All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 3, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
54:46
REMEMBERING REAGAN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep263
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is a special episode of the podcast devoted to Ronald Reagan.
Now, later this week it's Ronald Reagan's birthday and I thought it would be interesting in this troubled time to do a survey of Reagan, a survey of his leadership, a survey of his accomplishments, also a kind of honest look at his relevance or irrelevance today.
Debbie's going to join me.
We're going to talk about our experience as young Reaganites in the 1980s.
My daughter, Danielle D'Souza Gill, will join me.
We'll talk about the issue of Reagan and Trump, the way in which leadership styles are dramatically different now from in the past.
And the question I want to ask is whether we are facing the same old evil that Reagan faced, but in a new form, and whether we'll need a new strategy to, in a familiar phrase, make America great again.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
We're no longer living in the Reagan era.
And I don't just mean by that that Reagan is no longer with us.
It's been a long time since Reagan was president.
But what I mean is that the Reagan era of American politics, which began in 1980, I believe came to an end in 2008 when Obama was elected.
I think Obama, in fact, saw himself self-consciously As the man who was going to try to, he couldn't undo the Reagan era any more than Clinton could.
Clinton was largely carried by the Reagan tide.
But I think Obama's idea was, let me try to close this chapter and begin a new chapter in American history, which, in fact, he did.
If we think of the larger landscape of American politics, think of what that means.
The Democratic Party was the dominant party in this country from 1932.
This is when FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, was first elected in the era of the Depression.
And Democratic dominance went all the way from 1932 to 1980, when Reagan was elected.
The great achievement of Reagan was to stop that Democratic train.
Now, Reagan did more than that, and I'll come to that in a minute.
But Reagan began a new approach, and he was able, amazingly, to get Democrats to come over to his side to vote for his tax cuts, to vote for some of his foreign policy initiatives, to ratify treaties that were Reagan's treaties, but he got Democrats to vote for them.
And Reagan's influence continued to be felt long after Reagan.
It went into the Bush era.
In fact, George H.W. Bush was largely elected on the strength of Reagan.
And as I say, Clinton was unwillingly, reluctantly, thrashingly carried by the Reagan tide.
But we haven't had somebody like Reagan since Reagan.
Republicans since Reagan have been so different than Reagan.
Many of us who came of age in the Reagan era were looking for another Reagan.
We realized not only is that Reagan hard to find, but we were unlikely to find another Reagan in our lifetime.
That's been a perhaps startling, but it shouldn't have been a very surprising discovery.
Reagan was in many ways a very unique guy.
The challenges of today are different than Reagan's.
Reagan faced largely an international crisis, although there were domestic crises as well.
But the big fight for Reagan was the Cold War.
And the opponent was a Soviet empire that had become rapacious and very strong, with tens of thousands of nuclear-tipped warheads pointed directly at us.
And Reagan realized that that was the challenge of his day.
Today, of course, we're facing a more internal, more domestic challenge.
And so the tactics of Reaganism, the generic appeal to patriotism, the appeal to kind of one America united against Even though that was to some degree more rhetorical than real, nevertheless, Reagan could plausibly appeal to a single America united behind a single anthem and a single flag.
But that's not our America today.
I remember in 1987, I was...
Listening to Reagan, I was in the White House, the old executive office building, and I was watching on TV as Reagan, who was then in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate, was saying, Mr.
Gorbachev, take down this wall.
And of course, I was thrilled by this speech, in part because a college classmate of mine, Peter Robinson, Who was a fellow right-winger at the Dartmouth Review.
We were buddies together at Dartmouth.
And here was Peter writing this unbelievably important speech.
But I don't even think Peter thought, and I certainly didn't think listening to Reagan in 1987, that the Berlin Wall two years later would in fact come down.
We just thought this was sort of masterful rhetoric.
And there's a very interesting story that I might tell in the next segment about how this speech even got written.
But Reagan's achievement wasn't just to say it, but to actually make it occur.
The Soviet bear had been on the prowl from 1974 to 1980, gobbling up ten countries, including South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, South Yemen, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Grenada, Nicaragua, Afghanistan.
Think about that. Ten countries falling into Soviet orbit in six years.
This is the legacy of democratic defeatism.
We're back with that legacy now.
It seems that when Democrats are in office, really bad things happen around the world, and of course, the 1970s were really no exception.
At this time, it seemed like fighting the Soviet Union was the losing battle.
In fact, a famous communist who became a conservative, Whitaker Chambers, when he moved right, when he left the Communist Party and joined, if you will, the side of the West, He made the really striking comment, he said, I am leaving the winning side.
And you get a sense here of how conservatism in those days was defined by a kind of gloom.
The gloom is that we're on the right side, but we're going to lose.
Reagan never shared that gloom.
Reagan believed that we're going to win.
Reagan predicted that we're going to win.
Here's Reagan, by the way.
This is in 1981.
He's speaking at the University of Notre Dame.
And Reagan says, the West won't contain communism.
It will transcend communism.
It will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.
Here's Reagan in 1982, addressing the British Parliament.
In an ironic sense, Reagan says, And Reagan goes on to say, It's the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity.
And he says that if the Western alliance remains strong, it will produce, quote,"...a march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history." I'm quoting these things because at a time when no one, and I mean literally no one, thought the Soviet Union was going to collapse, Reagan did.
He predicted it.
He knew it.
He adopted the policies to make it happen.
And then it did happen.
He left communism on the ash heap of history, never to return in that form again.
Mike Lindell is such a kind of creative guy that whenever he comes up with new products, I'm like, what's it going to be this time?
Well, my slippers.
That's the new one. And I'm like, let me get some now.
I want to try them. I try them.
I love them. They're so soft.
They're awesome. I mean, they're pretty much what I slip into right as I get out of bed.
Well, Mike has taken over two years to develop these my slippers.
They're designed to weigh indoor or outdoor all day long.
They're made with MyPillow foam and impact gel to help prevent fatigue.
They're made with quality leather suede.
And for a limited time, Mike is offering 50% off the new MySlippers.
Now, these MySlippers are so comfortable, you're going to want to get some for the whole family, and we actually did.
Here's Danielle with her moccasins, and of course, Debbie and I just love ours.
I got the moccasins, she got the slippers.
Go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Dinesh.
You're going to get deep discounts, not just on these slippers, but on all the MyPillow products, the GizaDream bed sheets, the MyPillow mattress topper, the MyPillow towel sets.
Call 800-8760-227.
That's 800-8760-227.
Or go to MyPillow.com.
Make sure you use promo code D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
Those of us who lived through the Reagan era all have our kind of favorite moments and memories of Reagan.
If you lived through that time, here's one memory I don't think that you'll soon forget.
This is a moment from the Reagan-Mondale debate of 1984, which shows you Reagan's ability to deliver a punch, and in this case it was a counterpunch.
Listen. I will not make age an issue of this campaign.
I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
What I find amusing and interesting about that clip, watching the video of it, is you see that even Mondale is laughing.
Even Mondale is like, you got me?
And Mondale goes with the spirit of the Reagan jibe.
And that's, of course, the lighter side of Reagan.
I don't know if that was a scripted line that Reagan came armed with or if it was a spontaneous punch.
If it was spontaneous, it's one of the best spontaneous lines ever delivered, I think, and certainly a presidential debate.
But here's an earlier glimpse of Reagan.
This is 1964. This is Reagan speaking on behalf of Goldwater.
This is the speech that sort of brought Reagan onto the national stage.
And you can see a younger Reagan and get the mood of Reagan, a little bit more somber mood, from this short clip.
Listen. You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, Or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
So this was Reagan's career, really spanning from starting in the mid-60s all the way to his election in 1980.
I mentioned in the last segment, I talk about my Dartmouth pal, Peter Robinson, who had been down to Berlin and seen the Berlin Wall and talked to some Berliners and asked them, What do you think about this wall?
And they saw the wall as the very symbol of Soviet tyranny.
And that's what gave Peter the idea of drafting in a speech the line, Mr.
Gorbachev, take down this wall.
And Reagan loved it.
The moment he read the speech, he jumped right on it and he goes, that's what I want to say, Peter.
I want to talk about taking down the Berlin Wall.
And Peter describes, and he's written about this subsequently, massive efforts by the State Department and the Defense Department, all kinds of diplomatic channels, which, by the way, review these speeches before, these official speeches before they're given.
They all wanted to take the line out, but Peter ultimately appealed to Reagan, and Reagan said, no, I want that line...
To stay in. And Peter made the point later, and other speechwriters, Peggy Noonan, Tony Dolan have said the same thing, that as speechwriters, they didn't really write for Reagan.
They rather, they were sort of, you would almost say that Reagan was the real writer, and they put themselves in the place of Reagan, and they went back to Reagan's old speeches.
Peter said that one of his greatest sources of what to say in Reagan's mouth was what Reagan had said himself previously.
And so...
This was very much Reagan sentiment, but it was designed to put diplomatic pressure on Gorbachev, and as we know from history, that pressure ultimately worked.
Now, what made Reagan different in his understanding of communism, I think, than what a lot of conservatives were saying at the time, is that they embraced the evil empire aspect of communism, but Reagan also saw the ineptitude of communism.
Reagan saw that communism wasn't just evil, it was evil, but it also didn't work.
And Reagan saw this in the kind of jokes that he would sometimes tell about communism.
Jokes that, by the way, Reagan claimed to have heard and picked up from the Soviet people themselves.
In one of Reagan's favorite jokes, he talks about a guy who goes to the Soviet Bureau of Transportation, and he wants to order a car, an automobile.
And he's told that, look, you've got to pay now, but there's a 10-year wait.
And the man is like, oh, man.
But he goes, that's all right.
He fills out all these forms.
He goes through all these various agencies.
He signs in countless places.
Finally, he pays the money, and he says, okay.
And now what? So they say, well, come back in 10 years and get your car.
And the man says, morning or afternoon?
And the guy in the agency gives him a look and says, we're talking about 10 years from now, what difference can it make?
And the man goes, well, the plumber is coming in the morning.
So this was Reagan relaying stories from the Soviet people.
But the point of the stories is that you've got this huge system of socialism, all based upon centralized planning.
And the centralized planners don't know what's going on.
They don't have markets.
They cannot rely on the price mechanism.
Their system's not going to work.
So even though the Soviet bear is dangerous, It is also clumsy.
And of course, those two things, by the way, go together.
We often think, well, ineptitude and danger are sort of opposites.
But no, Reagan's view is that a Soviet bear, where the economy is collapsing around you, inside the Soviet Union, is only going to become more adventurous abroad.
It's going to try to secure gains on the international front that are not available domestically.
And Reagan realized that that bear had to be checked.
It had to be brought to its knees.
It had to be, in the words of the time, not merely contained but rolled back.
The rollback of communism was Reagan's ultimate goal, a goal in which he was incredibly successful.
You know, guys, 2022 has already been a critical year, not just for America, but also for AMAC. This is the Association of Mature American Citizens along with its over 2 million members.
The Biden administration and Congress are pressing forward with radical overhauls of voter integrity and much more legislation that could hurt our seniors.
And the midterm elections this November are going to be a big one, a battle for freedom versus socialism.
Now, unlike liberal groups, I think you know the one I'm thinking of, AMAC is America's conservative, action-oriented organization for 50 +, fighting hard literally every day in Washington and across the nation for our seniors.
I'm urging you to choose AMAC now.
You'll get all the great membership benefits.
So how do you do this?
Go to amac.us slash Dinesh.
Again, go to amac.us slash Dinesh to become an AMAC member like me and Debbie have now.
Debbie and I are both, well, I guess we are creatures of the Reagan Revolution.
And I was just thinking back that when Reagan was elected in 1980, I was 19, but you were 14.
And ironically, you met Reagan at that age.
Talk a little bit about, first of all, why did you, you know, a Hispanic kid in a school in Harlingen, Texas, why did you care about meeting Reagan?
And what was it like when you did meet Reagan?
Right. So, well, I mean, as a kid, I was always very political, even in Minnesota.
I would, like, go with my cousin to put flyers on people's doors of our candidate.
In the Copey party, Copeyana.
So I was a Copeyana before I was a Republicana.
Yes. So anyway, so it was very natural for me at age 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 to be very political.
And I have to say my grandparents, I've talked about this before, were Democrats.
They're from the Rio Grande Valley.
They're Hispanic. They're Mexican-American.
And they were Democrats.
They were for Carter. And I would look at it and I would think to myself, why on earth is she voting for a Democrat?
You know, just in my mind, right?
Well, when it was announced that Reagan was coming to Harlingen, I really wanted to meet him.
And I really wanted to do everything I could to make that happen.
And so he went to Harlingen in the fall of 1980, probably September, I think, around then.
I was a ninth grader.
And so I was really excited and gung-ho to go see him.
I got to see him.
He was super sweet.
But one of the things that I'll never forget that he said in that talk in Harlingen was that Hispanics are Republican.
They just don't know it.
Well, I knew it.
Well, let's unpack that phrase.
What he meant, I think, is that if you look at the way Hispanics are, not politically, but just their values, they're pro-family, they're hardworking, they know that education is the way up the ladder.
In their beliefs and their conduct, they do belong in the Republican Party, even though historically they had been voting Democratic.
And your grandparents being the perfect example.
And my grandmother thought Jimmy Carter was a...
That he was probably not of wealth.
And so she thought, he's like us.
He is like us, right?
Not to mention he's an evangelical Christian.
Exactly. My grandmother was an evangelical Christian.
And so all of these things were very important to her.
So anyway, but Reagan, and I came to find this out later, Reagan's goal, and this is why we always talk about Latinos and Trump and the fact that he made such headway with the Latino community in the Rio Grande Valley, but Reagan always wanted the Republicans to have a really large Hispanic support.
And in 1980, he got 30% of the Hispanic vote, And in 84, he got 37% of the Hispanic vote.
I was one of those because I did get to vote for him his second term, right?
But nobody came close to him until Donald Trump.
And so George W. Bush, I believe he got 30 and 35.
I think Senior got 30% of the vote.
But, you know, this is crazy because we should be getting...
I mean, Hispanics should be overwhelmingly...
Voting for Republicans.
Because of the Hispanic platform just in general, our values, our beliefs really line up with the Republican Party and not the Democratic Party.
So we are doing a very poor job as Republicans to bring more Hispanics into the fold.
Since Reagan, we haven't, I think it's fair to say, had someone quite like him.
We have had a number of people, starting, of course, we had Bush, H.W., then Clinton.
And on the Republican side, we had W. And, of course, we've had Trump.
What is it about Reagan that, to you, makes him stand out?
I mean, is it simply the fact that we were younger then and sort of Reagan was our guiding star?
Or is it that even looking back and with some kind of clinical objectivity, there was something different about Reagan?
What was that? Reagan was like my grandpa.
I mean, he just...
He was...
He felt...
Like somebody that I could go up to and talk to and give him all kinds of stories.
So he was that type of person.
He was very nice, very cordial, very warm, and he was not like your typical politician.
And, you know, I got the same type of feeling when I met Donald Trump.
The exact same. Yeah, although on the face of it, they're temperamentally different.
Their styles are different. I mean, I think part of the reason for that, and people mistake the fact that Trump is so aggressive, it's a different time.
In fact, I see this even with Lincoln.
The early Lincoln is different than the later Lincoln because Lincoln realized he was in a very difficult situation.
In fact, he said, I'm facing a challenge greater than Washington faced.
And he realized, I've got to be a man of steel.
Whereas before, Lincoln had been perceived as kind of a softie, a little bit of a rhino.
Right, right. Well, you know, with Reagan, I often tell you how every time something would happen and he would go on TV... I would literally start sobbing.
And he was just that type of person, president, leader.
One of the things is that when Reagan used the phrase, we, which he would, he did speak about one America.
I think he saw America as a single country.
I think he saw Democrats as, well, remember, he had been a Democrat, as not enemies, but just political opponents, people who saw things a different way.
And I wonder if we will ever get back that sense of a one America where we disagree about means, but we do agree generally on goals.
Well, I hope we do reach that point in America.
I'm afraid to say we probably won't.
I think the Ronald Reagan era of politics is over.
When you think back to the highlights of Reagan, his kind of great moments, his sort of greatest hits, what is the one time at which you remember Reagan as sort of exhibiting the qualities that are quintessential in a leader?
Well, I mean, especially with his ability to convince somebody like Gorbachev to end the Cold War.
I mean, that to me was just amazing that he was able to do that.
And Gorbachev even regarded him as a friend, which, you know, I can't even imagine that happening today.
Well, I remember going, this is going back, I think, to the 1987 summit where Reagan would tell Gorbachev just highly amusing anecdotes, which had nothing to do with politics.
At one point, Reagan was telling Gorbachev about this really fat man who had gotten stuck in his own bathroom and couldn't get out of it.
And Gorbachev was intrigued because obviously this was not diplomatic talk.
This was not scripted.
Gorbachev was like, Where did you find out about this man?
How did the man eventually make his way out of the bathroom?
So yes, Reagan, these world leaders.
But I think Reagan realized that that's the way you actually break the ice.
Right. Get him through to people.
And they begin to talk to you more...
On a personal level. On a personal level.
Yeah. I mean, Gorbachev at one point asked Reagan for advice.
When Eastern Europe was breaking apart, the Soviet Union was beginning to dissolve.
And Gorbachev said to Reagan something to the effect of, I feel like a man on a precipice.
What should I do? And Reagan unbelievably said to Gorbachev, take one step forward.
I'm sorry. I always get choked up.
But I mean, here's a man telling another man to commit sort of political suicide.
And amazingly, he did it.
Gorbachev did it. Unbelievable.
Unbelievable. Going online without ExpressVPN?
Well, that's like leaving your kids with the nearest stranger while using the restroom.
Well, most of the time it's probably okay, but you never know who you're trusting.
Why would you ever risk it?
That's why you need to be using ExpressVPN.
Now every time you connect to an unencrypted network in a cafe, hotel, airport, any hacker on the same network can gain access to your personal data.
It doesn't take that much technical knowledge to hack someone, just some cheap hardware is needed and your data is valuable.
Hackers can make up to $1,000 per person selling personal information on the dark web.
Now ExpressVPN is the solution, it's so secure, no one can get past ExpressVPN's encryption.
You just fire up the app, click one button, boom you're protected.
It works on all smart devices.
So go ahead, secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash Dinesh.
That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash Dinesh.
You'll get an extra three months for free.
Once again, expressvpn.com slash Dinesh.
Henry Kissinger called Reagan's defeat of communism the greatest diplomatic victory of the modern era.
And I think it was. It ranks with the defeat of Nazism as one of the greatest achievements of the West in the past 100 years or so.
You can see the magnitude of Reagan's victory when you contrast his evil empire speech, which goes back to the early 80s when he first took office, with the way that former Soviets talked about Reagan at the very end.
So let's begin by just getting a little taste of that evil empire speech.
Here's Reagan speaking in the early 80s about the Soviet Union as an evil empire.
Listen. 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.
So let's pay attention to the significance of what's going on.
The liberal view at the time was that the US and the Soviets were similar.
We have different economic systems, maybe, but we're basically two great powers.
We both have similar interests and objectives.
We're both trying to project our influence.
Sometimes there's obviously misperception, misunderstanding, as Reagan puts it, and we sort of have to work through that.
This was the liberal view.
Reagan's view is no. There's a moral line that runs between these two societies, free societies on the one hand, totalitarian on the other.
Now, I mention all this because let's fast forward to when the Soviet Union...
It's now collapsing.
And there are uprisings across Eastern Europe.
Poland is already breaking free of Soviet influence.
And here is the Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman.
This is one of Gorbachev's top guys.
In fact, I think I might have met this guy, if my memory is right.
I had a brief conversation.
I had the opportunity to actually interview Gorbachev for my book on Reagan.
This is the book, by the way, Ronald Reagan, How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.
If you want to read good books on Reagan, I obviously recommend my own.
I also recommend Peggy Noonan's What I Saw at the Revolution.
I recommend Doug Brinkley's book, The Reagan Diaries.
Brinkley is actually a liberal, but I think I had a big role in convincing him to write that book.
He had written a somewhat absurdly...
A devotional biography of Jimmy Carter.
And I said, well, Doug, you've got to pay attention to Reagan.
And Brinkley had not, at that point, taken Reagan seriously.
It's only when he began to look at Reagan more closely that he was like, whoa, this guy actually had far more substance, far more vision than he was ever credited with.
But here's Gennady Gerasimov, Gorbachev's guy in October 1989, announcing that the Soviet Union is not going to intervene in the internal affairs of Eastern Bloc nations anymore, allowing the people there to have their own destiny.
And reporters are asking him, what happened to the Brezhnev Doctrine?
And here's Gerasimov.
The Brezhnev Doctrine is dead.
And reporters say, well, what's going to take its place?
And he says, well...
He goes, you know the Frank Sinatra song, My Way?
He goes, Hungary and Poland are doing it their way.
We now have the Sinatra Doctrine.
Think about this. You've got a Soviet communist who was trained in the Soviet system, part of the so-called nomenklatura or ruling class.
And he's talking like, well, he's talking like Reagan.
And here is Andrei Kosirev, a minister in the Yeltsin government, which came after Gorbachev, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, after the Communist Party dissolved itself.
And this guy, Kosirev, was asked about the...
And the name of the Soviet Union, which was being changed back to the Russian Federation, and obviously getting rid of the idea of Soviet.
He said, this is Kosirov talking, he goes, there was always a mistake to call it the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
And then someone asked him, well, what was it really then?
And he goes, well, he goes, it was rather, as was once said, So here are the Russians themselves, in the aftermath of communism, ratifying and agreeing with Reagan's characterization of the Soviet Union.
Now, in politics you rarely have this kind of a victory.
It's one thing to say, we defeated our opponent, we knocked him to his feet, we humiliated him, and he had nothing to say.
He had to concede our military superiority.
It's a whole other matter to say we defeated our opponent so thoroughly that we didn't have to fire a single bullet.
We got him to abolish his own bad society, and then we got him to agree with our description of him from the beginning.
That is some sense, I hope I'm conveying, of the magnitude of what Reagan was able to accomplish in the Cold War.
You know, for centuries, people who got aches and pains would be like, well, what can I do about it?
Pretty much nothing. And very often, you don't even know where the pain is really coming from.
You just know that with time, with age, this is something that's like, quote, part of life.
Well, now there's a 100% drug-free solution, and it's called Relief Factor.
The great thing about it is it makes the pain go away, and Debbie is like a walking testament to it.
She has this problem with frozen shoulder, and she says, let me try relief factor.
She tries it. Wow, it's actually working.
I'm feeling better. The pain's gone away.
Then she forgot to take it for a while.
It's like, whoa, the pain comes back.
So Debbie was, you know...
Kind of a quick learner. Realize, listen, I better keep the Relief Factor around.
And so she now makes sure she never goes without it.
Now look, you don't have to take her word for it or even mine.
Try it for yourself. You'll see.
Order the three-week quick start for the discounted price of just $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call 833-690-7246 to find out more about this offer.
That number again 833-690-7246 or go to reliefactor.com.
Feel the difference.
I thought it'd be interesting to have a, well, kind of an intergenerational conversation on Reagan.
And so Danielle, my daughter Danielle D'Souza Gill is in town.
By the way, she's the author of the book The Choice, The Abortion Divide in America.
She's the host of the show Counterculture with Danielle D'Souza Gill.
It's on the, on Epic TV.
You can get it by downloading the Epoch Times app.
And so, Danielle, you're actually, well, you were born after Reagan.
You were born in the Clinton era.
I'm sort of chuckling because I'm actually thinking about a photo that we have when you were...
Almost a baby where you're with Gerald Ford, and he's sort of reaching out to pick you up.
And of course, this was at an American Enterprise Institute function.
And Ford, of course, was part of that.
But Reagan at that point, I think, had faded from the scene.
Now, you know about Reagan by watching older videos of Reagan, the Goldwater speech, a couple of other Reagan speeches.
Talk a little bit about how you, when you see those speeches, you see a man from a different time.
What do you see and what was your take about when you look back at Reagan through the speeches you've watched?
Well, his speeches, I think, are some of just the most incredible speeches listening to them.
They're really, I think, a mixture of informative, but also very inspiring.
But I think just listening to people from that time, even not just Reagan, but even news hosts and talk show hosts and other things like that, they just spoke in a different way.
And I think today... Because of maybe technology and social media, people want everything, you know, quick, quick, quick.
They just want kind of punchy everything.
Whereas back then, I think there was a much more deep dive into issues and into topics.
And I try to do a deep dive like that, you know, on my show and stuff.
But I think in general, people just want things fast.
And I think that's affected how our politicians talk, for better or worse.
Not to say that either is better.
But I just think it's a different type of speech to listen to Reagan from that time.
Really go into things in so much more, almost a literary way even.
He'll make, you know, analogies and use a lot more descriptive language than politicians might do today.
I mean, I think if you think back to, say, Reagan's evil empire speech, this is the great speech where Reagan, in blunt moral terms, describes the West as a force for good, the Soviet empire as a force for evil.
And if you listen to that speech, you learn a lot about communism.
In other words, Reagan makes the case.
He doesn't just assume you're against communism, we're good, they're horrible.
He lays out how they see the world, how we see the world.
So his speech has, when you said informative, there's an educational component to that.
And I find that has almost disappeared from American politics, on our side as well.
I mean, if you think of Trump, Trump forcefully states his position, but he rarely lays out the argument.
Even for free markets.
Trump won't say, here's the reason that markets work.
Here's the reason that entrepreneurs are more productive and contribute more to society.
And you said that that's partly because of social media.
Is it partly because social media also creates a different kind of person?
More hurried? Less explanatory?
Yeah, and I think also back then, Reagan, of course, was much more focused on...
I guess speaking in a way that kind of brought everyone in on something, whereas I think now we're in such a deep fight with the left that it would almost be silly if we were to try to explain the fundamentals of...
A free market or things like that.
Of course, we should do that.
And I know that we do have other ways of doing that.
But I don't think that's exactly what our politicians are up to.
I think at this point our politicians try to say, you know, this is my position.
And if you agree with my position, then you should support this because this is like the fight of our lives.
So we have to really like buckle down and go hardcore.
and a lot of people resonate with that.
So it's not to say that that's not working.
I think it does work because people are just at the breaking point, a lot of people are.
They're so tired of, as Trump is so famous for, but speaking on behalf of the forgotten man and woman of America, so we wanna speak on behalf of those people.
Whereas I think Reagan was more speaking to those people, or perhaps to convince those people, whereas I think Trump represents those people.
That's a very interesting point.
I mean, I'd almost say, would you agree with this, that if you take something like the family, Reagan assumed that a family is a good thing, right?
That we want stronger families.
Now, there might be people who don't have families, they're orphans, they're raised in single families, but it would have been inconceivable to Reagan that somebody would be, like, against the family.
I mean, I think Reagan would think that there's something wrong with you.
But we live at a time now where the left aggressively attacks the idea of the family.
And some of the Black Lives Matter rhetoric, they explicitly want to dismantle the traditional family.
And so part of what you're saying is that the Reagan tone, even though there's a little bit of us that pines for it, wouldn't work today because we're in a different environment.
Yeah, we are in a different environment.
And I also think it's the role of the president or whoever is running on our side to fight for families, to fight for those things, because we all realize just how extreme it's gotten.
know that gender just everything even just the basic unit of the family under attack and perhaps someone else you know maybe we were there may be very elder would explain the importance of you know the father in the home are going to more details on to convince someone of that but in general i think mostly that the politicians are focusing on hopefully winning these things i mean for reagan i think the the opponent the real opponent was always abroad
Reagan was a creature of the Cold War.
The Soviets were the focus of evil in the modern world.
I think we would have to say, and this would, I think, reflect Trump's philosophy, that we're in a different landscape in which the great threat to America now is domestic.
It comes from within.
And quite frankly, if you listen to the left...
It sounds like they agree.
They think that the biggest threat to the world is us.
And we think the greatest threat to the world is them.
But we agree that we would locate the focus of the struggle domestically and not internationally.
And that is a real chasm that separates the Reagan era from today.
Right. And I think that's what Trump would have in common perhaps more with Abraham Lincoln because the threat is from within and it was very divided times.
And so I know Trump has compared himself to Lincoln.
And so, you know, you can see the Trump-Lincoln behind us.
Yeah. But yeah, I think Reagan's time period was definitely more with the conflict abroad.
And people's love of Reagan is so deep, almost in a very, you know, affectionate way, whereas I think people's love of Trump is so deep, but in a...
Self-identifying way in the sense that people feel like they're more like Trump because Trump is them in a way, whereas Reagan is a little bit more of an ideal figure.
So I think that people love both of them, but just in very different identifying ways.
Very interesting. I've been trying to think about what it is that brought the ideas of Reagan together.
Was there a single theme that united them?
And is that theme relevant to today?
I think the answer to that question is that, one, there was a single theme, and B, it could not be more relevant today.
It is very relevant today.
So while there are certain Reaganite strategies that have to be modified because our situation is different, In some ways, the central ideological challenge is not that different.
Now, although I've been focusing on the Cold War and we think of Reagan as fighting this kind of external battle against an external adversary, the truth is that Reagan had a single ideological adversary that he was against.
And this was the adversary, the idea that dominated the 20th century.
Well, what is that idea? It's the idea of collectivism.
It's the idea that the collective or the state This is collectivism.
It expressed itself in various forms in the early part of the 20th century.
We can think of communism.
We can think of fascism.
We can think of progressivism.
These were all cousin doctrines that deified the collective, that deified the state.
And collectivism was on the march.
FDR represented the march of collectivism.
And as you know, if you've seen my movie, Death of a Nation, or read my book, The Big Lie, FDR was an admirer of fascism, of Mussolini-style Italian fascism.
And so here you had collectivism making gain upon gain upon gain, and you had a Republican Party that was in complete retreat.
But Reagan set his goal at defeating collectivism not only abroad, that was the Soviet Union, but also at home.
In other words, stopping the march of big government.
And think once again of the victory of Reagan.
In the early 1990s, Bill Clinton, then a much younger man, no less of a maniac than he is today, but nevertheless a younger man, says the era of big government is over.
Why did he say that? Not really because he wanted it to be, but because that's what Reagan had made happen.
So collectivism was Reagan's opponent.
And Reagan inherited a big mess of an economy, stagnant economic growth, runaway inflation.
We're seeing glimpses of that today.
And so the combination of poor growth and inflation was called stagflation.
Very high tax rates.
In fact, the top tax rate, the top marginal tax rate, 70%.
And think about it.
Reagan brought it down from 70% to 28%.
I kid you not.
So this is a real fiscal revolution in two stages.
Reagan, the initial tax cuts brought the tax rate down.
And then later in the tax reform of 86, the tax rate went down to 28%.
Now it's gone back up.
To 37%, 38%.
But think about it. It's not even close to 70%.
There's not even the most left-wing Democrat who could push the marginal tax rate back up to where it was in 1980 before Reagan took office.
I was many years ago at a Forbes conference with Michael Dell.
Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computer, one of the early architects of the technological revolution.
And I posed to Michael Dell this question.
I said, you know, the technological revolution really exploded in the 1980s.
All these companies were formed like Microsoft and Dell Computers, many others.
And I said, why did the technological revolution happen now?
I said, why didn't the technological revolution happen in the 1960s or the 1970s?
Is it because it just so happened that the technology was discovered now, a kind of accident, if you will, of serendipity?
Or, I said, did Reagan's policies of tax cuts, privatization, deregulation, the celebration of the entrepreneur, Reagan had basically, you know, John F.
Kennedy had said a generation earlier that if you're young, if you're idealistic, if you care, do what?
Well, join the Peace Corps.
In other words, become a bureaucrat, become a public servant.
For John F. Kennedy, if you worked for yourself, if you had your own company, well, you're kind of a greedy, selfish guy.
But if you work for the government, you're a noble guy.
You're subordinating your own interests to the common interest.
And Reagan challenged that.
Reagan basically said, no, the entrepreneur is the embodiment of American idealism.
So my point to Michael Dell was, isn't it a fact that the technological revolution was made possible, was enabled, was lubricated by Reagan's policies, and that's why it's exploding now and exploding so fast?
And he gave me a funny look as if to say, what did I just hear?
What are you talking about? He had no idea what I was even saying.
And I thought it kind of was one of those early cases where it occurred to me that you've got a guy, and he's in the technological revolution, and he's part of it, and he's obviously a very smart guy because he's...
Creating a multi-billion dollar company, and he knows what he's doing in making computers.
But evidently, when it came to the political infrastructure that enables a guy like Michael Dell to succeed, he was totally clueless.
And I think if Reagan were present, Reagan would have said, Hey, Michael Dell, you know, it's one thing for you to benefit from the technological revolution, and we're all delighted you are, but...
You should also become a defender of the political and economic system that enables your success.
Reagan understood that even markets do depend upon a political and cultural environment.
And we should see today, after Reagan, that what the left is trying to do is not only have policies that are destructive to markets, but to culturally poison young people against entrepreneurship, to convey the idea, and you see this in no one more than Bernie Sanders, the idea that somehow an entrepreneur...
Is a greedy, selfish guy.
Whereas he, Bernie, a guy who's really never worked a day in his life, a guy who's stealing electricity from his neighbor and sleeping on another friend's couch for years, essentially a lifelong bum who has now found a way of living through politics.
He sees himself as the embodiment of the new America, the new socialist America.
And I have to say that to some degree, he is.
I'd like to talk in this concluding segment about Reagan the man and about Reagan's character.
Debbie alluded in our segment together to Reagan's great speech when the Challenger shuttle blew up.
I want you to get a feeling, a reminder of what that was like.
Here's Reagan. Listen. The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us for the manner in which they lived their lives.
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.
Thank you. Wow.
He was a modest man in his own way, Reagan was.
He would sometimes talk about the White House as the people's house.
When he was first elected, somebody asked him, what's it like living in the White House?
And he goes, well, I'm sort of back living above the store again.
And in fact, here's Reagan thinking back to his old childhood when his father had a store and Reagan lived above the store.
Reagan dealt with even important people, foreign leaders, in a very informal way.
I remember the Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone met Reagan for the first time.
And the Japanese, of course, very formal.
He gives Reagan the strategic Japanese bow.
He's referring to Reagan in ceremonial terms.
And Reagan surprises him by saying to Nakasone, what does your wife call you at home?
I guess so when he's a little taken aback and he says, well, my wife calls me Yasu.
And Reagan goes, stretches his hand out, and he goes, well, Yasu, my name's Ron.
And you see here the almost goofy over-familiarity of Reagan, but foreign leaders, and this includes people who were not necessarily fans of Reagan at the beginning, Mitterrand, for example, the socialist prime minister of France, they all became super fans of Reagan.
Later, Mitterrand would say Reagan has a kind of primal power, like a rock in the Morvan.
I mean, this is a... This is a French socialist.
Think about it. A cultural snob.
Nevertheless, deferring to Reagan's, as he saw it, almost primal influence and power.
I remember a very powerful incident that I learned about from the White House Correspondence Director, whom I knew at the time.
And she told me about a woman named Frances who received a mailing from the Republican National Committee.
And it's one of those fundraising mailings that essentially says that if you give a big amount of money, at that time it would have been $1,000, maybe $5,000, you were actually granted a visit to the White House.
You could come and get a White House tour in sort of gratitude for your contribution.
And this woman, Frances, had gotten this direct mail appeal in the mail. Obviously hadn't read it very carefully.
She saw it as a kind of invitation to come to the White House.
And so even though she might have given $10 or nothing at all, she decides to come visit the White House.
And so she shows up outside the White House.
Of course, the place is all fenced up.
She's talking to the guards at the gate.
And she does not have authorization to come in.
And she's very flustered.
And the guards realize that this is a bit of a touchy situation.
They don't know what to do, so they kind of call up.
To the White House itself.
And Reagan says, let her in.
Reagan happens to be kind of walking by and he hears some sort of conversation going on.
He realizes what's going on.
And he says, well, bring her in.
And so they let this woman, Frances, in and she's getting her formal, you know, it's done by a White House tour guide, walking her through the different rooms, the rooms of different colors, so to speak.
And she's very, you know, starstruck and looking around.
And then what happens?
Well, the doors of the Oval Office open and out comes Reagan.
And he walks up to her and he goes, he goes, Frances, if I had known you were coming, I would have come out to meet you myself.
Now, can you imagine the impact on this woman of the President of the United States interrupting whatever he's doing, coming out to greet her personally?
This was Reagan.
This captures, in a sense, the spirit of Reagan.
For me, I remember Reagan.
I had worked in the White House in 1987-1988.
Not a very long time, just a little bit over a year, and then I left.
At the very end, I joined the George H.W. Bush campaign, and after that went to the American Enterprise Institute.
I did attend the kind of farewell party that Reagan had when he was leaving.
And I remember about 40 of us Reaganites standing around Reagan.
And I remember Reagan saying this, and I quote this in my book, so I'm reading from it now.
He said, And the revolution has been a success.
Reagan went on to list some of the data and talk about how the world had changed, how the economy had changed.
And then, it's so classic, Reagan goes, all in all, he goes, Not bad for a fellow who couldn't get his facts straight and worked four hours a day.
Reagan making a joke here about the fact that people said he was lazy, showed up, you know, to the office at 10, left at 4, and so on.
Claire Butloos, a great American diplomat, once said that history will remember every president by only one line.
So Washington was the father of the country.
Lincoln freed the slaves.
It's kind of interesting to think about, well, I mean, you and I could think about how Obama's going to be remembered.
I'll leave that one for the moment.
But how will Reagan be remembered?
Margaret Thatcher, I think, gave a pretty good first draft in history when she said he'll be remembered as he won the Cold War without firing a shot.
And I think he did that.
He did do that. But I think he also restored the American economy and he restored the American spirit.
And the battle that Reagan fought against collectivism, which he won in his time, arresting the growth and spread of collectivism probably for 30 to 40 years.
But collectivism is now back.
What is the left trying to do if not collectivize the economy, collectivize the culture, collectivize our minds, stamp out our individuality, and put us into worshipful subordination to the state?
It's an old serpent.
It's an old enemy.
Reagan successfully fought it.
▲
Export Selection