Announcer:
From the Library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE, and at ICE's 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now here's your host, Josh King, Head of Communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Two years into a Presidency, the midterm elections loom. In the US House, the Democrats flipped 27 seats bringing the majority to 269 to 166 for the Republicans. It's 1982. The Speaker of the House is Thomas P "Tip" O'Neill, and the Minority Leader is Bob Michael of Illinois. The President is Ronald Reagan. The election was a reflection of Reagan's approval at the time. The country was coming through the 1982 recession. It was the election that brought onto the national stage, a set of names who, like Reagan, would shape the country's politics for a generation to come. Names like John McCain, Harry Reid, John Kasich, Dick Durbin and Tom Ridge.
Josh King:
Yet with the divided government, the Republicans controlled the White House and the Senate under Howard Baker, the Democrats, the House. Things still got done. The country worked. The Cold War was on its way to being won, and at the end of the day, the President and the Speaker, two men from backgrounds split by 3,000 miles but oddly joined by a new deal heritage could join at the White House for beer, and set their daily battles aside, at least that's the mythology.
Josh King:
Mythology has a way of staying with us until new evidence emerges. In the field of biography, the passage of 30 years since the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, left office, allows new storytellers to access new sources and reconstruct history from a fresh angle. With us in the ICE House today, Bob Spitz, author of Reagan, An American Journey, out now from Penguin Press.
Josh King:
The story of a man born into poverty in the Midwest, who by luck and determination worked his way from young sports broadcaster to Hollywood actor, governor of California, to President of the United States. Bob spent over five years capturing hundreds of interviews, and piecing together previously unavailable documents to tell the story of Ronald Reagan, a man who always wanted the starring role, and found himself perhaps not as he originally imagined doing just that. My conversation with Bob Spitz, right after this.
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Josh King:
I'm blessed in many ways. I get to talk to CEOs and Prime Ministers on behalf of Intercontinental Exchange here in the Library of the New York Stock Exchange, but back in the 1990s, I got to work in the White House, creating events for leaders like that when they were about to meet the President of the United States. While I worked for a Democratic President, the model I used was that of a Republican. Ronald Reagan and his Chief Architect of Events, his Deputy Chief of Staff, Michael Deaver.
Josh King:
I went to see Deaver in 1993 when we were fresh-faced kids trying to use the West Wing, and every place the President traveled as an instrument of political communication. Deaver's advice to me, "Look at the television with the sound off. Focus on the imagery," and that's exactly what we did. It helped that I had, and still have, a complete set of Time Magazines from 1981 to 1989 as my guide.
Josh King:
The words of Hugh Sidey and the images of Diana Walker, and Dirck Halstead to show me how a President should look and sound. Those in Washington of today's generation on all sides don't have file boxes of Times from the 1980s as a beacon for the exercise of Presidential Stagecraft but they now have, if they go to bookstores, 761 pages of Ronald Reagan from start to finish. One day in particular rings true for those who work here at the NYSE, the day he rang our opening bell. Let's have a listen.
Ronald Reagan:
This is a great view from up here. It's kind of like being at a Saturday night tag team wrestling match at the Garden, but in a few minutes, I'll ring the bell so trading can begin. I know that if I don't it'll ring itself anyway. In this lull before the storm, I'd like to say a few words about where this country's been, and where we'll be going from here. The last time I visited the New York Stock Exchange was in 1980, and the mood sure was different then, but in the last five years, we've moved from malaise to hope, confidence, and opportunity.
Josh King:
Welcome Bob Spitz to the Library, and the same stage that Reagan occupied all those years ago.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah. It's a pleasure to be here, Josh. Thank you.
Josh King:
The words that he used from the podium of the exchange, they echoed. He would recycle good phrases and words all the time.
Bob Spitz:
You know, you said it in your introduction, it's all about the optics, really. Reagan knew how to play to the crowd. He knew when to say something, how to say something, and it was very evident in his little piece with the Stock Exchange right there. You can hear how he plays to that crowd. I mean, he really has audiences in the palm of his hand. He had it all through his Presidency.
Josh King:
What you don't see by not continuing the audio and the video that we've watched many times is Don Reagan telling him to wrap it up, wrap it up because the floor traders were so enthused to have the President on the podium that he could have gone on all day, but the bell waits for no person.
Bob Spitz:
That's true, but Reagan never really cast an eye out to his handlers. He was his own man, and the rest of them be damned.
Josh King:
There were 5,000 or so A-type traders on the floor when he was talking. Was it his acting background or something else that made him as comfortable in that environment as he was that first trip to Geneva to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev?
Bob Spitz:
Well, I think acting had a lot to do with it, but you know, Reagan had a lot more composure even way before then when he was a broadcaster in the Midwest, in the late '20s, early 1930s. That's where he developed it. He had a presence. He knew how to use it. He knew how to play to the crowd, and by the time he got to Hollywood, the directors helped refine all over that.
Josh King:
Talking about performers, Bob Spitz, you've written extensively about music, including your New York Times Bestseller, The Beatles, the Biography, and Barefoot in Babylon, which dissects 1969's Woodstock festival. You also dove deeply into the culinary world, covering Julia Child in Dearie. I've heard some conversations with you that, in terms of looking at the people that you profile and focus on, it is the people that bring joy, and entertainment, and good feeling to people's hearts. Reagan was next on your list.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah, really not consciously next on my list, but when I was looking for a new subject to talk about, I realized that there were two elements in every book that I had written that you could not overlook. That is number one, the people were beloved, and number two, they had changed the culture. When I was looking for a subject, it was really difficult to find both of those elements in one person. I must have spent six months going over every name that I could possibly find that would fit that bill, and my wife finally said, "What about Ronald Reagan?" I went, "Absolutely not." I mean, I'm a life-long Democrat. I didn't vote for Reagan twice.
Josh King:
Who were some of the other names on the short list that you crossed off?
Bob Spitz:
You know what, there were no names on that short list. Really. It was incredibly difficult. We thought about Andy Warhol perhaps, somebody who had changed the culture, but not really in the big definitive way that a President had, that Reagan had, not just politically, but the legacy that he leaves behind all of his life.
Josh King:
For someone who held office more than 30 years ago, the lore of Reagan has grown over the years, and his name is invoked to support ideas on both sides of the aisle. What was it about Ronald Reagan's Presidency that made you feel that there was more to be told, or the record corrected, and new information to be uncovered?
Bob Spitz:
Well, just as when I wrote The Beatles, I realized that about 600 books had been written about Ronald Reagan. When it came to the Beatles, it was 900 books. Of course, I delve into all of them, and saw that either they were hagiography, they were narrow slices of his life. They were political polemics, or policy wonks. I wanted to write a definitive soup-to-nuts biography, a complete nonpartisan take about a man who many people, other than myself, thought the most of in this world.
Bob Spitz:
I realized that I would have to put my liberal mindset completely aside, and write, and not write a partisan take. Hard to do. Also, it had to be a compelling read. I used David McCullough's book on Truman as my model, which I thought was a complete page-turner. I had no interest in Harry Truman, but I couldn't put that book down. I tried to bring the same thing to the Reagan biography.
Josh King:
Where were you '81 to '89?
Bob Spitz:
I had just come off the road with Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, nine years of that, and was thinking about changing my career. I was in New York City. I told people, friends of mine, that I was going to try to write, and of course they thought I was out of my mind. I'd never make a living at it, but I needed some peace and quiet in my life. Writing seemed like the perfect avenue to do that.
Josh King:
What do you think of the storytelling in Bruce Springsteen's Broadway show right now?
Bob Spitz:
I kind of think it's wonderful. I mean, I had ...
Josh King:
It's a new form of communication, isn't it?
Bob Spitz:
It really is. I had lived through a lot of the stories that he told with him, and found that he was ... He turned himself inside out telling those stories, even more so than when he had been on stage when we were kids back in the '70s. Yeah, a wonderful way of storytelling.
Josh King:
I'm curious when you and your wife narrowed down the short list, and it's Ronald Wilson Reagan ...
Bob Spitz:
Yeah.
Josh King:
... and you've got McCullough's book as maybe a starter, in terms of form and format, but what was the first thing you dove into in terms of substance and information? Where'd you turn first?
Bob Spitz:
It's the place I always turn when I write a biography. I believe that you can't know anything about a person before you know where they come from. I went to the Midwest. I went to Reagan's home town, two hometowns, Tampico and ...
Josh King:
Dixon.
Bob Spitz:
.. Dixon, and then, I was also in the minor places, Galesburg, places that his parents had to get out of, often in the cover of night when the rent came due, and they couldn't afford it. They were very poor. I seeped into that culture to try to find out what inspired Reagan? What gave him that drive? What formed him? It was all there. It was all in the Midwest. The Midwest ideals, he surrounded himself with that all of his life, no matter where he was, whether it was in Des Moines, or in Hollywood, or in the UK, or in the Oval Office, he never changed from that kid in Dixon.
Josh King:
Tampico, Dixon, Galesburg, you go there today, they're like a lot of other places, strip malls, Home Depot, Motel 6s.
Bob Spitz:
Yes, except for Tampico, which still looks like Dodge City from Gun Smoke.
Josh King:
Is there Tampico Public Library or a photographic resource that transports you back to understand what it was like in the Midwest back then?
Bob Spitz:
Actually, there was a Historical Society there, and they took me through it, and they actually had a lot of artifacts from the time Reagan lived there. His parents were very active in the theater. They had brochures. I mean, I could we get a sense of who Jack and Nellie Reagan were, and how they brought up young Ronald.
Josh King:
I'm in the White House in the 1990s, and looking for more source material. I have great resources in terms of the White House Television Unit, the White House Communications Agency, the compilations of news reporting, and also raw video footage of '81 to '89, the way Reagan did stuff during his term, but I'm also looking at the first biographies to come off the line of Reagan, including one that's actually billed as a memoir by Edmund Morris called Dutch, which had been, I guess, authorized by the President, Nancy Reagan, but it didn't come out the way it was intended.
Bob Spitz:
No, actually they had a meeting one night, and they invited 10 of the most prominent biographers in the country to attend. Morris had just written the two-volume life of Theodore Roosevelt. fabulous work. I mean really lovely piece of scholarship, very readable, and so they thought perhaps he was the natural for this. Roosevelt, Reagan, there were many ties to be drawn, but Ed Morris really, he couldn't penetrate Ronald Reagan. Reagan is not a reflective man, and so when they did their interviews, Morris got frustrated, and for the lack of information that he was getting, he decided to insert himself as a fictional character in the biography. Once you do something like that, you lose all the authenticity of a really true work of biography.
Bob Spitz:
I had asked Morris to see his interviews with the President. Biographers share their work normally. I've shared my work. People have always helped me out, and I got a very rude note back from him that there was no way I was going to see that, but when I was in Reagan Library, the head of the Reagan Foundation, which is separate, and apart, and controlled by the family who had endorsed my book came over and said to me, "You know, we heard you were trying to get Ed Morris' interviews." I said, "Yeah, he's not going to give them up" She said, "Well, he doesn't know this, but he doesn't own them. We do, and here they are.
Josh King:
Wow.
Bob Spitz:
I got to read them, and I could see where Morris was frustrated, but he did worse than that. I hate to say this, but it's true. Every time Reagan approached a really terrific subject, something where you could really sink your teeth into what was happening in that Oval Office, Morris pivoted away from it. I mean, he'd ask him a social question, and as a biographer, I just wanted to tear my hair out. I mean, here you have the subject. You were that close to him, the President of the United States, ask those questions. It was not only frustrating for him, it was frustrating for me as well.
Josh King:
Before she passed away, Nancy Reagan was encouraging of you pursuing this new biography?
Bob Spitz:
Yeah, she was. I did not speak to her because she was ill at the time, but she had heard from people who I had begun speaking to, that my process was right on the money. She told everybody, who had not spoken openly about Ronald Reagan before, to talk to me, and put no restrictions on it. In addition to that, she gave me a bigger gift, and that's she allowed me to have access to the President's private papers. These are not the papers that were in the Library. They were in a file next to his office.
Bob Spitz:
He brought them from the Governor's Office to the President's Office. He referred to them all the time, heavily annotated them, and they were an incredible resource for me because I got to see what really inspired Ronald Reagan to be who he was, and to do what he did. I really appreciated having that at my beck and call. What astounded me most about those private papers were that the majority of them, and you might not be ready for this, were Reader's Digest articles. There was a trove of them. I mean decades worth of Reader's Digest articles. This is what he took to heart. These folksy stories that would influence him forever, and not all of them were true stories, but he took them as truth, and rolled them into his platform.
Josh King:
If I had been subscribing in the 60s and 70s, I'd have boxes of Reader's Digest too. They are an amazing window on an America at a certain time.
Bob Spitz:
Yes, absolutely.
Josh King:
Bob Spitz, going back to his earliest days in the Midwest, we probably pick up his life maybe as someone in his twenties. He's at WHO in Des Moines. He's doing radio as Dutch Reagan. When he ascended to the Presidency, there aren't many recordings. I don't know if you heard any of the earliest Reagan radio recordings, but when he gets to the World Series, and we're experiencing the World Series this week between the Dodgers and the Red Sox, here he is being interviewed by Howard Cosell, telling a story he told innumerable times.
Howard Cosell:
I remember your telling the story of one you called off the teletype.
Ronald Reagan:
You mean the one where I called a game that wasn't going on?
Howard Cosell:
That's right.
Ronald Reagan:
Yes. It was the ninth inning, Cubs and Cards, zero, nothing, nothing, and the wire went dead. I was doing a telegraphic report. Billy Jergus at the plate. I decided that maybe I'd take a chance, and I had him foul one, and then I had him foul another one. Then, I had him foul one, it was almost a home run. Then, I described the two kids that got one that he fouled back, a third one. I went on until I was setting a world record for foul balls. They did finally get the wire fixed while still had him at the plate. The first word that came to me was that he popped out on the first ball pitch.
Josh King:
Foul balls all night long, Bob.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah, I've heard that story told by him so many different ways, so many different people were at the plate. The score was completely different, but he dined out on that story for the rest of his life. It did actually happen. You know, it was an amazing thing. He did these White Sox and Cubs games every night, but he never had seen a professional ball game. It was all done through hieroglyphics that came over that teletype. You had to be really fast, and creative to read those. I mean when I looked at some of those teletype dispatches, I just saw how creative this guy was. He was a real gifted announcer, and if the Ronald Reagan story had stopped right there in the Midwest, it would've been enough.
Bob Spitz:
People in eight states listen to Dutch Reagan every night. I mean, not just the ball games, but he would do lengthy interviews with celebrities, Aimee Semple McPherson, Gene Autry, whoever came through town. He'd have singers on, and entertainers of all kinds. He was a real celebrity in the Midwest. People knew him. They knew his picture was on the wall of saloons. Dutch Reagan was the man.
Josh King:
Take me into the home of Jack and Nell Reagan that created this performer, this person who would, I guess, curl up in his mother's lap, and listen to her reading aloud, so that he could actually teach himself to read at age five.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah, that actually sounds nicer than it was. It was a very trying childhood that he had. He came from very humble circumstances. There were times they didn't know if they could put food on the table, and growing up, he often had to share a bed, a single bed, with his older brother, Neil. There was always that cloud of his dad's alcoholism, and getting fired for alcoholism, hanging over the family. While there were those wonderful moments that I was able to capture where he sat on his mother's lap, and actually learned how to read from following her putting her finger under the lines of text, the difficulties, I think, far outnumbered it.
Bob Spitz:
It's one of the reasons, I think, that Reagan was not reflective. Did not have a lot of friends growing up. Did not have friends, even when he was an adult. Very few people in his life, very few outsiders, because he had to turn inward, and he had to make a go of it for a himself.
Josh King:
You've said in other interviews that it was almost he could relate to a lens. He could relate to a microphone, like you and I are looking at a microphone today, but in terms of really mixing with a group of people, and having a human conversation, a taller challenge for him.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah, he could always, he loved a big audience where the audience was amorphous. I remember going on stage with Bruce Springsteen when we were in a coffee house, and you could see people in the roads. That was really frightening, but when we were in Madison Square Garden, you couldn't see anybody, not difficult at all. That's the way Reagan played to his audience. He was still good in a small situation, but he never really looked people in the eye when he was telling those stories. He was performing.
Josh King:
Tampico, Dixon, Galesburg, the other Midwestern towns. How do you achieve that escape velocity to get out? A tremendous overachiever. He thought he could break out of the Midwest, and make it to Hollywood. With the help of Jack Warner and others, he did, let's hear him in that famous scene as George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American
Ronald Reagan:
"Rock, someday when the team's up against it, and the breaks are beating the boys, ask him to go in there with all they've got, win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, but I'll know about it. I'll be happy.
Bob Spitz:
The irony is that he made Gipp this lovable guy, but Gipp was a reprobate. I mean, he smoked, he drank, he was involved with prostitutes. He bet against his own team in games that he played in. Reagan really took them to another place, and it served him well for the rest of his life.
Josh King:
Where is Knute Rockne, All-American on the arc of his trajectory through Hollywood, before he gets to GE Theater? he put on his old Eureka college uniform to show that he could actually cut a silhouette like a football player.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah. The producer wanted anybody but Ronald Reagan to play that part. I mean, you know, Reagan was not a leading man. He was best friend as Jack Warner always said, but Reagan was determined to get that part, and he did suit up, as you said, and he even went into the producer's office, and threw a couple bullet passes in his old college days form. This role came to him, I think about midway through his career, and he ranks it up there with King's Row as perhaps the two movies that represent him more than anything else. One of the interesting parts of that is when he meets Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev tells him that he's seen him in Hollywood, and he brings up Knete Rockn, and Kings Row as particular favorites of his. That gives Reagan his opening, and he just drives a truck through it.
Josh King:
KGB working overtime looking at the vaults.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah, sure.
Josh King:
Bob Spitz, even the best and brightest Hollywood stars see their stars fade, and it's time for a second act. I want to hear his introduction, I think, to the first episode of the GE Theater.
Recorded announcer:
For General Electric, here is Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan:
Good evening. Tonight, John Forsythe stars on the General Electric Theater, and you'll see product reports that show how in the things that lead to a better life for us all, at General Electric, progress is our most important product.
Josh King:
Alas, poor General Electric NYSE ticker symbol GE, not quite on the ascent as it was back at the time that Reagan was the national spokesperson, but for Reagan, an incredible gift to be able to be transported out of Hollywood, and back into middle America.
Bob Spitz:
Well, I think this was his favorite job ever. I mean he really loved this, not so much being the host of GE Theater every Sunday, but the job that also came with it, and that was to be GE's ambassador. They asked Reagan to make a tour of all their plants across the United States, where thousands of people were employed, and to just walk through, shake hands with people, talk to them. This is where Reagan really got a sense of what was on the working man's, working women's minds. How they lived, what their struggles were, what they wanted out of their government, what they were aren't getting from their government, and I think if he could have done this job for the rest of his life, he would've been a happy Buckaroo.
Bob Spitz:
Every phase of it appealed to him, He loved being on camera, but of course, he also loved talking to these people, and you can see the shift from where he began life as a really liberal, Roosevelt Democrat, gradually moved to the right by talking to these people in the plant.
Josh King:
Was he writing a lot? How was his sort of political philosophy beginning to evolve at this point? What was he turning out in terms of content?
Bob Spitz:
He was writing. He made speeches everywhere that he went. They would be ancillary so to his plant tour, and he would listen to these people, then formulate things that they had told him in his mind. He would put it through the Ronald Reagan Cuisinart, and it would come out in a really kind of home-spun way. Then, he would refine it in a speech. He always wrote the same way, from the time he was the President of the Screen Actors Guild to the time he was President of the United States. He would put a yellow tablet on his lap.
Bob Spitz:
There's a picture in the book of this, and I really wanted it in there because it was a pose everyone saw Ronald Reagan in from the time he was a radio broadcaster until the day he'd died. He had that yellow tablet on his lap. He wrote in long hand, and he never crossed things out. Really, it was stream of consciousness, and I saw by reading a lot of these handwritten texts of Reagan's, that he really had a much more nimble mind than I had expected.
Josh King:
As he's continuing his work as the host of GE Theater and the GEs National Spokesman, politics become increasingly his calling. I want to hear part of his 1964 speech for Barry Goldwater, famously known as A Time for Choosing.
Ronald Reagan:
Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as the masses. This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America, but beyond that, the full power of centralized government, this was the very thing the founding fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. They know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew those founding fathers that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.
Josh King:
Goldwater supporters in the audience were wondering whether they had backed the wrong horse, that maybe this guy giving the speech should be on the national ticket.
Bob Spitz:
Absolutely. There were a group of about 15, very wealthy California businessmen who had put up the money for this speech, and they did it really because Goldwater's candidacy was tanking, and they wanted to give it one last shot. As you just said, while watching him, they realized this guy had everything. He was telegenic. He was charismatic. He had a way with words. He knew what to do in front of the camera. They realized the wrong man was on the ticket, and they decided after hearing, as use said, a time for choosing, but forever ever more, it was known around the Reagan group as The Speech. They realized that they were going to put their money behind Ronald Reagan, and launch him first as Governor of California.
Josh King:
When we come back with Bob Spitz, we continue on Ronald Reagan's march to the Presidency from California to Washington DC. Right after this.
Recording:
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Josh King:
Back now with Bob Spitz, the author of Reagan, An American Journey, a tome five years in the making, 761 pages engrossing research that has brought Bob Spitz from California, to the Midwest, to Washington DC, and interestingly to Paris, France, where Olivia de Havilland was a interlocutor for you.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah. I had been corresponding with her for some time. She was not only on-screen with Reagan in Santa Fe Trail, but she was also very involved with him in any number of political committees that were set up during the time in Hollywood. Lefty, liberal committees, I will say, and also when the founding of the Screen Actors Guild. I knew she was getting up there in years. In fact, she was just about to turn 100, and we had been going back and forth, and she had been filling in some details. I knew that she really didn't talk to people. She never saw people in public anymore, but I said, "Look, you know, I'm coming over to Paris with my wife. Is there any chance you would tell me a little more about Reagan?" I got the fastest invitation, "Do come for champagne and canapes."
Bob Spitz:
I spent three and a half hours with her in one of the most fascinating conversations I've ever had because her long-term memory was so sharp. She remembered the little details, and she also had all her papers from the founding of those committees, and dealing with Reagan, and could really give me an insight into what was going on in Hollywood during the time, and how it shaped the fight that was to come.
Bob Spitz:
I'll also admit that that woman drank me under the table. When we got to the third bottle of champagne, I really had to beg off, and she said, "Oh, that's okay. I'll finish it after you're gone." Great. I loved it.
Josh King:
How would de Havilland and Reagan deal, at the time, with someone like Dalton Trumbo, and then in retrospect, in Paris today, how does Olivia look back at those days?
Bob Spitz:
Yeah, well, you know, Trumbo at the time was one of their own. I mean, he was a screenwriter, they were actors, and he was a good screenwriter, but de Havilland told me that Trumbo ... In the recent years, his reputation has been repaired a bit. She point blank said to me, "He was a very evil man," and he had organized a group of people who were committed Communists to disrupt Screen Actors Guild meetings long enough to table every measure that came up, every measure until he knew that the actors had an early call the next day on the set, and they had to leave. As soon as they did, he would bring up the measures again and vote, have them voted on the way he wanted them voted. It turned her from the left to at least middle of the road, and it turned Reagan further to the right.
Josh King:
Reagan's term as Governor of California was '66 to '72. He's thought of as a potential Presidential candidate in '76 at the convention that ultimately nominated Gerald Ford, but by 1980, it's his time to perhaps win the Republican nomination. There is this moment in New Hampshire, at the Presidential debate, that if you think about his performance at the speech, or A Time Tor Choosing with Barry Goldwater, or his time on the Hollywood stage, or going back all the way to WHO in Des Moines, almost rekindles this acting ferocity on the stage. I want to hear a bit of that debate.
Ronald Reagan:
Mr. Green, you asked me if you could make an announcement first. I asked you permission to make an announcement myself.
Mr. Breen (Mr. Green):
Would the sound man, please turn Mr. Reagan's mic off?
Ronald Reagan:
Is this on? Mr. Green ...
Mr. Breen (Mr. Green):
Can you turn on microphone off please?
Ronald Reagan:
You asked for me if you would ... I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green.
Josh King:
Beside getting his surname slightly wrong, this was a turning point in his race?
Bob Spitz:
Yeah. His name was John Breen and actually that line, "I've paid for this microphone," was lifted right out of a Spencer Tracy movie. It was an incredible night, and in the book, it is one of the most dramatic scenes in the book. Ronald Reagan was trailing George Bush going into that debate. It was in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Bush had won the Iowa caucus, and he pretty far ahead, but Reagan had engineered this debate, and when Bush didn't want to do it, he didn't want to put up the money for it, Reagan said, "That's okay. We'll put up the money ourselves," which gave him control over those microphones.
Bob Spitz:
He brought in the other candidates at the very last minute who had been excluded from the debate. This wasn't something that he had done spontaneously. This was crafted from the very beginning. It was to unsettle George Bush, for sure. Bush was like ... He fell apart at that debate. He sat there stone-faced. He wouldn't look at the other candidates. He wouldn't look at Ronald Reagan, and when they finally did start to debate, Bush had lost all of that fluid language that he had that had served him so well in Iowa in the early early days.
Bob Spitz:
The interesting part of that is when it came time for Ronald Reagan to pick a Vice-Presidential candidate, everyone said, "Well, of course, it'll be George Bush," and Reagan said nothing doing. He felt because of that debate that night that Bush had no backbone. He didn't want a man serving as his second, who he felt had no backbone. That's why he flirted with choosing Gerry Ford is his Vice-President. When that started to fall apart, he realized that he was saddled with George Bush, and he was just going to have to make due. It turned out to be a great partnership.
Josh King:
It was a good casting decision ultimately.
Bob Spitz:
It was, and Reagan and Bush got along completely for those eight years, and I think Reagan was really thankful to have a man like Bush serve with him in that office.
Josh King:
He beats Jimmy Carter in 1980, establishes his West Wing trauka, Ed Meese, Don Regan, Jim Bakker.
Bob Spitz:
A brilliant move by the way.
Josh King:
And Mike Deaver, and things start out pretty well in those first few months until we get to this ride that he has to take in the Presidential Limousine, up to the Washington Hilton to talk to the AFL-CIO Building Trades Council. Here's a 70-year-old man who's going to give a after lunchtime speech, trying to talk up the economy, understanding that the Democrats are standing in his way. Gets some tepid applause as he's coming out. Knows that he's going to be yelled questions by the reporters as he comes out, because there's an international incident involving a hijacking going on in Europe, but something much more terrible happens as he's walking out toward the limo. Let's hear how Frank Reynolds of ABC News reported that live.
Frank Reynolds:
A videotape of an incident that took place less than 15 minutes ago at the Washington Hilton Hotel, when shots were fired at President Reagan. Here you see the President coming out now. We just have to watch. I don't know if we can hear this or not. There it is. Shots. These are the agents immediately guiding ...
Secret Service Agent:
Get him out.
Frank Reynolds:
... after the assault. There are two or three people down on the ground. We understand that one Secret Service Agent, one, there may be another Washington policeman who was injured.
Secret Service Agent:
All right. Stay back.
Frank Reynolds:
I can't hear the sound on this. Can't hear the sound. We understand also that James Brady, the White House Press Secretary was among those injured.
Josh King:
Bob Spitz, of the 800 or so books that I think you've mentioned have been written about Reagan, enumerable movies, documentaries as well looking at that day, turning the life of John Hinckley inside and out, the moments of Reagan coming out of the limo, the good spirits that he had trying to stay on his own two feet, the jokes that he made leading up to his surgery, and even as he was being allowed to leave the hospital a miraculous five days later.
Josh King:
This is a turning point moment in Ronald Reagan's life. You are attacking this subject 30 some odd years later. It's been thoroughly written through. What new did you learn about this moment?
Bob Spitz:
Well, what I learned more than I've ever read before is how close to death Ronald Reagan really was. I mean, I got to speak to all the nurses, and all the doctors who had attended him. They said that they could not find that bullet at first. It had flattened to the shape of a dime. There was just a slit in his side. It was lodged very close to the heart, and so I learned just how close to death he was, but I also learned how much chaos was involved in the Situation Room, in the deepest recesses of our government. I mean, that was like a drama that I had never heard played out. Dick Allen, who was working in the National ... for Al Haig.
Josh King:
He went for a swim that day.
Bob Spitz:
He did go for a swim that day, and they pulled him out by his hair, out of the water, and pushed him into a car in his suit. Changed in the car. Got to the Sit Room, and was ... You cannot put a recording device in the Situation Room, but he realized that this was a really important event, and so he put his tape recorder in the middle of the table, and I got a transcription of what transpired there. I mean, we were really close to fist fights in that room. We had also learned that the Russians had moved their nuclear subs closer to the United States.
Josh King:
That's what was bothering Allen that day. There are a couple Russian subs with nuclear tip missiles that were two minutes closer to hitting the US mainland.
Bob Spitz:
Right, and so you know Cap Weinberger, who was the ... Cap was the Secretary of Defense and Al Haig were not seeing eye-to-eye on anything, including who was in charge. Very famously, Haig thought he was in charge. Of course, he was wrong. It was an incredibly dramatic situation, and I tried to recreate it as if you were sitting right there in the Sit Room, and you were right there in the hospital theater where they were operating on the President, and thereafter. It was one of my favorite things to write about in that book.
Josh King:
Meanwhile, you write that George HW Bush is on a DC-9 heading to an event in Texas. The DC-9s, in terms of the Presidential fleet, or the older planes with less sophisticated communications gear, and there's Secretaries Haig trying to communicate to Vice-President Bush, his basic message is, "Turn around."
Bob Spitz:
That what it came down to. He couldn't really say anything over the air that might have been picked up. It was just, "George, turn around," and you could hear static, and like, "Why? Why?" "I can't tell you, but turn around now. Come right back to Washington." Bush got back there in record time.
Josh King:
In the Situation Room, you distilled the 25th Amendment pretty clearly, and the arguments that were going on both sides, and Haig said, "Pending return to the Vice-President, Presidential authority sits right here," and he basically points at his chest.
Bob Spitz:
Right, I mean everybody told him how wrong he was, but Haig never really listened to anybody but himself. He was a tough guy. I mean he was really narrow-minded in that respect, and also he had come out of heart surgery, I think, just about six months before, and Dick Allen told me that Haig was a completely changed man. Irrational more than anything else, and so when he went up to speak to the press, and they went up to speak to the press because David Gergen, who they refer to as Professor Leaky had been leaving the Sit Room every few minutes. They knew what he was doing. He was leaking confidential information to the press.
Bob Spitz:
Haig went up to address the press, and Allen told me he stood behind him, and he saw that Haig was not just shaking terribly, but his knees were buckling, and Allen grabbed him by the back of the belt, and held him up because he was afraid he would collapse. He was that nervous.
Josh King:
A lot has been written, and I think it might have started with Edmond Morris in Dutch, speculating that Reagan's recovery from the assassination affected him for the rest of his life, physically, emotionally in different ways. Did you get any more clarity on the long-term effects of the assassination through your research?
Bob Spitz:
Absolutely, and here's the number one thing that it did to Reagan. It put him in touch with his own mortality for the very first time in his life. At that point, he starts to think about his legacy, which Nancy Reagan had been harping on from the minute they set foot in the Oval Office. Think of about your legacy, and they only had one thing in mind for that. They wanted him to be known as a man of peace, so while Reagan's in the hospital, in his folksy way, he takes a yellow tablet, and he writes a hand-written letter to Leonid Brezhnev, who was the Soviet Premiere at the time, just saying, "You know, Mr. Premier, if we could just sit down and talk at a table, like two men face-to-face like friends, we could reduce all the tension in the world, and we could find a common thread on which to start a longer conversations."
Bob Spitz:
It was naïve, perhaps. We didn't do the things that way in diplomacy in those days. They stopped Reagan. Reagan said ... Mike Deavers said to him, "Whatever you do, don't let the State Department rewrite that letter. It's in your words. It's heartfelt."
Bob Spitz:
Of course, they eventually did get their hands on it, and they did rewrite it. Reagan managed to slip some of his own sentiments through, but it was not the same document. From that time on, Reagan realizes that he has to make some kind of an impact in a way with the little time that he has left, whatever that might be, and so he's thinks in terms of someday reducing the tension, no longer Sabre rattling with the Soviet Union, but to do something larger, something bigger, and of course, we get SDI mixed in there as well.
Josh King:
In terms of making an impact, and thinking about your legacy, only four or five months later, on the road to recovery, he's making history in a different sort. It was brought home dramatically this week with the announcement by former associate justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, that she is dealing with the onset of dementia, and probably Alzheimer's, a very similar kind of public communication that Ronald Reagan shared with the world in 1994. I want to hear Reagan's introduction of O'Connor that day that he was making this appointment, the first female to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
Ronald Reagan:
That would not be fair to women nor to future generations of all Americans whose lives are so deeply affected by decisions of the court. Rather, I pledge to appoint a woman who meets the very high standards that I demand of all court appointees. I have identified such a person, so today I'm pleased to announce that upon completion of all the necessary checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I will send to the Senate, the nomination of Judge Sandra Day O'Connor of Arizona Court of Appeals for confirmation as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Ronald Reagan:
She is truly a person for all seasons, possessing those unique qualities of temperament, fairness, intellectual capacity, and devotion to the public good, which have characterized the 101 Brethren who have preceded her.
Josh King:
In naming O'Connor to replace Potter Stewart, he almost looks Westward, and in his meetings with O'Connor at the White House, has a personal affinity with her.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah, he does. First of all it's a wonderful thing that he put a woman on the Supreme Court. It was really well thought out. Stu Spencer, who was his campaign manager when he ran against Jimmy Carter the first time, came to him at one point and said, "Your campaign is flat-lined. We need something to give it a spark, something, something provocative." He suggested naming a woman to the Supreme Court, the first opportunity he got because they had no female support for Reagan's candidacy. It did the trick. I mean, he announced it early. He decided to choose O'Connor. She was not the first choice of any of his staff.
Josh King:
They were looking at Rehnquist and Scalia.
Bob Spitz:
Yes, and other women too.
Josh King:
Right.
Bob Spitz:
There were other women who were much more conservative than Sandra Day O'Connor, but they had one thing in common. She came from the ranch. Reagan loved that. She told him that she could not get a job in a white-shoe, LA law firm, other than being a secretary at the time, even though she had a brilliant law degree, and so she worked for herself in a small firm in Arizona. She happened to know his in-laws. They were neighbors of hers.
Bob Spitz:
There was a lot of affinity, but the one thing that did it was, this is the first time that the word abortion is raised in the vetting of a Supreme Court candidate. Reagan wanted to know where she stood on that issue. He was opposed to it, even though he had signed as governor, one of the very first therapeutic abortion bills, six years before Roe V Wade, permitting therapeutic abortions.
Bob Spitz:
He put at the question to her. "Where do you stand on this, Ms. O'Connor?" She said, "Look, I'm opposed to it, but it's the law of the land, and if I'm a Supreme Court Justice, I defend that law, so that's exactly where I'll come down to it." Reagan thought that made complete sense. Also, he knew that the country wanted someone more moderate than a right-wing ideolog at that point in his administration. He judiciously chose O'Connor, I think, at this point over the objections of his staff, especially Ed Mace, who was opposed.
Josh King:
Coming to the end of his first term, looking toward reelection, looking to create a new narrative, and a new way in which he needs to communicate with both domestic audiences, but also those in Europe, goes to Normandy for the 40th anniversary of the invasion of Europe, D-day, something that I studied very closely planning the 50th anniversary when President Clinton goes there, but on the cliffs above Point Du Hoc gives one of the most memorable speeches of his life. I want to hear a little bit of that.
Ronald Reagan:
Shot back and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. 225 came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms, and behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. Before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Point Du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent, and these are the heroes who helped end a war.
Josh King:
Peggy Newing gets credit for the words. How did he reflect on that after the visit?
Bob Spitz:
Well, I mean it turned him inside out. I mean, it really went straight to his heart. Real stories like this play on the President's heartstrings all the way through his administration, and just being there, and standing there made him realize that how much is at stake in any kind of a war situation. He begins even more so than before, to really make a drive for peace, reducing the nuclear threat, getting rid of mutually assured destruction.
Josh King:
Did he appreciate the optics of these moments, and the trip to Berlin and, "Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall," and the pictures of him by the fireplace in Geneva with Gorbechev.
Bob Spitz:
He did, but especially the one that you just played because that situation, he really had to redeem himself from making a huge mistake, and that was placing a wreath on SS graves at Bitburg at the same time. While there had been weeks and weeks of controversy, even people begging him not to go, especially famously Elie Wiesel, reprimanding him in the Rose Garden one day.
Josh King:
"This is not your place."
Bob Spitz:
"This is not your place, Mr. President," right. Reagan goes anyway, and comes out of that remarkably, even in better shape than he had been before. I mean, the public thought he looked Presidential, conducted himself Presidentially. When you go back and listen to something like that, you look at the pictures, and you compare it to what's going on today, and the way that the country reacts, you really have to hand it to a guy like Ronald Reagan, and it's what changed my mind about him.
Josh King:
Reagan singularly made that microphone, and that camera, and that resolute desk in the Oval Office as important props in the way he communicated, and at the very end of his Presidency, as Presidents are always given a chance to do, he gets behind the resolute desk, and he talks about his vision of America, as it has been shaped, not only by the eight years of his Presidency, but his entire life up to this point. I want to hear just a clip of that speech.
Ronald Reagan:
I've spoken to the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than notions, wind swept, God blessed, and teaming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace. A city with pre ports that hung with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will, and the heart, to get here.
Ronald Reagan:
That's how I saw it, and see it still, 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 is held steady, no matter what storm. She's still a beacon. Still a magnet for all who must have freedom. For all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurdling through the darkness toward home, we've done our part.
Josh King:
"If there had to be walls, the walls had doors."
Bob Spitz:
"They should be open to anybody with the will and the heart to get here." I mean you think about that, and how that resonates today. It's a remarkable statement, and I think it's what elevates Reagan, and the grandeur of the office more than perhaps anything else. Listening to that little clip, I really hadn't heard this before, the music behind it with his ...
Josh King:
You can always have post-production, add the music soundtrack.
Bob Spitz:
Absolutely, I mean what a stage managed thing to put that, the strings in behind him. Just pure Reagan 100%. Pure cornball, actually.
Josh King:
Many years later when Barack Obama is running for President in 2008, I think he's looking back at the 80s and 90s, and talks about the way Presidents have affected the Oval Office, and the culture generally. He pinpoints Reagan as a person who really changed the culture more than either his predecessors, or his successors. Let's hear then Senator Barack Obama.
Barack Obama:
I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I mean, I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and 70s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people just tapped in. He tapped into what people were already feeling, which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism, and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
Bob Spitz:
As always, nobody says it more eloquently than Barack Obama.
Josh King:
He took a lot of grief for that.
Bob Spitz:
He did. He did from his own party especially, but you know, not only Obama, but Clinton has also cited Reagan in the same way, Bill Clinton. It's hard to deny it. I mean, here I am a Democrat all my life too, and when you look at Reagan's life in total, and the way he presented himself as President to the people of this country, it's hard not to admire the man. That doesn't mean that I have to subscribe to his policies, and I'm sure Obama felt the same way, but as a leader, as a human being, this is a man who was a unifier, not a divider. He didn't have a hostile bone in his body. When he thought about America and that shining city of the hill, he held the American people in the highest of esteem, whether you agreed with his policies or not. I think that's what resonates so clearly in his legacy.
Josh King:
As you're finishing researching and writing the book, what's the last thing that you found that you said, "This just has to be in there to help complete the story of Reagan that hasn't been told up to this point?"
Bob Spitz:
Actually, I think it was actually the prologue to the book. I had learned that in between Reagan's Hollywood years, and moving on to the next phase of his life, he was in a terrible bind. He took a job. His career in Hollywood was tanking. He had just gotten married to Nancy, and he had a new infant daughter to take care of. Ronald Reagan takes a job in a cornball variety show in a Las Vegas casino, and every night he goes to this gig, and comes off stage afterwards, and beats himself up for it.
Bob Spitz:
He goes back to his room, and he talks to Nancy about his life, and where he's headed. I begin the chapter, that part of the book, by saying, "Ronald Reagan had lost his way," but at the last line of that chapter is, "Ronald Reagan had lost his way, but he knew the path back. He knew where he was headed. He was going to move out of entertainment. He was going to move to politics. Do something more that he felt was more meaningful, and would have a greater impact in the world." I think that's a pivotal moment. We'd never heard before about Ronald Reagan.
Josh King:
This story unfolds in 761 pages of Reagan, An American Journey by Bob Spitz. If you have the eyes for it, you can and consume every page. It reads like an ongoing drama, but Bob, there's also another life to this. You're going to translate part of this into documentary form.
Bob Spitz:
Yeah. Yeah. We're doing an eight-part documentary right now, and hopefully, if we do our job, it'll be out before the next major election.
Josh King:
The Beatles, the biography was nine years in the making. Reagan, An American Journey was over five. What's next on your list?
Bob Spitz:
I think I'm going to go back to music again. Return to my roots, and I'm headed over to the UK to talk to some people who I think would make a great biography, who have changed the culture.
Josh King:
Always changing the culture. Thanks so much, Bob, for joining us inside the ICE House.
Bob Spitz:
My pleasure.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Bob Spitz, author of Reagan, An American Journey. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes, so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweeted us @NYSE. Our show is produced by Theresa DeLuca and Ian Wolfe with production assistance from Pete Ash and Ken Abel. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the Library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
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