with the myths and powers of his country in an unprecedented way."
Reagan's successes were more than symbolic. That month in Poland the government gave in to one of his conditions for ending sanctions and freed political prisoners. Solidarity was alive. Reagan upped the ante in Afghanistan from harassing the Soviets to forcing them out. The rebels were about to realize the benefits of the Stinger missile.
In Nicaragua things were different. In 1984 Congress cut off funding for the Contras and made CIA support illegal. Reagan told his national security adviser Bud McFarlane: "We've got to find a way to keep doing this, Bud ... I want you to do whatever you have to do to help these people keep body and soul together. Do everything you can." On Liberty weekend, a year and a half into his second term, Reagan was the master of the ceremonial side of the presidency. But he was less and less engaged with his job.
Rollins: In the first term we had Baker and Deaver and Meese and Clark. They would brings things to the president, and they would fully engage in the discussion and the dialogue with him. Don Regan had a tendency to keep staff away from the president and basically have staff brief him and he would go into the president himself.
Maureen Reagan, Daughter: As time went on I sensed a discomfort in him. I knew that he was coming upstairs quieter at night where he used to come up with great stories about some decision that had been made and who was arguing what. Now, it was just, it was all just kind of quiet. And, we'd have to draw out of him, you know, kind of what happened during the day and there was a, there was just a kind of sadness about it. I mean, Ronald Reagan did not understand that his chief of staff thought he was prime minister -- he just didn't get it.
Morris: A good way of tracking how much a president is doing is looking at the papers that come through his hands and seeing how much they engage his attention. And in the first years of Reagan's presidency, he is constantly checking these points off, writing comments, thinking about them.
But as the years proceed you can see he is less and less interested. They just become check marks. Check marks. Check marks. He was saving his faculties as old men do for the really important, vital events.
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