Reagan: The Life
It is the last Sunday of the month so it’s time for another president, this week our countries 40th president, Ronald Reagan, making this week’s book Reagan: The Life by H.W. Brands.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico, IL on February 6, 1911, to Jack and Nelle Reagan, who had one son before Reagan, Neil Reagan. The family was poor and bounced around various towns in Illinois until finally settling Dixon, IL when Reagan was 10.
Now, during the Carter book, the author broadly hinted that everyone Republican, up to and including Reagan, were racist, largely because they ARE Republican. Well, Jack Reagan was by no means perfect, he was an alcoholic, which contributed to the families financial woes, but Jack was by no means racist and absolutely did not raise his sons to be, refusing to allow the family to see The Birth of a Nation, the DW Griffith film that Woodrow Wilson showed in the White House, which made heroes out of the KKK. Jack Reagan once refused to stay in a hotel, preferring to sleep in his car, when the hotel wouldn’t rent rooms to Jews. Jack was not Jewish, but he WAS Catholic, and he told the proprietor if you refuse to rent to Jews, it’s not too long before you’ll refuse to rent to me. And these are values he instilled in his kids. In fact, the more I read THIS book, the more bitter and sour Peter Bourne, the author of the Carter book seems.
Back to this book. Reagan was kind of a socially awkward kid, but his mom talked him into doing a church play and he found his voice as an actor, which was a course he wanted to follow from that point on. After high school he went to Eureka College, following high school crush Margaret Cleaver to this location. It’s unclear if they dated and frankly doesn’t matter as after college each went their own way. He graduated from college in 1932, which was the height of the Great Depression, making the job market tough. One might think he’d immediately head to Hollywood, since he did want to be an actor, but Reagan was actually a cautious man, and he wasn’t going to make such a leap without at least SOME chance of success. So, he started pounding the pavement, looking for a local job in radio. And he found one! He walked into station WOC in Davenport, IA just after they had filled the position they had advertised for. In a fit of frustration, Reagan said “How the hell can you get to be a sports announcer if you can’t even get a job at the radio station?!” The passion with which he said this appealed to the station manager, who asked him to report on a fake game. In the days before televised sports, the ability to make the game come alive with your voice was invaluable, and so Reagan reported on a college football game he had played. And got a short-term contract, which he eventually leveraged into a steady paying job.
And eventually he talked the station into sending him out to California to report on the White Sox winter training. And during a rainy day in April 1937, he met with a former radio employee who’s contact information he had, Joy Hodges, who had moved to Hollywood to try and make it herself. She’d had a few bit parts and after seeing what he looked like without the glasses he wore for his nearsightedness, she set up an appointment with Bill Meiklejohn, who set up an appointment with Max Arnow at Warner Brothers, who set up a screen test and then showed it to Jack Warner. And as all this worked its way through the Hollywood system, Reagan, pragmatic as ever, returned to Iowa and his sure paycheck. And he was there when he received a contract offer of $200 a week from Warner Brothers, which is $4,384 per week adjusted for inflation. He took the contract and permanently relocated to California.
Once in Hollywood, he was cast in many B roll movies. Basically, way back in the day, Hollywood churned out movies at a really fast pace. The B movies were the opening act for the big name featured films on double features. And Reagan was a B movie actor. He MIGHT have made the leap to the featured films, but WWII interrupted life. Now, always thinking ahead, Reagan actually enlisted with the Army Reserves Cavalry unit, because the cavalry would teach him to ride horses, a skill he could bring back to Hollywood post war. Unfortunately, he was so incredibly near sighted that active duty in combat was not going to happen. Instead, he was made the public relations officer for the military, and Warner Brothers began churning out propaganda films, starring Reagan. And so, he became the voice and face of what America was doing to fight evil. This…definitely worked in his favor during his later political career.
He married his first wife, Jane Wyman, on January 26, 1940, and the couple had three children together, Maureen and Christine, Christine would die within a day of being born prematurely, and then they adopted Michael together. Michael was the middle child in this scenario, and following Christine’s death, they couple divorced more or less amicably on July 18, 1949.
Post war, Reagan’s movie career fizzled. But he found meaning by stepping into leadership of the Screen Actor’s Guild, for which he served as president from March 1947 until 1952, then again from 1959-1960. As president of SAG, he did testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about communist takeovers in Hollywood. However, I don’t think he named names in open forum. He did in private conversation with the FBI, but other than speaking to the activities which were communistic in nature, he didn’t say much to Congress.
Reagan met Nancy Davis, who was born Anne Frances Robbins, in November 1949 and they dated a few years before marrying on March 4, 1952. The couple also had two children, the first of which, Patricia Ann Reagan, aka Patti Davis, was born October 21, 1952….so less than the usual 9 months. She was NOT premature.
Reagan’s big movie career fizzled, but his Hollywood career jumped to the small screen when he signed on to host General Electric Theater, which he did from their first show, which aired July 9, 1953, until the show ended in 1962. Reagan’s entertainment career was effectively over at this point, but it was not a stretch for him to enter a second career, and the one for which he is best known, politics.
And he entered the political arena on a national stage, after giving a campaign speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964. The speech, famously known as his “A Time for Choosing Speech” did not get Goldwater elected, but it did launch Reagan into national prominence as a Republican to watch.
Rather than join the national politicians, Reagan went for a local executive position, becoming governor of California in 1967, in which position he served until 1975, after declining to run again in 1974. He did run for the presidential nomination in 1976, but lost the nomination to Ford, who of course lost to Carter. But Reagan bided his time and won the nomination for the 1980 presidential election, winning in an absolute blood-soaked gore bath, winning 46 of 50 states and 489 electoral votes to Carters 49, and was sworn in as our 40th president on January 20, 1981. And holy shit…. the 1980’s were freaking wild man.
<insert American Dad>
Like…hot damn. He inherited a country that was drowning in inflation, Russia was mad at us again because of Carter’s meddling with the earlier agreed upon treaty, there were still American’s being held as hostages in Iran, we had airplanes taken by terrorists and airplanes just straight up blown out of the sky…like commercial airlines blown up by Russian military, there were Communists poised to take over Nicaragua, and Reagan was shot barely two months into his presidency.
So, Iran. In the Carter book, that author had hinted that VP Bush had used his CIA contacts to broker back alley deals to get the hostages released after the election, to make Carter look bad. More sour grapes on the part of that author. Brands addresses that allegation in this book and basically, no. The would-be bargainers locations have been accounted for, and there was no where or time they would have been in a position to make such a deal. Even with missing passports so that stamps couldn’t be verified, travel journals and daily diary entries basically clear all parties. Peter Bourne failed to mention in his book that Congress actually DID conduct an investigation into these allegations because brokering such back door deals is a felony and violation of federal law. I think Bourne just didn’t want to admit what really happened: Iran disliked Carter. Immensely. Felt he was a meddler. So, once they were sure he was really out of office, they released the hostages as an act of goodwill towards the new administrator, aka President Reagan.
But the Iran hostage situation, believe it or not, set the stage for the Iran Contra scandal that would rock the nation in 1987. How so? Well, Reagan did not want to be in Carter’s position of having American citizens he could not protect them. And when 7 Americans in Lebanon were taken hostage by Hezbollah, Reagan kept it more or less quiet. But became desperate to get them back. And that was one half of what led to the scandal. The other half occurred 8300 miles away in Nicaragua, where the left leaning Sandinistas had taken over the government. And Reagan did not want another Russian satellite communist state, like Cuba, sitting near our Southern border. So, while he was all about lowering taxes and slashing government spending, he wanted to slash social programs, while keeping a robust defense budget. So, he wanted to fund the Contra’s, who were fighting the Sandinistas. Congress said no and in 1982 they passed the Boland Amendment which prohibited the CIA from selling arms to the Contras. They were good sending money to hold the line at El Salvador but refused to fund the Contras. We’ll circle back to Iran Contra after covering some of the other stuff.
So, all this budget slashing occurred early in Reagan’s first term, and started to bear fruit in 1983, which had his 1984 reelection return even more brutal results. 49 states, 525 electoral votes. That’s still three years in the future.
March 30, 1981, while leaving a speech, he was shot by John Hinckley. They didn’t even realize he had been hit at first, as the wounds James Brady, Thomas Delahanty, and Tim McCarthy received were much more obvious. But Reagan was shot and had emergency surgery. He lived, but Nancy went a little off her rocker as a result. I get it, don’t get me wrong, having someone try to shoot your husband to impress an actress…no joke, this was Hinckley’s motivation. He wanted to impress Jodi Foster…. that’s gonna have an impact. Nancy basically started checking everything with her astrologer. This is not speculation, like this is confirmed. Nancy would check with Joan Quigley for auspicious dates on when Reagan should travel, speak, meet with world leaders.
In August 1981, the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike, wanting more money. Which I get. That’s one of the advantages of unions, is that unions will negotiate higher pay for their people to combat inflation. Unfortunately, Air Traffic Controllers were federal employees, falling under the Federal Aviation Administration, and federal employees had to sign a contract agreeing NOT to strike. And Reagan cited Calvin Coolidge when he said government employees are not allowed to strike to the detriment of the people they serve. And he straight up fired the ATC who did not report for duty as required. Fun fact. When you are FIRED from the federal government, you are precluded from obtaining other federal work for three years. Air Traffic Control is a highly specialized field, so all those who striked….struck? well, life was not easy for them from that point forward. Action…meet consequence. Reagan felt for them and tried to waive the three year no hire requirement to get them into other federal positions. The book does not say if he was able to politic that into reality.
In 1983, I don’t recall the specific date, America did fly a spy plane over the Soviet Union. This made the Soviet’s nervous. And when South Korea Airlines flight 007 basically got lost and did not realize they were flying over Soviet airspace, the Soviet’s freaked out, and rather than hailing the airline and saying…hey…do you know where you’re going? The Soviets just shot the damn plane down. This was September 1, 1983. The flight had 61 US passengers, including a Congressman from Georgia, Representative Lawrence McDonald. Reagan condemned this act as heinous, but really there wasn’t much more that could be done, without escalating to full warfare, which he did not want to do. What he DID want, was to find an effective way to defend America no matter how far away the shot. From this came the Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI, better known as Star Wars. The general idea was to create a way that could shoot missiles out of the sky from space. Billions were poured down this drain and from the safe distance of 40 years later it’s easy to see how crazy this idea was. He introduced this idea in March 1983, and it would become a major sticking point in his negotiations with the Soviets.
Those negotiations would not begin until 1985, when Gorbachev was made Secretary General of the Soviet Union, largely because Reagan just could not find common ground with any of Gorbachev’s predecessors, Konstantin Chernenko, and Yuri Andropov. But Gorbachev…. well Reagan and Gorbachev met several times, first in Geneva and later in Reykjavik, to discuss disarmament. Both times they came to absolutely nothing when Reagan refused to call a halt to field testing SDI. Even though there was no indication SDI would ever work and even if moved beyond the realm of possibility to actual field tests would not be ready for field tests until the mid to late 1990’s, Reagan refused to agree NOT to field test SDI. The Soviets feared that SDI could be moved from defensive to offensive really fast and so had some justifiable reservations, but Reagan wouldn’t budge on SDI, so negotiations never led anywhere. Until 1987 when they did meet in Washington DC and brokered a massive disarmament deal, both sides agreeing to get rid of their nuclear stockpiles, and SDI was left intact. And then mothballed in 1993…or rather it was restructured to something else by Clinton. That’s a future book knowledge drop.
Ok, we’re already at five pages of review, so let me round out Iran Contra here. We have seven American’s being held hostage by Hezbollah. Iran greed to talk to Hezbollah in exchange for TOW missiles. And basically it became a thing to trade X number of missiles per hostage. This got us I think two back. But, several members of the intel community, most notably Lt Colonel Oliver North and National Security Adviser John Poindexter, arranged to continue to sell TOW missiles and other armament bits and pieces to Iran. And then they funneled the proceeds of these sales to the Contras in Nicaragua. At first, they did this through Israel; however, Israel eventually got tired of being the middle man and said just make your own sales, we’re out. This was all uncovered in November 1986 when journalists in America noticed a small article in an Arabic newspaper alleging that the United States had been trading missiles for hostages in Iran.
Now, Reagan actually did not know anything about this, as reported by, well….EVERYONE, not only those directly involved, but his staff and cabinet. The account says that when he was told exactly what had been going on, he turned white. Normally his, complexion was quite red, so…whiter than usual. Given that he was a white man.
He authorized the Tower Commission to investigate and everyone BUT Poindexter and North were entirely forthcoming. Reagan was interviewed but ultimately ended up just saying I don’t remember, when asked specific questions. Now, there are some who might think this was the start of the Alzheimer’s that would eventually set it. It was not, and we will come back to that. Most likely it was a combination of respect for the man himself and acknowledgement that on any given day, the sitting president is one of the busiest people on the planet. So they let his I don’t knows I don’t remembers stand.
Following Iran Contra, Reagan had nothing left to do BUT talk to the Soviets. In June 1987 he made his famous speech in Berlin at the Brandenburger Tor, telling Gorbachev to tear down this wall, which brought the Soviets back to the table, and in November 1987 the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was created, and signed by Gorbachev in December 1987. It was then ratified by the Senate in May 1988. In November 1988, Reagan was gratified when the nation voted George HW Bush into the office, and he stepped down January 20, 1987.
Things also mentioned in the book are of course the TWA high jacking, the bombing of Libya, invasion of Grenada, war on drugs, the AIDS epidemic, the Challenger explosion, which I definitely remember seeing in class…I remember asking my mom, who volunteered at our school, if she would have gone to space if offered, and being scared to death when she said yes. I mean, I had literally JUST seen a space shuttle explode, live on TV. But I get mom’s point. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, with no reason to suspect the tragedy that would happen.
About six months after he left the presidency, Reagan was riding horses with friends when his horse bucked him off and he hit his head. Nancy believed, and her doctors agreed, that this incident may have actually caused Reagan to develop Alzheimers. I googled it, and traumatic brain injury CAN actually contribute the Alzheimers. He was still giving speeches and traveling but Nancy definitely noticed a decline, and she finally mentioned it to the doctors during his annual physical in August 1994. And he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. And I do believe that this was when he developed it. I’m basing that belief largely on the descriptions of his marathon talks with Gorbachev. I don’t believe anyone with the severe cognitive declines as exhibited by Alzheimer’s patients would have been capable of those talks. And someone would surely have noticed and said something. This wasn’t a Woodrow Wilson situation, with the world communications having hit truly global levels they wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. Hell, it’s not working NOW….wait, wait….now is not the topic this week.
Anyway, Reagan had already done the responsible thing once before, temporarily transferring power to VP Bush in March of 1985 when he had to have surgery to remove a polyp. If he acts responsibly once, for what was a pretty standard procedure, I don’t believe he would have wanted to put the nation at risk by staying in power if he wasn’t mentally equipped to handle the job. So I think Nancy’s estimation of the inciting incident is accurate. I think if he hadn’t fallen off the horse and hit his head, he might have retained his faculties up until his death, which was on June 5, 2004.
I really enjoyed this book. It was well organized and well written; it does not leap back and forth but all the pieces are laid out in a more or less concise timeline. As a kid in the 1980’s, I was only peripherally aware of all the crazy going on, but reading about how close we really did come…. The Korean Airlines thing alone probably brought us closer than the Cuban missile crises to escalating from a cold war to a hot war. It’s only because Reagan chose to believe the Soviets when they claimed accident that it stayed cold, and eventually de-escalated to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, to the USSR voting to dissolve itself on December 26, 1991. Both of which can arguably by placed at the feet of the Great Communicator.
