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and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Can we do the job? The answer is yes.
I believe Ronald Reagan is the most presidential man I've ever known, and that will be his principal legacy.
He was just like, I think we'd all like our sons to be, just a real all-American boy.
We're just one for the kipper.
How did this man come to embody the hopes and dreams of so many Americans?
I don't think there's any president in American history who has been less engaged in the conduct of affairs than Ronald Reagan.
Tonight on Frontline, the real life of Ronald Reagan.
From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York, WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston, this is Frontline with Judy Woodroof.
Good evening. Welcome to a new season of Frontline, our seventh year on public television.
When George Bush is inaugurated here on the steps of the Capitol on Friday, that moment will also mark the end of the reign of Ronald Reagan,
America's first two-term president in a generation and the first president in recent memory to leave Washington more popular than when he arrived.
In fact, Reagan the man has often been more popular than his policies, and his personal popularity has always been his greatest political weapon.
So tonight, Frontline looks back over the long life and unusual career of Ronald Reagan, searching for the source of his connection to the American people and the American psyche.
Tonight's broadcast was produced for Frontline by Martin Smith. The correspondent is the historian and presidential scholar, Gary Wills.
Our program is called The Real Life of Ronald Reagan.
President Reagan returned to South Bend, Indiana in 1987 to mingle his legend with the legends of Notre Dame.
He was there to dedicate a stamp to coach Knute Rockne and to recall the movie in which he played Rockne's star halfback, George Gifford.
The event was carefully choreographed. White House aides screened Reagan's 1940 movie, Knute Rockne All-American.
Just before Reagan's speech, the audience viewed that movie's famous death scene.
As Americans, as free people.
As always, Reagan is the Gifford.
I don't know where I'll be then, but I'll know about it and I'll be happy.
Reagan has reported, reenacted, and celebrated the myth of George Gipp for over five decades.
His own history is interwoven with Gipp's.
And he has appropriated other American folk tales, making it difficult at times to distinguish between the teller and the tale, between this one American and America itself.
That explains Reagan's intimacy with the American psyche. He comes at it from within.
Born in Tampico, Illinois in 1911, Reagan likes to remember his Midwestern childhood as secure.
I've often thought that there's something out there in small town America, rural America, where you know everyone and are known by everyone in the community that is different than being anonymous in a large city and being able to go down the street and no one knows who you are or cares.
In fact, Reagan's childhood was not so secure.
His restless father took his family through eight changes of towns and 16 changes of homes while Ronald Reagan was growing up.
Between the ages of six and ten, Reagan went to school every year in a new town.
His father was Irish Catholic, a shoe salesman, a storyteller, and a hard drinker.
His mother was a devout convert to the disciples of Christ who worked for prohibition and moral causes.
There were two boys. The elder brother was named Neil. Ronald was nicknamed Dutch.
In his early days, Dutch was not a natural leader.
Ronald was more of an introvert. He was more of a stay at home boy. He was very close to his mother, and she was a very capable woman.
And I think that the drive that was necessary for him to later attain the position that he has attained was more through his mother than through his father.
Because of Jack Reagan's drinking, relations between Dutch and his father were strained.
Well, he had a problem, you know, and it was an illness with him.
And the mother and the boys fully realized, and they did everything to help him. It wasn't taken lightly.
If his father embarrassed him, his mother protected him.
At an early age, Nellie Reagan put Dutch into church skits and town plays, and she gave him elocution lessons.
In high school, Ronald Reagan was a regular in class dramas.
Reagan said, as a kid, I lived in a world of pretend.
She planted in my mind the first ambition, the entertainment world.
She had been in a hometown talent club that put on plays in the small town, and she gave readings.
I don't think that goes on anymore, but would be invited to go to a club meeting and so forth and then recite, whether it was comic or dramatic or whatever.
And when I was a little boy, she kind of got me interested in memorizing things. That's why I could recite the Jack Lund or the Robert W. Service a couple of those poems.
Because he had very bad eyesight, Reagan could not star in most childhood sports.
But that did not prevent him from becoming an excellent swimmer, a skill that made him a genuine hero at the local beach.
I was the only one up there on the guard stand. It was like a stage. Everyone had to look at me.
He spent every minute with his eyes on that beach looking around, and all of a sudden you'd see him take off his glasses and look and then throw his glasses and hit the water like a torpedo, so to speak.
Then you'd realize that somebody was going down.
There's no question about him saving lots of people because I saw many of them myself.
In 1928, Reagan went off to Eureka College near Peoria, Illinois.
He was the head of the cheerleaders and of the swimming team.
He took the gut course in economics. It was the all-American college experience for him.
I had two great interests in my education, in addition to getting an education, and they were athletics, playing in the athletic teams, and being in the entertainments, in the class plays, in the drama club plays and so forth.
Even though I got my degree in economics when I got out of college and was forced, in the depths of the Depression, to face up to what did I really want to do, I realized it was in some part of the world of entertainment.
I remember Reagan saying very decisively in a way of expressing. He said, sometime I'm going to get a good job. He said, I'm going to start, but I'm going to get a good job.
I can remember that so well. In fact, at one place, he said, I'm going to earn $5,000 in one year.
Well, that was almost unbelievable. But to me, he was looking ahead.
When Reagan graduated, he crossed the Mississippi River into Iowa, looking for work in broadcasting.
He was just out of college, and he was a very nice, just like an all-American young man. That's the way I can best describe him. He was a very nice young fellow, and that's what he was.
He was fresh and eager and excited about his work and anxious to get into things and eager to learn.
He was just like, just like I think we'd all like our sons to be, just a real all-American boy.
He landed his first jobs, sportscasting for radio stations WOC in Davenport and WHO in Des Moines, stations run by an eccentric but mesmerizing chiropractor and salesman, B.J. Palmer.
There, Reagan was taught how to read commercials.
I think he learned how to sell ideas, how to sell a product.
I think that's just natural broadcasting. Broadcasting was about communicating and so forth.
B.J. was a master communicator himself, and the people he had around him were the same way.
In the mid-1920s, B.J. published a booklet called Radio Salesmanship that ended up being published many, many times, and he in many cases wrote the book on how radio copy was used.
Reagan was here when those things were going on.
Under Palmer's tutelage, Reagan learned a trick that made him famous in much of the Midwest.
Without being at a Chicago Cubs baseball game, he became the voice of the Cubs, translating teletype relays into vividly described games for his Des Moines audience.
The details he invented were the very things that made the games seem real.
In 1937, Reagan persuaded the Palmer Company to let him travel west with the Chicago Cubs to their spring training camp off the coast of Southern California.
Actress Olivia de Havilland was shooting a movie on the island at the time.
I met Ronald Reagan on the island of Catalina. This charming young man, rather a celebrity, asked to meet me. And so we were introduced to each other, and I remember him as being full of good nature and affability and grace, graciousness.
While in the area, Reagan arranged to take a screen test. Warner Brothers liked what B.J. Palmer liked, Reagan's Midwestern voice and his sunny disposition. They signed him to a six-month contract paying $200 a week.
To come out here, as he did from a small town as I did, and into this studio, it was entering heaven, because this is the mecca, the mecca of anybody who wants to be in the entertainment business.
When I met him, I was introduced to him by Jimmy Cagney. Jimmy Cagney was then a big star. I'm a male boy here at Paramount, and he said, oh, I want you to meet somebody, just got in town. He said, this is Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan had just finished a picture that he, I think it was called Hollywood Hotel, and he had maybe three or four lines in it.
Within a few months of arriving in Hollywood, Reagan sent railway tickets back to his parents in Illinois so they could join him. Reagan was churning out more than 20 films in his first three years at Warner Brothers. He also met and married fellow Midwesterner actress Jane Wyman.
In 1941, Reagan and his new wife returned to the Midwest in triumph. The occasion was the premiere of his football movie, Canute Rock Me All America. Reagan was coming back to the Midwest a football hero. A South Bend resident made these home movies of the occasion.
The role was a young actor's dream. How I had wanted to make that movie and play the part of George Gipp.
I just saw you make that kick. You think you could do it again?
All totaled, Reagan appeared in 51 feature length films. Reagan's attitude toward acting was in sharp contrast with Jane Wyman's. An actress of range, she was always striving to play different roles. Reagan usually played the same role, light and likeable, often patriotic.
All right, Aidan, focus that inertia projector on him and let him have it.
The inertia projector. It's a device for throwing electrical waves capable of paralyzing alternate and direct currents at their source.
The inertia projector. It not only makes the United States invincible in war, but in so doing promises to become the greatest force for world peace ever discovered.
Reagan's directors remember him as easygoing and pleasant to work with. I had a feeling that Ronnie always wanted to please his director because he was ambitious and wanted to be an actor, a good actor.
And I think little by little he became, you know, more and more skillful as time went on, knew his lines with a quick study and a good study. And he took direction. He was not not difficult that way. He basically he wanted to please.
Don't pull your hair back.
Actors will give you an argument about things for clarification. He never demanded very much, never gave you much of an argument.
He was always fun to have around, told interesting and funny jokes and was a good storyteller, had a story for almost everything that happened, you know.
He did not have an extraordinary career. He worked steadily in several good films, one or two extraordinary films, but most of his films were lighter films, action films made during the war, comedies, things of that kind.
But he was fine. I enjoyed working with him and he fulfilled his opportunities very well. But finally, in King's Row, he was absolutely splendid.
In King's Row, Reagan plays a wealthy small town playboy, Drake McHugh, whose luck runs out. After a rail yard accident, both McHugh's legs are unnecessarily amputated by a vindictive town doctor.
Where's the rest of me?
It would be Reagan's best film performance. His line Where's the Rest of Me became the title of his 1965 autobiography.
When the war came, Reagan was called to service by the Army Air Corps.
Radial engine, oil cooler, air scoop at bottom of nose, it's a zero, check!
In 1983, Ronald Reagan told the Prime Minister of Israel that he had served in the United States Air Force unit which filmed Nazi death camps. In reality, Reagan never left California.
He made training in propaganda films there for the war effort.
I guess we'll hold Christmas service in this hole tomorrow.
But it seemed to him that he had been an intimate part of that effort.
I had been on the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild and I came back from the service after four years in World War II and back to the board and discovered that something was going on in Hollywood.
Labor strife on the movie front. California studios picketed in a dispute between rival unions. After the war, Reagan became involved in the real world politics of Hollywood labor disputes.
Reagan was on the board of the Screen Actors Guild and a member of more than one politically active left-meaning organization.
The atmosphere of the day was that you were a careless citizen if you were not a politically engaged citizen.
One of the organizations Reagan joined was the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions.
Olivia de Havilland was also a member and recalls when some communist party members tried to take over the organization.
I noticed something very peculiar happening. For example, emotion would be entered and seconded.
Whereupon someone extremely intelligent would get up and talk absolute nonsense for 15 minutes, absolute gibberish.
It was a form of filibustering and I thought, could they be communists? I decided to resign.
Almost all of my team resigned with me, but one did not and that was Ronald Reagan. He remained for another three months.
Now I thought, that's very strange. I thought, Ronnie couldn't be a communist, could he? Who would stay with this outfit?
And I thought, no, no, no, no, he couldn't possibly be that. And after further pondering, I thought, well, he always had a kind of, he seemed to be observing.
He seemed to be related to the organization as an observer. I wonder, I wonder for whom he was observing.
And then I learned much later, and only really rather recently, he was with the FBI.
Some of the people from our own FBI made contact because of what they saw I was doing then. I'd become president of the Screen Actors Guild.
And they came wanting some advice, some findings from me on people that I had dealt with and so forth.
And I got an insight into what was happening to the motion picture business.
It did give me a real understanding of the communist menace.
In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated alleged communist infiltration of the movie industry.
Those who did not cooperate with authorities were in many cases blacklisted. Reagan testified as a friendly witness.
There has been a small group within the Screen Actors Guild which has consistently opposed the policy of the Guild Board and Officers or the Guild itself as evidenced by the vote on various issues.
That small clique has been referred to, has been discussed as more or less following the tactics that we associate with the Communist Party.
You have no knowledge yourself as to whether or not any of them are members of the Communist Party?
No, sir. I have no investigative force or anything, and I do not know.
Has it ever been...
Reagan testified he had no proof that there were any communists in Hollywood, but he was already naming names of his colleagues to the FBI.
Reagan said actors should be judged by their audiences and made all new members of the Screen Actors Guild take an anti-communist oath.
We here in Hollywood, who too often have suffered from the misconception that we have not been a target for their infiltration, but have been a welcome haven for them, we will find that we can convince the world by subscribing to this program...
During this period of tension, there were threats on Reagan's life. He began carrying a revolver to protect himself. Politics overwhelmed his career and his marriage.
In 1948, Reagan traveled to London to make a picture called The Hasty Heart directed by Vincent Sherman.
I think it was the second or third night he was there. We had dinner together. We came back to the hotel and began to talk.
It was then that he told me he was very unhappy about the divorce and the breakup with Jane.
And I felt very sorry for him. I thought he was deeply affected by it.
The rumor around Warner Brothers was that she had said that he was boring.
And somebody said, well, Ronnie would like the encyclopedia. You drop any subject on the table and he'd run with it.
It wasn't a happy relationship. And I think it came as a surprise to him when she said that she wanted to leave him.
After his divorce, his movie career continued to suffer. Few good roles came his way, and he took to playing MC on the nightclub circuit.
Ladies and gentlemen, now for another special award, to present that award, a very special young lady, Jane Mansfield.
Soon there were better times for Reagan.
In 1949, he met a young actress named Nancy Davis at a friend's dinner party. Nancy fell in love.
He was less like an actor than anybody I'd known. He never talked about my last picture, my next picture.
He had a wide range of interests. He was a Civil War buff. He loved horses.
He was the complete antithesis of an actor.
Reagan was not eager to remarry. Hurt deeply by the desertion of his first wife, he had become distrustful.
But he grew in time to rely on Nancy, who, unlike Jane Wyman, was interested in playing a supporting role.
After a four-year courtship, they were married in 1952.
Professionally, Reagan was more active as a union leader than as an actor.
He stirred controversy when, as Screen Actors Guild president, he signed an agreement between the Guild and the giant talent agency, MCA.
MCA wanted to become a major producer of TV programs, but long-standing Guild policy restricted their expansion.
No agent could wear the two hats of employee as an agent and employer as a production company.
And Screen Actors Guild did grant a waiver to this regulation, to MCA. And, of course, that was a quite unprincipled wrong thing to do.
It may have been wrong, but as Reagan saw it, what was good for business was good for everybody. At least it was good for Reagan.
When, in 1954, MCA launched the flagship of its television production empire, Reagan was named host and given a contract worth over $125,000 a year.
I'm Ronald Reagan speaking for General Electric. Tonight's program stars Fred Waring.
Reagan became a kind of living advertisement for GE on the General Electric Theater.
I'm your General Electric progress reporter, Don Herbert, and tonight we're going visiting as the guests of Ronnie and Nancy Reagan in their new home in Pacific Palisades.
You know, good modern lighting makes a great deal of difference in the way you live. Now this is an open court off our living room.
Now the struggling actor had a chance to return to what he always did best, use his voice and personality to appeal directly to an audience.
This, of course, is our living room. You know, Nancy, we'll see Patty later on.
Hello. Our lighting in here is...
I think GE was very astute in that they wanted somebody that had the qualities of Ronald Reagan to present to the American public,
and I think that they were very... they had a campaign on to find somebody, and I think he was the epitome of the American male at that time, and he did it.
And he represented the country well, he spoke well, people liked him, loved him, and believed in what he said.
To promote the TV program, Reagan toured the country, visiting GE offices and factories. His GE producer was Earl Dunkle.
The original reason for taking him around was so that he would charm our vice presidents all over the country,
so they would leave us alone long enough to develop a program, and it worked.
When I first went out with him, he had a standard speech, and that standard speech was that the people in Hollywood are badly vilified for no real reason,
that their divorce rate was lower than that in the public at large, and so on and so forth.
It was... I always cataloged it in my mind as a defense of Hollywood speech, but then as time went on, he moved into other areas.
Now, there came a time when we were in Schenectady, New York, and they were holding a massive teacher's convention at the Armory there,
and at the last minute, their speaker was ill or couldn't come, and they came to see me and ask if they could get Mr. Reagan as a speaker.
And I said, no, I know nothing about education, and if I did, I wouldn't have time to write a talk like that, so I'm sorry, but we'll have to beg off.
And Ron, who was there then, said, no, let's do it, Doc, trust me.
And that night, he got up before teachers and gave a talk on education that had them applauding for 10 minutes after he sat down.
He knew exactly what he was talking about. They knew he knew what he was talking about, and I was absolutely amazed,
and from then on, when he said, trust me, I didn't worry about it.
Gradually, Reagan turned the tour into a series of political speeches.
He took much of his direction from the people he addressed.
Reagan, like a lot of people in Hollywood and, I suppose, like a lot of politicians, is a creature of his audiences,
and I say that even though Reagan has very strong and profound views about certain issues, but he's always wanted to please his audience.
Now, the issues that were in the minds of his audiences, which were mostly service club and business audiences,
were the kind of post-New Deal issues we had in this country, government regulation, high taxes.
Reagan had a very strong view about that because he was earning money for the first time in his life of any significant amount,
and the tax rates were then the highest.
What happened is he began to reflect the concerns of the audiences he addressed.
He had a fantastic ability to sense the mood of an audience, and within four or five sentences after he started speaking,
he would determine if the way he was approaching them was being received well by them,
and if not, he'd shift the gear and go into another approach,
saying that it was the same subject matter but a different way of presenting it.
In 1962, after eight years as GE spokesman, Reagan was fired.
The reasons are unclear, but at the time his producer, MCA, was facing possible indictment
by the Kennedy Justice Department for monopolistic practices.
Reagan had his tax records subpoenaed and was summoned to testify amid allegations that he had conspired with MCA
and that his GE contract had been an illegal kickback.
Our enemies are largely within ourselves.
Indifference, passiveness, a lack of standards and values about right and wrong, good and bad.
While he was never indicted, the episode embittered Reagan.
After leaving GE, Reagan became an intense crusader for the far right,
hosting a series of conservative propaganda films.
He attacked fellow citizens' dependence on big government.
Those who seek more and more relief from government to solve the problems of life,
old age, unemployment, guaranteed security,
who are willing and eager to have hard decisions made for them by remote authority,
they hasten the process.
Explosively new.
Ernest Hemingway.
Reagan made his last feature film in 1964.
Reagan was cast for the first time in his career as a bad guy.
Who planned a million dollar heist and got more than he bargained for.
You get back to the hotel and stay there.
I like it here.
Well, I can change that in a hurry.
The movie flopped, but it did not matter.
The politics were in Reagan's future.
The Republican National Convention reaches the spirited,
but hardly suspenseful climax of its San Francisco conclave.
In 1964, Reagan, already a leading conservative spokesman on the after-dinner circuit,
became a co-chairman of Republican Californians for Goldwater.
I'm Ronald Reagan, and I'm very much a Barry Goldwater man.
I'm full Barry because I know him, and I know what he stands for.
Goldwater was going to lose the election to Lyndon Johnson,
but Reagan emerged a winner.
In the waning days of the campaign on behalf of Goldwater,
Reagan delivered a nationally televised address.
I have spent most of my life as a Democrat.
I recently have seen fit to follow another course.
I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines.
No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income.
Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share,
and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in.
We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years.
We've raised our debt limit three times in the last 12 months,
and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world.
He was really the only good thing sort of that happened for Goldwater in that whole campaign,
and he had a sort of an electricity to him, and he raised just lots and lots of money.
It brought in more money than any political speech had ever brought in up to that time,
and it was a message. Here was a conservative who was putting their case in understandable terms.
No conservative had really been able to do that before.
We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night.
Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.
Because of the speech, Reagan attracted the backing of a group of wealthy Southern California businessmen,
including banker Ed Mills, drugstore magnate Justin Dart, auto dealer Holmes Tuttle, and oil millionaire Henry Salvatori.
The patrons became known as Reagan's kitchen cabinet.
He had shown by his speech that he was a very, very foremost and foremost spokesman for the Republican Party.
Nobody could speak as well. Nobody got the response he did.
And he articulated the principles of the conservatives, so he was a natural.
A group of prominent party members came to me before the 1966 governor race in California
and claimed that I was the only one who could bring the party together.
It was quite divided and split up and win the election.
And I thought they were crazy, and I said, no, you pick someone else and I'll campaign for them, do that.
Well, they kept after us till pretty soon Nancy and I couldn't sleep.
We thought, well, what if they're right? Can we live with ourselves if we keep saying no?
He thought that the party was in such a bad shape and that if he didn't do all that he could,
that maybe he'd be shirking his responsibilities, and we spent a few sleepless nights.
Finally, I made a proposal to them that I would go out on a circuit throughout the state of making speeches
and come back and tell them whether they were right or wrong.
And I came back and told Nancy that I thought maybe they were right.
Now, I've come to a decision that even a short time ago I would have thought impossible for me to make.
And yet I make it with no lingering doubts or hesitation.
As of now, I am a candidate seeking the Republican nomination for governor.
So I finally gave in.
And you know, I was well into the campaign before I realized that I wouldn't be back in show business by November when the election time came.
Suddenly dawned on me I might win, and that was the end of show business for me.
Now the issue gets down to two people.
Mr. Ronald Reagan, the crown prince of the extreme right and a moderate governor that has brought this state of California to its—
Reagan's opponent, Pat Brown, aired commercials that attacked Reagan as an unprincipled extremist.
Whether he's been selling ideas or products, he's always professionally persuasive.
And remember, beraxyl-powdered hand soap in the attractive new plastic container.
For the AMA, he's made a pitch against Medicare.
Straight for Mr. Reagan.
For GE, he's called federal aid to education a tool of tyranny.
He's big on integrity.
Integrity is a good word.
But is it the right word for Mr. Reagan?
Other commercials demeaned Reagan as an actor.
Ronald Reagan has played many roles.
This year he wants to play governor.
Are you willing to pay the price of admission?
To prepare Reagan for the campaign, the kitchen cabinet hired campaign manager Stuart Spencer, a pioneer political consultant.
The 1966 governor's race, the basic problems you had to overcome were, number one, he was not an extremist,
because he was going to be painted as an extremist by his opposition, and number two, that he was an actor and he wasn't just working from lines.
He'd had a whole career in the movie, in the entertainment business, and he was starting a new career in his life.
And he needed to be brought up to speed.
Most people who run for public office at that level have been a legislator, they've been a congressman, they've been a mayor,
they've held a public office someplace, and Ronald Reagan had not.
To coach Reagan, Spencer hired a team of behavioral scientists.
We went to a speech, that was our first introduction to him, and it was the speech, the speech that he had given for Goldwater,
and it was about Washington.
And it had all the aphorisms about Washington, all of the references to what was wrong with Washington, nothing about California.
We listened to him a few times after that, the same thing, the same speech with a little bit of variation.
We finally told the campaign management team that, hey, we've got to get this guy off to the side for a while.
We need three days with him to find out what is his political philosophy and how that can be interpreted into California.
And that's what we did.
We took three days up here in Malibu, just this kind of setting, right here, and learned about him,
learned what he believed in, and also, very importantly, how he could take in information.
And from that point on, we organized information in a way that he could handle it.
I thought that it was a joke.
I really felt that running a motion picture actor, and he was regarded, this is not the man that he defeated, speaking meanly,
but he was not a grade AA actor.
So I didn't regard Ronald Reagan as a strong candidate.
We were always in the position of trying to bring him up to speed on issues and things of that nature.
He worked with the Plog Group.
He also worked with Charlie Conrad.
I think he was the minority leader in the state legislature at the time.
And Charlie was working with him on what we would call pure civics lessons.
This is what goes on in state capital.
This is how a bill gets out of the legislature.
We felt those were important things for him to know.
The thing we had to learn was how he took in information.
And I guess through his actorial training, he was used to working off of cue cards.
So what we did was take five by eight cards, those little white cards,
organize them into a total of 13 black books, binders about that thick, on 17 issues of California.
They could be inserted so we could update them all the time.
He could pull them out and work on speeches, and he did his own speeches at that time.
He learned very quickly about California through that,
and it was amazing how he would take all of that, not miss anything that we said,
and click the things off like that, one, two, three, and control people.
Audiences that were hostile to him lost their ability to be hostile by the time he was through.
I won't estimate my numbers.
I'll just settle even if it's only the point after touchdown, but we're going to win.
Ronald Reagan is the best political candidate I have ever known.
Not that he's the smartest or anything like that, but he understands the role of being a candidate.
He understands that somebody else is running the mechanics of the campaign.
He's the kind of a man who's willing to listen and willing to accept an idea even if it wasn't his.
He'll go ahead and make it his, but he rides very easily.
He's a delight on a campaign.
With some candidates, you have to worry about are they going to drink too much?
Do they want to go chasing one thing or another?
Reagan is almost a non-drinker. You put him to bed and he stays in bed.
It's a nice trait.
So, Ronald Reagan, the amateur, defeated Brown, the professional, by a stunning one million votes.
You solemnly swear that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States
and the Constitution of the State of California.
Governing was a new experience for Reagan.
It was also new for most of the men around him.
Communications Director Lynn Nofziger was a former newspaper man.
Legal Affairs Director Ed Meese, a former Deputy DA.
Finance Director Casper Weinberger was a lawyer, as was Chief of Staff William Clark.
They figured out how to govern on the fly.
We presented a plan, a decision-making process, to the Governor, which he quickly approved.
That is bringing many people, many experts, into a room, having someone, at that time myself,
attenuate the issue and get to the heart of the matter, avoiding minutiae.
At that point, the Governor would go around the room, might very well ask his Secretary of Agriculture
his own thinking in the area of social welfare, as an example, until at the end,
everyone in that room had expressed him or herself, and the Governor would then not defer, not delay,
but make a decision and state that he expected that decision to be implemented.
He did not appreciate being immersed in great detail.
There were simply too many issues traveling at too great a speed.
And thus, they were refined on what one news magazine called mini memos, one page per issue,
stating the issue, the facts, the options, the recommendation for decision.
I've always said that from the first days that I worked with him in Sacramento,
I found that he was one of the best executives I've ever met.
I remember the first time that we had to talk to some law enforcement executives.
I prepared a detailed memorandum for him, took it into him.
He read it at his desk, and I thought he was going to take that memorandum with him as a talking paper.
Instead, he left it on his desk, went down the hall, and spent a half hour with law enforcement executives.
The first time that I knew that he had really talked informally on a number of these topics
and held forth for a half hour as though he had been involved in this topic for months.
He really has the ability to do this, but as I say, he conserves his time for the important decisions
and for the important things, he doesn't get involved in a lot of trivia.
In his first term, his administration clashed frequently with students.
Reagan had promised to cut government spending, including state aid to education.
On one campus, students hanged Reagan in effigy.
The times were the restless 60s. Inner cities were rioting.
The war in Vietnam was growing. Students were protesting the draft.
Reagan's tough talk incensed the young, but appealed to conservatives who wanted tranquility restored.
I was picked a few days ago in California by some youngsters that had signs that said, make love, not war.
The trouble is they didn't look like they were capable of doing either.
This fellow that was doing the talking had a haircut like Tarzan. He walked like Jane and smelled like cheetah.
I do not believe it constitutes political interference.
But Reagan talked tougher than he acted.
In negotiations with educators, Reagan showed a willingness to compromise.
By the time he left office, state aid to education actually doubled.
On other budget issues as well, Reagan's actions diverged from his rhetoric.
In his first year as governor, he could not find fat to trim from the budget, so Reagan the tax cutter signed a tax increase.
In 1967, in his first year as governor, he did what any good governor would have done.
He was faced with a budget problem. He passed a tax increase.
And the tax increase, because it came out of committees that were controlled by the Democrats, was very progressive.
It hit the banks and the corporations and the insurance companies much harder than the Democrats had ever been able to hit them when they had a Democratic governor.
And Reagan signed it.
Reagan still blamed government for his failures.
In 1968, he signed into law what turned out to be one of the most liberal abortion bills in the country.
Later, he said he regretted it, but blamed government bureaucracy for misunderstanding his intentions.
I have to confess, I'd never given it much thought.
And I, for the first time in my life, had to sit down, I did more study, more soul searching,
contacted more legal lights, more medical authorities, more theologians, in an effort, read more, trying to find out what was my view.
And I have come to the conclusion, no, it wasn't easy, because I just casually looked at it like anyone else, a way out.
It didn't work out as I thought it would, because some of those who were supposed to police it, evidently had different ideas.
He was, said one political opponent, a better speech maker than a governor.
During his second year in office, the kitchen cabinet sent Reagan on a speaking tour of the United States.
It was a presidential election year.
That seems like a simple question.
It's a very simple answer. I've been saying it for weeks.
Would you say the same? I am not a candidate.
By the time Reagan arrived at the Republican National Convention in Miami, he changed his mind.
And so, yes, as of this moment, in response to that resolution by the California delegation...
It was too late. The 1968 convention belonged to Richard Nixon.
But Reagan made clear to everyone what he had confided to Dr. Plogg two years earlier.
Reagan was thinking of being president from the time we first met him.
That's all he wanted.
And I can remember when he's running for the governorship, he had to take three or four days off because he had some kind of flu or something.
It didn't seem to be responding very well.
I was with him in his specific palisades home, in his bedroom.
And he's sitting in bed, and we're going through some issues, and I'm working with him on these issues.
And suddenly he put the books down, and he says, damn, wouldn't this be fun if we were running for the presidency?
Reagan made his first serious run at the presidency in 1976 against Republican incumbent President Ford.
The challenge did not go over with the party faithful, and Ford won the nomination.
But it was Reagan who was lucky.
It was not an easy time to be president.
A steep rise in Arab oil prices was fueling inflation.
Interest rates were also rising.
And we can't expect an overnight miracle and no easy answers.
For winner Jimmy Carter, the presidency became an impossible job.
In 1979, revolutionaries seized American hostages in Iran.
A desert rescue mission failed dismally.
Americans blamed their president.
At 69 years old, Reagan was prepared for one more try in 1980.
Bring back the recognition that the people of this country can solve the problems that we don't have anything to be afraid of as long as we have the people of America.
After the convention, one of his first campaign stops was in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Reagan talked of states' rights.
I'm going to devote myself to trying to restore to states and local communities those functions which property belong there.
He had appeared against the advice of some staffers.
Three civil rights workers had been slain in the town in 1964 with the complicity of local police.
Soon there were other blunders.
The campaign turned to an old hand, Stuart Spencer.
You know, as I look back on it, 1980 was a tremendous victory.
But there was no indication early on it was going to be that kind of a victory.
And I think the most important decisions were, number one, try to keep from making mistakes.
And the second one was whether we debated or we did not debate with Jimmy Carter.
And there was a big split in our organizations to which way we went.
These are the kind of elements of a national health insurance important to the American people.
One chance for Reagan to make a big mistake would be in the debates.
But without Carter's knowing it, Reagan's campaign team had stolen a copy of Carter's debate briefing book.
Reagan knew Carter's strategy before going in and was well versed with answers and one liners.
An emphasis on catastrophic health insurance.
Governor Reagan, again, typically is against such a proposal.
Governor, there you go again.
When I opposed Medicare...
I had tremendous confidence, more confidence than many other people did,
that he could handle the incumbent president of the United States in a debate,
because a presidential debate substance really isn't important.
It's how the person is perceived on camera during that debate, their style, their form, etc.
And nobody in American politics has a better style and form than Ronald Reagan.
And he prevailed, and I think that was the turning point of the 1980 campaign.
Ronald Wilson Reagan, the ex-actor and ex-governor, was now the oldest man ever to become president.
He was certainly the most relaxed.
On the morning that Governor Reagan was to be inaugurated 40th president of the United States,
I went over to the Blair House to be sure everything was under control,
and it was about nine o'clock in the morning.
Nancy was getting her hair done, and I talked to her for a few minutes,
and then asked about the governor, and she said, I don't know, he's still in the bedroom.
I went and gingerly opened the door to the bedroom, and it was pitch black,
and nothing but a mound of covers on the bed, and said,
Governor, and there was kind of a grunt, and I said,
good God, in an hour and a half you're going to be sworn in as the 40th president of the United States.
He rolled over and said, do I have to?
Raise your right hand and repeat after me, I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear.
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.
That I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.
Good morning. Good morning, all. Everyone looks very bright and happy.
The agenda is mainly concerned with the economic program, though.
Try not to smile too much.
In the beginning, the focus was on cutting taxes and spending.
As in California, the details were left to others.
Before we get into the details of the program,
I asked Dave Stockman for an interview, for an overview of what's been going on here.
I have to say that I am not one to shrink from a tough task,
but I must also say, and I think every cabinet member here will agree with me,
that the goals that you gave us are extraordinarily difficult to reconcile,
but I'm pleased to report today that we're almost there.
The president's job was to sell the broader concepts.
Having a degree in economics, I believed, and from experience in our own history,
that the best way to increase government revenues was to cut the taxes, not spend them.
To carry out Reagan's program, his staff labored long hours.
Reagan worked nine to five.
Most presidents had one chief of staff.
Reagan had three senior aides by his side.
His opponents on Capitol Hill found it hard to take President Reagan seriously.
No question about it.
He's the least knowledgeable man as far as the facts of government
than any president I ever known, and I've met ten and worked with eight.
Simple as that.
He never did his homework, in my opinion.
He had the brightest staff people I ever saw around him.
They had formulated the programs.
He went along with them.
But his staff, they were all conservatives.
I have to admit that they were brilliant people, and they handled them,
and they understood politics.
He used to address the nation in the State of the Union speech.
He sat on the talk, and I looked at George.
I said, who do economics, George?
I said, you were right in Iowa.
You're right now.
You don't believe in this bull, do you?
Well, we both smiled.
He said, stop it.
Can we do the job?
The answer is yes, but we must begin now.
We're in control here.
There's nothing wrong with America that together we can't fix.
We've lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core
every day that we accomplish.
In the beginning, the economic program was a hard sell.
On March 31, 1981, Reagan was at the Washington Hilton
trying to engage a lukewarm labor audience with talk of spending cuts.
The speech was to be followed by a routine photo opportunity outside the hotels.
The president has been shot once in the left chest.
The bullet entered from his left side.
He is in stable condition.
He is conscious.
And Mrs. Reagan is with him.
And at this moment, we have nothing further to say.
It was unreal that it couldn't possibly have happened,
because all we had ever felt was such love and affection from people.
And when I saw him, I mean, it was just unreal.
In March of 1981, his third month into office,
a time when traditionally masses of Americans most intently watch the new president
because he's new, it's a new entertainment.
Just at that time, he is shot.
The country is stunned.
It's reminded of the assassinations of the 60s.
And gallantry under fire is displayed.
And in my judgment, at that very moment, the Mr. Nice Guy of all those Reagan movies
is fused into reality because reality is acting like the movies.
And thereafter, in my view, he's a larger-than-life figure.
This, of course, is Mr. Reagan's first major public appearance since that day,
by members of his cabinet, CIA Director Bill Casey there.
Reagan's remarkable recovery made it difficult to criticize the man and his programs.
I have come to speak to you tonight about our economic recovery program
and why I believe it's essential that the Congress approve this package.
In the fall of 1981, Reagan's three-year tax cut was enacted into law.
And restore the vitality to our economy.
But tight money policies at the Federal Reserve Bank were slowing the economy.
The country fell into the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression.
Factories closed.
Unemployment figures rose.
Tax cuts did little for people who were not earning wages.
Reagan remained the eternal optimist.
Yesterday we were told that unemployment has gone up another two-tenths of one percent.
We can, however, take some comfort from the fact that 99.5 million of our people are employed.
I know that's no comfort to those who want to work and can't find a job.
And it's no comfort to farmers, independent business people, auto dealers, realtors.
But what about the promises that were made?
What about the promise that the burden would be shared equally?
What about the promise of lower deficits?
Throughout 1982, Americans increasingly disapproved of how Reagan was handling his job.
In early 1983, Reagan's approval rating stood at an anemic 35 percent,
lower at midterm than for any president in 40 years.
The thing that has struck me is the constant drumbeat of gloom
that is on particularly TV news.
The president did not change course.
The administration was committed to military spending increases.
And today, just as it's always been, strength, not weakness, is the greatest guarantee of peace.
I came here with the belief that what was needed was realism and strength.
The realism meaning, don't be lured into a détente because it sounds good
or to make a treaty in which you shake hands and yet you know that the evils are still going on.
To ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire,
to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding,
and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
In the winter of 1983, at a series of meetings with Pentagon officials,
Reagan formulated his own simple solution to the arms race.
And I asked in the very beginning, I'm not a scientist.
And I said, is it worthwhile, is it possible to look and see
if there cannot be developed a defensive weapon,
there's been one for every other offensive weapon since history began,
a defensive weapon that could actually intercept those missiles as they came out of their silos on their way.
It seemed like a movie fantasy, and the press called it Star Wars.
It was an enormously expensive plan, and no one knew for certain if it would ever work.
The subject I want to discuss with you, peace and national security, is both timely and important.
The speech projected an image of a decisive leader,
but SDI, one of Reagan's favorite projects, was an exception to the rule.
In foreign policy matters, where Reagan had no experience,
he was often comfortable letting others make the key decisions.
When Schulz and Weinberger advocated sending Marines to Lebanon, Reagan sat quietly by.
When the military wanted to invade Grenada, Reagan asked no questions.
And when a Korean jetliner was shot down by the Soviet Union,
Reagan, busy clearing brush on his ranch at the time, showed little concern.
His press secretary thought up presidential quotes to make the president appear outraged.
At times, even his wife supplied the words.
Doing everything we can.
I don't think there is any president in American history who has been less engaged in the conduct of affairs
than Ronald Reagan since the time when Woodrow Wilson was confined to quarters with a stroke.
Ronald Reagan reads the lines that are put before him, and he relies heavily on his subordinates.
He does not have the intellectual energy to...he's not stupid,
but he lacks the intellectual energy to involve himself in the details of policy.
So to an extraordinary degree, he relies on what is fed into him, and he regurgitates it.
He'll go into a meeting and he'll be told, you have the following options, which one do you prefer?
He doesn't have enough completed homework on his own part to question the options
and say, well, isn't there another one we might be considering?
However removed from detail, Reagan reaped the political benefits of any of his administration's successes.
The Grenada invasion, militarily sloppy, was a political hit with the public.
The fact that a few days earlier a bomb had killed 241 Marines in Beirut was almost forgotten.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Mr. Bob Anderson, Chairman of Rockwell International.
By the fall of 1983, Reagan would also reap the political benefits of an economic turnaround.
Lower taxes and heavy government borrowing to pay for defense was beginning to boost the nation's economy.
Reagan's approval ratings soared to record levels.
We've set our sights on victory, and I believe the election of 1984 will be a victory for us all,
for the future over the past, for progress over failure, for hope over despair, and yes, for strength over weakness.
Ronald Reagan seems to have understood instinctively some very important things about the presidency.
First is that Americans want to like the president, want the president to succeed.
Then, too, Mr. Reagan has had a series of messages that sound simpler than they are, but in which I think he deeply believes.
For example, if you get taxes down, the genius of the market will make the economy grow.
Another example, if you could get rid of nuclear weapons, the world would be a safer and better place.
These are not complicated thoughts, but expressed with conviction and apparently held with conviction.
They come across making the man seem convinced about things, knowing and caring about things.
That, too, has a great impact.
Now, I believe that our problem has not been that anybody in our country is undertaxed.
It's that government is overfed.
The impact was greatest when he had a script.
Without it, he sometimes stalled.
They don't have to pay much in taxes.
Now, Mr. President, you said, there you go again, right?
Remember the last time you said that?
You said it when President Carter said that you were going to cut Medicare.
You said, oh, no, there you go again, Mr. President.
And what did you do right after the election?
You went out and tried to cut $20 billion out of Medicare.
And so when you say, there you go again, people remember this.
Still, in 1984, he would win again.
It did not seem to matter that the deficit was growing.
Homeless families were in the street, and real wages were declining.
Reagan's campaign team turned the whole first term into a movie featuring Americans with restored faith.
He has brought back respect for the White House.
Hurry, that's it.
There's a whole new attitude in America today, and I think that that needs to be continued.
It used to be the Americans took it for granted they were American.
Now it seems like they're really proud.
I feel more patriotic towards my country, and I feel more proud to be an American.
And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.
Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
Thank you.
Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
Thank you all very much. Thank you.
In 1984, Reagan had persuaded the majority of Americans that it was morning again in America.
I think that's just been arranged.
It looked like more success lay ahead.
But the team that engineered the first term would not carry Reagan through the second term.
The president's role in the reassignment was characteristically passive.
Reagan's prime minister during the first four years of his presidency had been James Baker.
Baker was tired of the criticism he was receiving as White House chief of staff,
and he wanted something a little bit more prestigious, more powerful in a sense,
and more insulated from the daily turmoil.
He decided he'd like to be secretary of the treasury.
Don Reagan decided he would like to be chief of staff.
The two of them got together. They decided to switch jobs.
They went to the president and said, Mr. President, here's what we've decided to do.
Do you have any problem?
The president said, well, let me think about it overnight.
And the next day he said, well, if that's what you fellas want, that's fine with me.
As if he were powerless, with no control over what happens.
And the way he runs his life, he is powerless.
He doesn't look at details. He doesn't follow up.
He tries to pick good people, put them in the job, and then let them alone, and never goes back to them.
I tell in my book, by the way, that while I was secretary of the treasury, which is a four-year period,
I never sat down, as we are now, one-on-one and just discussed economics of finance with the president.
Not to say that we didn't talk about that. We did. But there were always people around.
In contrast to Baker's tight control over the president, Reagan's approach was to let Reagan be Reagan.
The new approach could be disastrous.
In the spring of 1985, the president was invited to West Germany to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II.
The site chosen was a tiny cemetery where 18 SS stormtroopers were buried.
When the story broke, there was anguish.
May I, Mr. President, if it's possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way, to find another way, another site.
That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.
The American Jewish community were outraged, and the president, almost singly, against my advice and Nancy's and a lot of other people,
including the resolution of the Republicans in the Senate, refused to cancel his visit and went.
I've received many letters since first deciding to come to Bitburg Cemetery.
Some supportive, others deeply concerned and questioning, and others opposed.
Reagan's single-mindedness led his advisors into a far more damaging scandal.
Inside the White House, a small group of men was creating a secret foreign policy.
They were driven by the president's obsession with contra-opponents of the Nicaraguan government.
They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help.
You know the truth about them. You know who they're fighting and why.
They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance.
We cannot turn away from them.
Reagan felt deeply about the contracts.
Repeatedly, against the wishes of the United States Congress, the president went out of his way to make pleas for their help.
The cause seemed to justify anything that got the job done.
The struggle here is not right versus left. It is right versus wrong.
I think that Poindexter, McFarlane, North thought they knew that the president wanted the Contras supported.
He did. He did not want a communist nation in Central America.
He wanted the Contras to succeed in getting their own government back.
To that extent, they figured, I guess, whatever means that we can use, we have to do in order to achieve that end.
And that's when they began funding the Contras when the Congress of the United States would not fund them.
The late William Casey, director of the CIA, was also mixed up in the ever-expanding contra-funding operation.
After Casey coaxed the president into a bizarre attempt to trade arms to Iran for hostages held in Beirut, the president's shadow government was exposed.
I have directed that no further sale of arms of any kind be sent to Iran.
The Iran-Contras scandal broke in the fall of 1986.
Long before the diversion of funds to the Contras, the Tower Board has documented two years of an extensive U.S. military support for the Contras at a time when Congress ruled that to be illegal.
Air scripts, phony corporations, tax-exempt foundations, all directed by Oliver North and John Poindexter, and before them Robert McFarlane at the White House.
And the question is, how could all of this be taking place, millions and millions of dollars, without you having known about it, especially at a time when you were calling the Contras the moral equivalent of our founding fathers?
Andrea, I don't believe, I was aware that there are private groups and private individuals in this country. I don't believe it was counter to our law.
What does it say about the way you've been managing the presidency?
Andrea, I've been reading a great deal about my management style.
I think that most people in business will agree that it is a proper management style.
You get the best people you can to do a job, then you don't hang over their shoulder criticizing everything they do or picking at them on how they're doing it.
You set the policy, and I set the policy in this administration, and they are then to implement it.
Reagan was on the defensive. His judgment had been questioned before, but never his honesty.
The Tower report said that the arms deal with Iran should never have been made in the first place.
You have said that you accept the Tower Commission report, and yet your friends say that in private you still have a deep feeling that you do not feel it was wrong to sell arms in the beginning.
I want to know, Mr. President, in your heart, do you feel that you were right or were you wrong in selling arms to Iran?
We had quite a debate, and it was true that two of our cabinet members were very much on the other side.
And it turned out they were right, because, as I say, it did deteriorate into that.
I think the image that was Ronald Reagan's most valuable asset was one of believability,
and that as long as we maintained his credibility, that he did what he said he was going to do regardless of everything else, that that was the most important thing,
that if the opposition or the media were ever able to break into his honesty or his credibility, then he would be in trouble.
And as it turned out, the issue that damaged him more in his whole career as a public servant was the whole issue of Iran, because the American people simply didn't believe him.
In spite of the wildly speculative and false stories about arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages.
The president's credibility was severely damaged.
Nancy Reagan took the lead in seeing that someone other than her husband would take the fall.
She consulted with Stuart Spencer.
Well, it was our opinion, and several of us, that Donald Reagan just was not serving the president well.
He was a good man. He was an honest man and all those things, but he just was not getting the job done in the manner in which it should be done.
And I've always taken the philosophy that everybody's expendable except the number one person. I don't care who it is.
This is business. That's the way it has to be. And when it reaches that point, then the person has to move on, do other things.
In our system, those people get taken care of.
However, on the advice of my attorneys, I must decline to answer that question.
Admiral John Poindexter and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North would also take the fall. Their testimonies protected the president.
The president said North did not know of the diversion of funds.
The president of the United States called me. In the course of that call, the president said to me words to the effect that I just didn't know.
I still think Olly North is a hero.
And at the other hand, in any talk about what I might do or pardons and so forth, I think with the case before the courts, that's something I can't discuss now.
But from my, I just have to believe that they're going to be found innocent because I don't think they were guilty of any law breaking or any crime.
The Iran-Contra affair dogged the president through most of 1987, but Reagan never changed his views.
Olly North remained a hero, and Reagan still insists it was never an arms for hostages deal.
I regret one thing. Some of the people in the cabinet when we talked about it who opposed it, never opposed it on the ground that it was arms for hostages.
They said if it ever becomes known, it will be made to look like we had traded arms for hostages.
Well, they were right. That's exactly what has happened, and the media has helped in that, and so have the opponents of our program.
But I don't know. You can't sit by when you know that you've got citizens of your country who are held in savage captivity by barbarians of that type.
In his remaining time in office, Reagan rebounded with a breakthrough in the unexpected area of arms control.
Cold warriors always have some room for maneuver toward the center.
But Reagan went all the way from denouncing an evil empire to arranging for real arms reduction with Mikhail Gorbachev.
President Reagan's belief that SDI could make offensive nuclear weapons obsolete led him at the Reykjavik summit to suggest a total abolition of those weapons.
Less optimistic bargainers on both sides crafted afterward an arms agreement that Reagan could sell, not only to Americans, but even in a personal appearance before Russians, as his crowning act of statesmanship.
It is a time when the first breath of freedom stirs the air and the heart beats to the accelerated rhythm of hope.
When the accumulated spiritual energies of a long silence yearn to break free in this Moscow spring, this May 1988.
Ronald Reagan is a very much of an underrated politician and statesman.
You don't know how he does it, but he does it.
When you look at what he's accomplished, you're amazed that this former actor was able to do it.
You can point out his foibles. You can point out his faults. You can point out any number of things.
But by George, he did it.
The President of the United States is going out. I'm friendly with him, even though I disagree with him along the line.
Was he personally mean-spirited? The answer was no.
Was he knowledgeable on things that happened? No, he wasn't knowledgeable.
Did he ever love the American people? Yes.
Did the American people think that he was a good president?
Yes, they think he was a good president.
Tip O'Neill, do you think he was a good president? I think the time isn't going to prove him to be a good president.
I don't think he leaves much of a legacy out there. Now we've had it. That's it.
Through it all, one thing has remained the same.
Do you actually think of yourself as a politician?
What?
Do you think of yourself as a politician?
No. Ex-actor.
It's been a wonderful two terms with lots of accomplishments, and I've even brought the slides to prove it.
So, Marlon hit the lights.
Here I am on top of the White House.
And the soldier is explaining where he thinks the next book will come from.
I mean, I hope the environmentalists never find out about this one.
We used to fly Air Force One over Wyoming low and shoot Buffalo from the window.
Oops, oops.
But I'll tell you someone I trust totally, George Bush.
He's been a wonderful vice president, and he'll make an excellent president.
Here we are listening to one of his speeches.
Power loyal sons are marching onward to victory.
So Reagan leaves office as he came to it in a glow.
His time in office was controversial, and he left a dubious legacy of deficits.
But he floated above much of the controversy.
Seeming adrift in the details of government, he showed the old lifeguard's infinite resurface ability.
His life seemed charmed, and we hoped some of it would rub off on us, as some did.
Whatever sober judgments are reached in the future, many Americans will still tell Ronald Reagan,
thanks for those memories.
Thank you for joining us.
Next week, Frontline will return in its usual slot Tuesday nights on most public television stations.
I'm Judy Woodruff. Good night.
For almost 20 years, U.S. Naval Officer John Walker sold secrets to the KGB.
For the first time on camera, he tells how.
U.S. Navy security is virtually non-existent.
Kmart protects their toothpaste better than the Navy protects their top secrets.
How much damage did Walker really do?
It probably altered the strategic balance of power, perhaps permanently.
The spy who broke the code, next time on Frontline.
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