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With No Borders / GIVE
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We
Preserve The Moment /
KASLC
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114 - In
Memory:
World
Wide Recognition
----Reagan's
political fortunes rose from the ashes of
Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater's
spectacular defeat in 1964. Reagan offered a
friendly antidote to Goldwater's strident rhetoric.
Reagan's tone suggested patriotic concern and
continuity with the past. Unlike Goldwater, he
could sell conservatism with a smile.
----In a fund-raising
address televised to the nation, Reagan honed "the
speech," as it was known during his GE days, into a
clarion call. Americans saw the smoothest, most
articulate, most attractive champion of the
Republican cause in a generation. Biographer Bill
Boyarsky says Reagan's speech, "A Time for
Choosing," stirred conservatives just as William
Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech had
electrified farmers and factory workers in
1896.
----Goldwater lost to
Lyndon Johnson, but Reagan won national
acclaim.
----The next spring,
Holmes P. Tuttle, a wealthy Los Angeles car dealer
who had promoted the fund-raising speech, invited
other millionaires to support Reagan in a race for
governor of California. The millionaires, later
known as Reagan's "kitchen Cabinet," hired the
California campaign management team of Stuart
Spencer and Bill Roberts. They, in turn, hired
professors to brief Reagan on state issues and
broaden his command of literary allusions.
----His years on
television for GE, then as host of "Death Valley
Days," had made Reagan a familiar face. But it
brought criticism as well. Democrats derided him as
a puppet who mouthed words scripted by others. In
"An American Life," a later autobiography, he
recalled that incumbent Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown
aired an ad in which he told schoolchildren, "I'm
running against an actor," then added, "and you
know who killed Lincoln, don't you?"
----Reagan, for his
part, gave versions of "the speech" at every
opportunity. He argued that government was too big,
taxes were too high and regulation was strangling
business. Often he ended with, "Ya basta!"
It was Spanish for, "Enough, already!"
----Californians said
yes, overwhelmingly.
----Reagan defeated
Brown by nearly 1 million votes and swept
Republicans into every major executive office
except attorney general.
----During his eight
years in Sacramento, Reagan's performance
foreshadowed his stewardship in Washington. Against
Democratic majorities among lawmakers for most of
the time in both places, he portrayed himself as a
"citizen politician" determined to "squeeze, cut
and trim" and get government off "the backs of its
people."
----The champion of
striking students at Eureka College vowed to
restore order at protest-torn campuses throughout
California and was pleased to see the firing of
nationally respected University of California
President Clark Kerr. Reagan also supported the
first-ever UC student tuition.
----He appointed a
former member of the John Birch Society to head his
Office of Economic Opportunity and to campaign
against legal assistance for the rural poor. In a
compromise, Boyarsky writes, he gave up a permanent
ceiling on welfare appropriations, but he succeeded
in reducing welfare rolls.
----Squeezing, cutting
and trimming government were harder. In his first
year, he proposed slashing the state budget by an
unprecedented 10% but ended up signing a spending
program 10% larger than his predecessor's. He kept
proclaiming "squeeze, cut and trim," but his
budgets, hammered by inflation, ballooned from his
first of $4.6 billion to his last of $10.2 billion.
He signed what at the time was the biggest state
tax increase in the nation's history: $844 million
in the first year, $1.01 billion in the second. It
marked the first of a roller-coaster series of tax
increases and rebates.
----One of his most
remarkable flip-flops involved his opposition to
payroll withholding of state income taxes. "My feet
are in concrete," he said, over and over. But in
1970, when the state faced a serious cash flow
crisis, Reagan finally gave in. "That sound you
hear," he told reporters, "is the concrete breaking
around my feet." That same year he found himself in
a personal controversy. He had paid no state income
tax himself because of "business reverses."
----As he campaigned,
he had been dismissive of some environmental
concerns. "You know, a tree is a tree," he said.
"How many more do you need to look at?" But as
governor, he signed some of the nation's strictest
air and water quality laws, increased state
parkland and started requiring environmental impact
reports on state construction projects.
----He signed a
historic abortion reform bill authored by a
Democrat that vastly liberalized the procedure in
California. Advocates promoted it as a model for
other states. Later, as a national political
figure, Reagan would hold the support of the most
militant anti-abortionists, while doing relatively
little to advance their cause.
----"Reagan was not as
good as the Republicans like to think, or as bad as
the Democrats would have you believe," declared
Democratic Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh, who had
opposed him unsuccessfully when he ran for a second
term.
----Reagan's march on
Washington began almost as soon as he reached the
state Capitol. He ran for president in 1968, but
fell to Nixon. By 1975, when Reagan completed his
second term as governor, Nixon had resigned in
disgrace. Reagan began an all-out, two-year drive
to wrest the 1976 nomination from incumbent Gerald
R. Ford, an appointed vice president who became
president on the resignation of Nixon. Reagan fell
short by a handful of delegates to the Republican
national convention.
----But Ford lost to
Jimmy Carter, and Reagan became the front-runner to
challenge Carter in 1980. This time Reagan was not
to be denied. He flirted with asking former
President Ford to be his running mate, but
negotiations faltered — so he turned to
George Bush, who in the primaries had called his
fiscal policy "voodoo economics." By 1983, Reagan
vowed, he would cut taxes, boost defense spending
and balance the budget.
----Under Carter,
Americans had been battered by double-digit
inflation, stagnant growth and a fuel shortage that
caused long lines at gasoline stations. They had
been humiliated by the imprisonment of 52 Americans
who were being held hostage in Iran and by Carter's
unsuccessful efforts to free them, including an
aborted military rescue that cost the lives of
eight American servicemen.
----Reagan preached
optimism. If he were elected, America would stand
tall again, he said, and competence would return to
Washington.
----"Are you better
off now than you were four years ago?" he asked
voters.
----Absolutely not,
they responded, and gave him a resounding victory:
51% of the vote to Carter's 41%. Independent John
Anderson won nearly 7%.
----Reagan won the
electoral vote 489 to 44.
Tumultuous First Term
----When
Reagan took office at the age of 69, he was better
positioned than any Republican since Eisenhower to
lay a firm hand on government. He froze hiring and
new regulations. He swept even low-level Democrats
out of their jobs and replaced them with
Republicans. He won a 25% cut in personal income
taxes and big tax breaks for businesses. He called
for deep cuts in social programs, and he increased
Pentagon spending by more than 9% per year between
fiscal 1981 and 1984.
----To presidents with
programs, their first 100 days in office are
important. Reagan did not have that long. On his
70th day, he was shot by John W. Hinckley Jr., a
25-year-old drifter who had hidden in a crowd of
reporters outside the Washington Hilton, where
Reagan had just spoken to labor leaders. A
.22-caliber bullet entered his chest under his left
shoulder. It careened off a rib and lodged in his
left lung — within an inch of his heart. The
bullet was removed during a two-hour operation, but
not before he had lost nearly half his blood and
edged close to death.
----Reagan had been in
far graver danger than he let on. He had walked
into the hospital and did not collapse until he was
out of sight. "Honey, I forgot to duck," he told
Nancy, borrowing a line from boxer Jack
Dempsey.
----Hinckley, who had
a history of psychiatric problems, was trying to
impress actress Jodie Foster, whom he idolized. He
had fired six shots, wounding four people. Press
secretary James Brady was hit in the head and has
been in a wheelchair since. Hinckley was committed
to a mental institution.
----Twelve days after
the shooting, Reagan was back at the White House.
His strength and gallant demeanor touched the
public. Characteristically, however, he did not
change his long-standing opposition to gun control.
Brady, on the other hand, became a national leader
in the fight to curb handguns.
----Despite the
interruption, Reagan lost little momentum. In the
middle of his first summer as president, more than
11,000 federal air traffic controllers, members of
one of the few unions to support him, walked off
their jobs and he fired them. It was a blow to
organized labor, already in decline. But it showed
that Reagan meant what he said, especially about
guarding the economy against inflation. Before the
end of his first summer as president, Congress had
enacted his historic tax cut and his budget
legislation largely intact.
----To justify
increasing defense spending while slashing taxes,
Reagan had embraced supply-side economics a theory
that enjoyed little standing among many economists.
Supply-siders held that higher spending and lower
taxes would not increase the deficit. Instead, the
theory held, tax cuts would unleash such a wave of
economic growth that government income would
actually rise.
----It did not happen.
As defense spending rose and the tax cuts kicked
in, the predicted surge in economic growth did not
materialize. The deficit soared toward record
levels. Eventually, the national debt nearly
tripled. Before Reagan's first year was up, the
nation's economy plunged into the worst downturn in
years. By March of 1982, Reagan, who had
acknowledged "a slight and, I hope, a short
recession," was reduced to denying that the nation
was in a depression. Unemployment reached a 41-year
record of 10.8% that November, and the global
effects of the slowdown did severe damage to Third
World debtor nations and the world's banking
system.
----Reagan's budget
director, David Stockman, was among the
disillusioned. He granted a series of devastating
interviews to William Greider, who published them
in the Atlantic Monthly, quoting Stockman as
saying, "None of us really understands what's going
on with all these numbers."
----"Stay the course!"
Reagan urged the nation, insisting that supply side
simply needed more time. But even Republicans
feared that without additional revenue, the deficit
would reach uncontrollable proportions. Republican
senators forced him to accept a three-year,
$100-billion tax increase.
----Reagan sought to
pass it off as closing loopholes.
----The economic
turmoil cost the Republicans 25 seats in the House
of Representatives. But Democrats were hesitant to
press their own solutions for the recession, and
when Reagan's tax increase began boosting economic
indicators in the fall of 1983, the president could
claim full credit.
----All the while,
superpower relations degenerated to an unnerving
low. Arms control negotiations stalled. Some
Americans, including a number of religious leaders,
urged a freeze on nuclear weapons. To blunt the
movement, Reagan assailed the Soviet Union as an
"evil empire." He called communism "another sad,
bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages
even now are being written." He announced a plan to
develop a space-based defense system, called the
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), to destroy
Soviet missiles before they could reach the United
States.
----Moscow
bristled.
----American critics
said SDI would never work. They named the system
Star Wars, after the George Lucas space fantasy
film. But Reagan would not give it up, and it
became a persistent stumbling block to an arms
control agreement.
----In September of
1983, a Soviet fighter shot down an unarmed South
Korean airliner that had strayed into Soviet air
space over a Russian peninsula. The attack killed
269 people, including a U.S. congressman. Although
an isolated incident, it deepened fear of a
superpower conflict.
----In the Middle
East, the administration tried hard to bring peace.
Reagan sent Marines into Lebanon as part of a
multinational force to end warfare between
Christians and Muslims. But the administration was
divided. Reagan's advisors showed signs of the
infighting that would come to cost him dearly
during his second term. Defense Secretary Caspar W.
Weinberger opposed the mission in Lebanon. But
Reagan, encouraged by Secretary of State George P.
Shultz, stepped up U.S. involvement.
----Pro-Iranian
terrorists crashed a bomb-laden van into the U.S.
Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17
Americans. Reagan held the Marines in place despite
the increasing risk.
----Terrorists struck
again. A truck filled with explosives broke through
inadequate defenses around a Marine barracks in
Beirut. It blew the building to pieces and killed
241 U.S. servicemen.
----It was "the
saddest day of my presidency," Reagan wrote in "An
American Life," and "perhaps the saddest day of my
life."
----On the day after
the bombing, he ordered Marines and Army Rangers to
invade the Caribbean island of Grenada to oust a
cadre of Cuban troops, effectively overthrow a new
Marxist government and bring home 800 American
medical students. Many allies and a number of
Democratic leaders called the invasion meddling in
Grenada's affairs and suspected that it was
intended to distract Americans from the horror in
Beirut.
----The facts show
otherwise, Cannon said. Although Reagan did not
issue his formal order for the invasion until the
day after Beirut, planning for a military
evacuation of the students from Grenada had been
underway for four days, and Reagan and his advisors
had reached a consensus to invade the island one
day before.
----In the end, the
5,000-member invasion force, facing little
opposition, sustained 19 fatalities. But Americans
reveled in the show of military muscle.
----During all of
this, Reagan refused to bring the Marines home from
Lebanon. He left them at risk for three more months
until he quietly ordered all 1,500 to retreat to
the safety of U.S. Navy ships offshore.
----By now the economy
was back up. The president and the Federal Reserve
had curbed inflation, "the most enduring," Cannon
judged, "of Reagan's economic legacies."
----The president, who
might have been doomed by recession and plagued by
misadventures abroad, basked in respect. As the
1984 election approached, he held a big lead in the
polls.
----His television
commercials declared: "It's morning again in
America."
----*
----Triumph and
Scandal
---- Reagan
campaigned on patriotism, prosperity and military
strength. His opponent, Walter F. Mondale, who was
Carter's vice president, failed to seize on a
compelling issue. He saddled himself with a pledge
to raise taxes. He said Reagan would raise taxes
too, but would not be candid enough to admit it
ahead of time.
----A poor performance
during one debate gave Reagan his only uneasy
moment. It prompted speculation that the president,
well past 73, might be too old for the job. When
the matter came up in the next debate, he remarked
with a disarming smile, "I want you to know that
… 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."
----Even Mondale, 56,
laughed.
----Reagan won by the
largest electoral raw vote landslide in history. He
received 59% of the popular vote, carried 49 states
and got 525 electoral votes to Mondale's 13.
----Even before his
second inauguration, planning was underway for
Reagan to visit Germany for the 1985 economic
summit on the 40th anniversary of the defeat of the
Nazis. Chancellor Helmut Kohl asked him to honor
dead German soldiers as an act of reconciliation.
Touched by Kohl's emotion and eager to reciprocate
his support as an ally, Reagan agreed and kept his
word, despite relentless objections from Elie
Wiesel and other Jewish leaders, as well as groups
of American veterans, prominent Republicans and his
own wife, Nancy.
----The ceremony would
be at a cemetery in Bitburg. Protests exploded into
outcries when snow melted on the graves and
revealed that 49 SS troops were among the 2,000
German soldiers buried there. Wiesel begged Reagan
to abandon the Bitburg visit, citing SS
participation in the Holocaust. "One million Jewish
children perished," he pleaded. "If I spent my
entire life reciting their names, I would die
before finishing the task. Mr. President, I have
seen children I have seen them being thrown in the
flames alive. Words, they die on my lips…. May
I, Mr. President, if it's possible at all, implore
you to do something else … to find another
way, another site. That place, Mr. President, is
not your place. Your place is with the victims of
the SS."
----Reagan added a
stop to honor the Jews who had died at the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but it hardly
helped. When the president finally visited the
German graves, he lost a measure of his stature in
the Jewish community.
----"Within two months
of Bitburg," Cannon said, "Reagan would authorize
the first stages of a backdoor deal with Iran that
would demonstrate in even greater measure …
[his] inadequate historical understanding,
political naivete and awesome presidential
stubbornness." Emboldened by his landslide
reelection, the Reagan administration reached
beyond what was legal and provided arms to the
Iranians in return for American hostages in Lebanon
and used proceeds to finance a war by guerrillas,
called Contras, trying to overthrow the Marxist
government of Nicaragua.
----The deal developed
into a scandal called Iran-Contra, and it cost the
president mightily.
----Nicaragua's
governing coalition, the Sandinistas, supported
guerrillas of its own, who were trying to overthrow
pro-American leaders in El Salvador. The
Sandinistas, Reagan told the Washington Post, were
"terrorists" in a "revolution being exported to the
Americas."
----As early as 1981,
Reagan had approved a request by William J. Casey,
his CIA director and a longtime cold warrior, for
$19 million to help the contras overthrow the
Sandinista government in the name of democracy and
anti-communism. It was secret money, and it went to
500 insurrectionists — including national
guard members in the former regime of despised
Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Reagan called
them "freedom fighters" and "the moral equal of our
Founding Fathers."
----Rightists won
control of the Salvadoran assembly, and they
elected as president Roberto d'Aubuisson, suspected
of being tied to the unsolved murder of Oscar
Arnulfo Romero, a Catholic archbishop and outspoken
foe of the far right. Now Reagan found himself
supplying covert aid to members of a deposed
despot's national guard, who were trying to
overthrow the lawful government of Nicaragua, in
defense of a right-wing leader in El Salvador who
was associated with death squads.
----Reagan did not
flinch. In 1982, the Washington Post disclosed his
covert aid. He won several fights in Congress to
send the Contras official assistance, but he lost
others, and by May of 1984 the Contras were broke.
Robert C. McFarlane, the president's national
security advisor, said Reagan told him to keep the
Contras together "body and soul."
----McFarlane passed
the instruction along to a Marine lieutenant
colonel, Oliver North, who was a member of the
National Security Council staff.
----Congress passed an
amendment, called Boland II, barring the use of
funds to support, either directly or indirectly,
any military or paramilitary operations in
Nicaragua. Less than a month before his reelection,
Reagan signed the legislation. But he thought that
helping the Contras was the "right thing to do,"
according to Cannon. "He had no interest whatever
in the legal restrictions that Congress believed it
had imposed on him."
----At the same time,
his second term brought an acute deterioration in
his White House team, with disastrous consequences.
He allowed James A. Baker, his pragmatic chief of
staff, to trade jobs with Donald Regan, his
secretary of the Treasury. For four years, said
Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus, Baker had helped
guard Reagan "from his own worst instincts." Regan,
on the other hand, let Reagan be Reagan. The loss
of Baker at the White House, along with his
political savvy, was widely blamed for many of the
subsequent troubles that befell the president.
----Regan and
McFarlane distrusted each other; Cannon said they
barely spoke. McFarlane also was at odds with
Secretary of State Shultz and Secretary of Defense
Weinberger, especially on Iran. McFarlane wanted to
woo Iran away from Soviet influence, even if it
meant encouraging the sale of Western arms to Iran
for its ongoing war against Iraq. Shultz and
Weinberger opposed it adamantly. American policy
forbade selling arms to Iran and other sponsors of
terrorism.
----To Reagan, this
was yet another wrangle over government policy. He
was not really interested in government, Cannon
said. He "was so obviously wearied by extensive
analysis, particularly of foreign policy, that
aides plunged into arcane material at their peril.
If Reagan became sufficiently bored, he simply
nodded off."
----He had even less
appetite for personal conflicts among his staff.
"Reagan had learned in childhood from his father's
alcoholic eruptions to withdraw at any sign of
disharmony," Cannon said.
----In March of 1984,
William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut,
had been kidnapped by terrorists linked to Iran,
and CIA Director Casey told Reagan he wanted
Buckley back. Moreover, Casey saw merit in
McFarlane's Cold War view of Iran as a barrier
against the Soviet Union.
----Terrorists took
more hostages, seven Americans in all.
----This seized
Reagan's attention like no policy debate ever
could. It evoked what Mayer and McManus call the
"hard-liner's soft touch." The danger, they say,
"was that, left to his own good intentions, the
president would confuse the human interest with the
national interest…. There was no clearer
example of this danger than in his approach to the
hostages."
----In August 1985,
McFarlane later testified, Reagan secretly approved
the first of eight shipments of missiles and
missile parts to Iran. Four of the shipments were
made through Israel, which provided the arms and
received replacements from the United States. The
other shipments were made directly.
----Reagan signed
three "findings," or authorizations, for the secret
sales. One spoke of freeing the hostages. Attached
to another was a memo. Cannon says Reagan did not
bother to read it, so Adm. John Poindexter, who had
succeeded McFarlane as national security advisor,
initialed it on Reagan's behalf. It approved using
a private agent as a go-between.
----North already had
arranged for such an agent. He called it the
Enterprise. It was a network of secret operatives,
shadow corporations and Swiss bank accounts. He
could use them to do something that might be
illegal under Boland II but would further a cause
dear to the president. He could divert profits from
the Iranian arms sales to the Contras. It would
keep them together "body and soul."
----Secretly, Cannon
says, North and the Enterprise demanded far more
money from the Iranians than they paid the Defense
Department for the missiles; just two of the
shipments had yielded $6.3 million in profits.
North kept none of the money for himself, but
fellow operatives in the Enterprise pocketed some.
North gave much of the rest to the Contras.
----On Nov. 3, 1986, a
Lebanese magazine, Al-Shiraa, told about a
McFarlane visit to Iran and said he had sent
weapons on Reagan's behalf. Three days later the
Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post broke the
first full story of the Iran arms sales. Diversion
of profits to the Contras remained a secret, but
Congress exploded in anger, and the trading of arms
for hostages sputtered to a close.
----By Cannon's count,
Reagan had sold more than 2,000 missiles and in
excess of 200 spare parts to Iran. Operatives in
the Enterprise had pocketed $4.4 million. Another
$3.8 million had gone to the contras, in defiance
of the law established by Boland II. The CIA's
Buckley had died in captivity. Three American
hostages had been released, but terrorists had
taken three others in their stead.
----The president's
first reaction was a "no comment," his second, a
denial. Then his denial became confusing: He said
that Weinberger and Shultz had supported an
initiative toward Iran, which he had already denied
existed. He refused to concede that he had traded
arms for hostages. "Our government has a firm
policy not to capitulate to terrorist demands," he
declared to the American people in a televised
speech. "That no-concessions policy remains in
force, 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."
----This became his
version of the truth, Cannon said, and the one that
Reagan believed forever. A Los Angeles Times poll
found, however, that only 14% of those who watched
him on television believed him.
----Atty. Gen. Edwin
Meese III opened an inquiry. So did congressional
committees and a bipartisan review board headed by
former Sen. John G. Tower, a Republican from Texas.
An independent counsel, former federal judge
Lawrence Walsh, a Republican, began a criminal
investigation.
----Meese's
investigation discovered the diversion of funds to
the Contras. Now the attorney general and other top
aides worried that the president might be
impeached. McFarlane tried to kill himself. Reagan
forced Poindexter to resign. He fired North, then
called him "a national hero." The Tower commission
said that Regan, as chief of staff, bore "primary
responsibility for the chaos that had descended
upon the White House." Reagan forced Regan to
resign.
----Walsh indicted 14
people, mostly lesser players. They included
Poindexter, who was convicted of five felony counts
of conspiracy, obstruction of Congress and lying to
Congress. His conviction was overturned. Walsh
charged Weinberger with perjury. But before
Weinberger could be tried, he was pardoned by
Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, after he
was elected president.
----Ten others were
convicted. Walsh found that Reagan had
"participated or acquiesced in covering up the
scandal."
----Had he authorized
sending money from Iran to the contras? Walsh could
not find out.
----Reagan
consistently denied it.
----The answer was a
mystery and might be forever.
A Thaw in
Cold War
In domestic policy, Reagan came under attack for
responding too slowly to the growing health threat
of AIDS, but he won praise, at least from
conservatives, for keeping his pledge to change the
Supreme Court.
----In 1981, he
appointed the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor, a
moderately conservative judge from Arizona. In
1986, he promoted conservative Justice William H.
Rehnquist to be chief justice and appointed another
conservative, Antonin Scalia.
----He nominated
Robert H. Bork, the conservative who fired special
prosecutor Archibald Cox for Richard Nixon during
Watergate. But the nomination was defeated after a
battle that injected enduring bitterness into
confirmation hearings. Reagan had to settle for
Anthony M. Kennedy. While hardly a liberal, Kennedy
later would vote against overturning Roe vs. Wade,
which upholds the right to abortion.
----Nor was
Iran-Contra the only trouble abroad. In late 1985,
four Palestinians hijacked the Italian cruise ship
Achille Lauro with 400 passengers aboard. The
hijackers surrendered in Egypt, but not before
killing Leon Klinghoffer, 69, a New Yorker confined
to a wheelchair. He was singled out because he was
Jewish.
----When an Egyptian
plane tried to fly the hijackers home, U.S. Navy
fighters forced it to land in Sicily, where they
were arrested. The interception gave the
administration a boost.
----In April 1986,
American planes struck Libya in retaliation for a
terrorist attack on a West Berlin nightclub that
claimed the life of a U.S. serviceman. Libyan
officials said leader Moammar Kadafi was not
harmed, but three dozen civilians were killed,
including his adopted daughter, and that nearly 100
people, including two of his sons, were
injured.
----The raid was
sharply criticized internationally, but it, too,
gained Reagan popularity at home.
----His overwhelming
triumph, however, was an improvement in superpower
relations that presaged the end of the Cold War.
Nothing displayed Reagan's capacity for political
accommodation more clearly than his dealings with
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
----During his second
term, Reagan carried the burden of his anti-Soviet
rhetoric and the stakes he had raised with SDI, his
space-based defense program, into four summit
meetings with Gorbachev. Reagan doggedly pursued
both a reduction in nuclear weapons and better
treatment for dissidents and Soviet Jews.
----Reagan had three
good reasons to reach out to Gorbachev, Cannon
says. He had little to show for his first four
years in foreign policy. He had built up the
military and could bargain from strength. He was
freer to deal with the Soviets than any other
president because he, of all people, could not be
accused of being soft on communism.
----Reagan believed in
Armageddon. It made him a visionary. "My dream
… became a world free of nuclear weapons
… ," he said in "An American Life." Because "I
knew it would be a long and difficult task to rid
the world of nuclear weapons, I had this second
dream: the creation of a defense against nuclear
missiles, so we could change from a policy of
assured destruction to one of assured
survival."
----But during
negotiations, Cannon said, his two dreams clashed.
The Soviets refused to retire any of their
strategic long-range missiles unless Reagan gave up
SDI, his proposed system of defensive missiles to
knock down enemy weapons. SDI frightened the
Soviets. If it ever worked, they said, it would
provide a screen behind which the United States
could launch an atomic attack of its own.
----Moreover, they
said, SDI violated an antiballistic missile treaty
in effect since 1972. The treaty permitted
laboratory research of antimissile components, but
it banned testing and deployment.
----On this, too, the
Reagan administration was divided. Defense
Secretary Weinberger and Assistant Defense
Secretary Richard Perle wanted a broader
interpretation of the treaty to permit testing.
Secretary of State Shultz and Paul Nitze, his
leading arms negotiator, said anything but the
traditional interpretation would anger the Soviets
and cause problems with allies and members of
Congress.
----As usual, Cannon
says, Reagan tried to avoid the disagreement. He
said he would interpret the ABM treaty broadly to
permit testing, but as a matter of policy he would
abide by the traditional interpretation and stop
short of conducting any tests.
----"A deliberate
deceit," the Soviets responded.
----So it was that
prospects seemed dim when Reagan and Gorbachev sat
down on Nov. 19, 1985, in Geneva for their first
summit. Reagan was the first U.S. president since
Eisenhower to go more than four years without
meeting his Soviet counterpart. During those four
years, there were three Soviet leaders. They "kept
dying on me," he quipped.
----From the start,
Reagan was relaxed and cordial. As Gorbachev,
bundled against the cold, approached the mansion on
Lake Geneva where they would hold their initial
session, Reagan took off his overcoat and strode
out onto the top step to greet him.
----In "An American
Life," he wrote: "As we shook hands for the first
time, I had to admit as Margaret Thatcher and
[Canadian] Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
predicted I would that there was something likable
about Gorbachev."
----Reagan developed a
personal sense of Gorbachev as someone he could
deal with. But by afternoon the two of them were
arguing about SDI. Reagan said the United States
would never launch an initial strike with nuclear
weapons and would prove it by sharing SDI
technology with the Soviets.
----Gorbachev did not
believe him. For his part, the Soviet leader said
that his nation had no aggressive intentions.
----How could
Americans believe that, Reagan asked, if Gorbachev
did not believe him?
----Reagan suggested
some fresh air. He and Gorbachev strolled out to a
pool house and talked in front of a blazing fire.
They achieved no momentous breakthrough, but as
they walked back, Reagan invited Gorbachev to meet
again, this time in Washington. Gorbachev accepted
and proposed a subsequent meeting in Moscow.
----It set the stage
for negotiation, not denunciation. The two leaders
shared "a kind of chemistry," Reagan told Cannon.
"Yes, we argued, and we'd go nose to nose. But when
the argument was over, it was like it is with us.
He wasn't stalking out of there and
[saying] 'down with the lousy Americans' or
anything. We fought it out, and maybe knew we were
going to fight it out again, but when the meeting
was over, we were normal."
----In "An American
Life," Reagan said he was reminded of his
after-hours relationship with Tip O'Neill. The
Soviet leader "could tell jokes about himself and
even about his country, and I grew to like him
more."
----They ended the
summit with a promise: to seek a 50% cut in nuclear
weapons.
----It looked
impossible. Gorbachev remained adamant: no SDI, or
no cuts. Reagan was committed to both: SDI and
cuts. Worse, Cannon says, Reagan's advisors were
more sharply divided than ever. Weinberger and
Perle distrusted arms control and wanted SDI, at
least partly to block an agreement. But Shultz and
Nitze wanted an agreement so badly they were
willing to give ground on SDI.
----Gorbachev
suggested meeting in Iceland or Britain before the
Washington summit to see if he and Reagan could
break the deadlock. Reagan chose Iceland. They met
on Oct. 11, 1986, in Reykjavik. The two leaders
argued about the missile cuts and about SDI, and
their advisors negotiated through the night. By
morning, they had neared agreement on the cuts but
they remained far apart on SDI.
----In "An American
Life," Reagan says that Gorbachev would not budge
on any SDI development outside the laboratory.
----Reagan stood. "The
meeting is over." He turned to Shultz. "Let's go,
George. We're leaving."
----Shultz was
crushed, but Reagan was unfazed. "I went to
Reykjavik determined that everything was negotiable
except two things," he told the American people
afterward. "Our freedom and our future."
----Over the coming
year, Shultz, Gorbachev and his advisors negotiated
persistently to eliminate at least a lower level of
weaponry: the U.S. and Soviet arsenals of
intermediate and short-range missiles. In September
1987, Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze announced an agreement in principle on
an Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, and
Gorbachev came to Washington that December.
----Crowds along the
streets applauded him. Like an American politician,
Gorbachev stopped his car, got out and shook
hands.
----On Dec. 8, Reagan
and the Soviet leader sat at a White House table
once used by Abraham Lincoln and put their names to
a ban on all nuclear missiles with ranges of 300
miles to 3,400 miles.
----The destruction of
these missiles about 1,700 by the Soviet Union and
800 by the United States was well underway by the
time Reagan left office.
----As for the
long-range missiles, it was obvious before the
remaining Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Moscow that
SDI would be an insurmountable obstacle to any
reduction. But Reagan went to the Soviet Union
anyway.
----He received a
welcome from the Russians to match Gorbachev's in
America. As Reagan walked through the Arbat, where
artisans sold their wares, crowds pressed forward
to greet him. KGB agents charged the people,
causing a panic. But their friendly intentions
carried the day.
----Reagan spoke to
students at Moscow State University, offering them
his vision of the American dream. He met with 96
dissidents and pressed Gorbachev on human
rights.
----Gorbachev already
had allowed hundreds to emigrate who were on lists
Reagan had given him, and he would free thousands
more.
----Reagan met three
more times with Gorbachev. Once was in New York
when the Soviet leader spoke to the United Nations;
the second time was in San Francisco, after Reagan
had left office; and the third time was in Moscow,
when Reagan was nearly two years into
retirement.
----By now, Reagan was
calling Gorbachev "my friend."
----Reagan never
abandoned what he said was his favorite Russian
proverb, doveryai no proveryai: trust but
verify. But the warmth of their friendship started
the thaw that ended the Cold War.
Going Home
Happy
----When he
departed the White House and came back to
California, Ronald Reagan had good reason to be
satisfied. He had failed to balance the federal
budget; the national debt had nearly tripled to
$2.68 trillion. But his recession, which Cannon
calls "the worst since the Depression," had been
followed by what would become the longest peacetime
recovery in history.
----Reagan had
achieved an unprecedented breakthrough in arms
control, and his diplomacy had been crucial to
peace. He was, Gorbachev declared, a "great
political leader."
----His credibility
with Congress and the American people, dismayingly
low during Iran-Contra, had recovered. His
achievements as well as his unyielding belief that
nothing was impossible and his uncanny ability to
persuade Americans to believe in him and in
themselves had earned Ronald Reagan a job
performance rating in the Gallup Poll of 63% when
he left Washington. It had been 51% when he
arrived.
----On Jan. 11, 1989,
when he bade farewell from the Oval Office, there
were two things he was proudest of. "One is the
economic recovery…. The other is the recovery
of our morale. America is respected again in the
world, and looked to for leadership."
----The United States,
he said, was a shining city upon a hill. "And how
stands the city on this winter night? More
prosperous, more secure and happier than it was
eight years ago. But more than that. After 200
years, two centuries, she still stands strong and
true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held
steadily no matter what the storm….
----"As I walk off
into the city streets, a final word to the men and
women across America, who for eight years did the
work that brought America back: My friends, we did
it. We weren't just marking time, we made a
difference. We made the city stronger, we made the
city freer, and we left her in good hands.
----"All in all, not
bad. Not bad at all. And so, good-bye. God bless
you. And God bless the United States of
America."
///
June
6, 2004 RONALD WILSON REAGAN / 1911-
2004
Reagan
Dies at 93
He created the Republican Inter-circle
Ronald
Reagan / White House
At the end of his two terms
in office, Ronald Reagan viewed with satisfaction
the achievements of his innovative program known as
the Reagan Revolution, which aimed to reinvigorate
the American people and reduce their reliance upon
Government. He felt he had fulfilled his campaign
pledge of 1980 to restore "the great, confident
roar of American progress and growth and
optimism."
----On
February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born to
Nelle and John Reagan in Tampico, Illinois. He
attended high school in nearby Dixon and then
worked his way through Eureka College. There, he
studied economics and sociology, played on the
football team, and acted in school plays. Upon
graduation, he became a radio sports announcer. A
screen test in 1937 won him a contract in
Hollywood. During the next two decades he appeared
in 53 films.
----From
his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, he had
two children, Maureen and Michael. Maureen passed
away in 2001. In 1952 he married Nancy Davis, who
was also an actress, and they had two children,
Patricia Ann and Ronald
Prescott.
----As
president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became
embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism
in the film industry; his political views shifted
from liberal to conservative. He toured the country
as a television host, becoming a spokesman for
conservatism. In 1966 he was elected Governor of
California by a margin of a million votes; he was
re-elected in 1970.
----Ronald
Reagan won the Republican Presidential nomination
in 1980 and chose as his running mate former Texas
Congressman and United Nations Ambassador George
Bush. Voters troubled by inflation and by the
year-long confinement of Americans in Iran swept
the Republican ticket into office. Reagan won 489
electoral votes to 49 for President Jimmy
Carter.
----On
January 20, 1981, Reagan took office. Only 69 days
later he was shot by a would-be assassin, but
quickly recovered and returned to duty. His grace
and wit during the dangerous incident caused his
popularity to soar.
----Dealing
skillfully with Congress, Reagan obtained
legislation to stimulate economic growth, curb
inflation, increase employment, and strengthen
national defense. He embarked upon a course of
cutting taxes and Government expenditures, refusing
to deviate from it when the strengthening of
defense forces led to a large
deficit.
----A
renewal of national self-confidence by 1984 helped
Reagan and Bush win a second term with an
unprecedented number of electoral votes. Their
victory turned away Democratic challengers Walter
F. Mondale and Geraldine
Ferraro.
----In
1986 Reagan obtained an overhaul of the income tax
code, which eliminated many deductions and exempted
millions of people with low incomes. At the end of
his administration, the Nation was enjoying its
longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity
without recession or
depression.
----In
foreign policy, Reagan sought to achieve "peace
through strength." During his two terms he
increased defense spending 35 percent, but sought
to improve relations with the Soviet Union. In
dramatic meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev, he negotiated a treaty that would
eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
Reagan declared war against international
terrorism, sending American bombers against Libya
after evidence came out that Libya was involved in
an attack on American soldiers in a West Berlin
nightclub.
----By
ordering naval escorts in the Persian Gulf, he
maintained the free flow of oil during the
Iran-Iraq war. In keeping with the Reagan Doctrine,
he gave support to anti-Communist insurgencies in
Central America, Asia, and
Africa.
----Overall,
the Reagan years saw a restoration of prosperity,
and the goal of peace through strength seemed to be
within grasp.
///
Farewell
Address
Broadcast Jan. 11, 1989, from the Oval
Office
///
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