what? the thoughts that keep them up at night. it's the books that we as parents as educators as librarians read to them, that initiate these essential conversations. i'm so to be here this weekend, celebrate the possibility those conversations and to celebrate the incredible work of so many and to celebrate all of it with all you. thank you so much for having me. and book tv's of the 2024 national book festival continues. good afternoon and welcome to

the 24th annual library of congress national festival, a place where books build us up. i am beatriz haspel, head of logistics of the library of national library services for the blind and disabled. it is a pleasure to welcome all of you here today. and at this time, we ask you that you turn off or silence your devices and cell phones if you need to leave the premises before the end of the session. the right the door on the right is the exit. so are the nearest restrooms. we want also to notify you that this event will be recorded and. your entry in presence at program constitutes consent to be filmed, otherwise recorded. there will be time at the end for questions and the microphones are here upfront. and then let's move on to our

program. it is a pleasure and i'm very happy to introduce max both a historian, bestselling author and foreign policy analyst. he's the jean j. kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the council on foreign relations and a weekly columnist at the washington post. his new biography is titled reagan his life and legend. he will be in conversation with david rubenstein, who is the of the national book festival and an original signer, the giving pledge. is also a recipient of carnegie medal of philanthropy and the museum of modern david rockefeller award. his latest book, the highest calling conversate on the american presidency, is featured at this year's festival.

i hope you enjoyed the festival and let us welcome them to. our stage. so i enjoyed reading your book. how long did it take you to write the book? ten years. the reagan administration? eight years. so it took you two years longer to write the book than the reagan administration? alas, as i write, it was not a fly by night project. i think you can say that for sure. so it was it was family cooperating with you in any way. yeah. i mean, primarily patty and ron, two of the kids were very cooperative and very helpful. and actually read the book already and and gave it a thumbs up. i was very happy to see. really. okay. so ronald reagan is somebody that was very worried, his own legacy in some respects, or maybe his family was. and so had a biographer, edmund, who for the last year and a half or so was embedded into the

reagan white house and administration. right. most to write a biography of reagan, whatever happened to that. why did that not work? well, edmund morris had on had access to reagan administration. and i think you can say he basically blew it and produced a volume that was had some interesting research in it and was well written in. but it was basically to the word of the hour, it was kind of weird because he inserted into reagan's life as a fictional and that kind of compromised historical integrity of the entire project. so what is the biggest surprise to you about ronald that you learned as a result of doing all the research? i think the biggest surprise was that reagan was actually more pragmatic than people and it was his reputation as being that of a conservative firebrand, an ideologue. and he was very ideological. and i show in the book that in some ways he was actually probably more ideological than lot of people realized,

repeating conspiracy theories and some outlandish rhetoric, especially in the early sixties. but the surprise about reagan that he didn't act on that sometimes extreme campaign when he became governor of california in 1967 or when he became president of the united states in 1981, he actually veered to the center, as you know, signing more tax increases and tax cuts. governor of california, he signed most liberal abortion law in the country, one of the toughest gun control bills, the country. and as he was able work with democrats whether it was jesse unruh, the powerful speaker, the california assembly or tip o'neill the powerful speaker of the house, and then at the end of his, he was able to work with mikhail, which in some ways was the biggest surprise of all, because here was ronald reagan, who had spent his entire political as a staunch anti-communist as a critic of detente, calling out the, quote, evil empire. and yet he decided that

gorbachev was somebody he could do business with and became very friendly with. and together they worked together to end the cold war. that is not something i think anybody ought to expected of a hard line conservative like ronald reagan. now, many people who come to power in washington are obsessed with it as young men or women. he doesn't seem to be particularly obsessed with washington political life. how did he go from being a radio announcer in iowa to, an actor, and why was he considered b actor? why wasn't he an actor or in some ways, the key event of ronald reagan's life occurred in 1932, when a new ward was opening up in dixon, illinois, his home town, and they were for somebody to run their sporting goods for 1250 a week and, you know, 1250 a week at the height of the depression, ronald had just graduated from eureka college, didn't have job prospects. so he actually for that job and as a former school athlete, he might have gotten it. and if he gotten that job in 1932, that's probably the last

anybody would ever heard of ronald reagan. he probably was when his whole life in dixon. but look, you know, unluckily for him or luckily for he didn't get that job some another guy got it. and so ronald reagan had to look elsewhere for a job in the midst of the great depression. and he got into radio and probably in davenport, iowa, and in des moines. and he became. a very successful sportscaster, well known throughout the midwest for calling chicago cubs games among. and then in 1930. but you know he always had that desire at the back of his mind to get into acting because he had been an actor in high school and in college. it was something enjoyed. it was he was with that love of acting by his mother who was kind of a failed and frustrated. and so in 1937, he convinced his bosses at the radio station in moines to send him off the cubs on spring training to catalina island, off the coast of southern california. and while he was at, you know, he did one of his stands with the cubs doing spring training.

he went to to hollywood and got a screen with warner brothers and. then he thought nothing was going to come of it. and, you know, they didn't say that we were going to hire you. and so he went back to des moines, assuming that nothing would ever happen. and then he got telegram saying, you're hired. and so 1937, he picks up and moves from the midwest to the hollywood and he becomes, you know, fairly star top as a b-movie actor. one of many minor. you know role players on the warner stable. but by the eve of world war one, he world war two, rather, he was becoming, you know, a pretty, pretty good star for them, you know, only, you know, a notch two below earl flynn. and he in those days, he became the head of the screen guild and he was known as a fdr liberal democrat. what converted him from being an mocrat to being a conservative republican? well, that's a great question. and that's another one of these myths that i think the book punctures the myth, which he created himself he often said

this a million times, i didn't desert my party my party deserted me to suggest the democratic party had gone far off to the left. and so he had to become a republican. but the reality is he became he went to the right in the 1950s and early sixties when the democratic party was pretty centrist. there was the party of sam rayburn, lyndon johnson, john f kennedy. guys were not some crazy left wingers. they were, you know, standing up to the soviets in the cuban missile crisis, troops to vietnam. they were actually pretty hawkish, pretty centrist. so it wasn't the democratic party. it was really ronald reagan. and moving to the right. and there a variety of reasons for that, including, you know, his battles with what he thought was a in resisting what he thought was a communist takeover of hollywood in the late forties, which i think was vastly exaggerated. but that's what his fbi contacts others were telling him. he was also aggrieved because he had to pay such high during world war two. and, you know top rates are up to 90% or something. and was making a lot of money. he didn't like that.

he didn't like he didn't like that the federal government filed an antitrust decree which broke up the studio system so studios no longer own movie theaters. and as a result of that, became an unemployed actor. he was out of warner brothers and then finally, i think the final piece of the puzzle was that he went to for general electric, and that was really he revived his career as pitchman for general electric in the 1950s. and ge, actually a very right wing corporation. its executives compared it to theology to that of the john birch society, and they actively proselytize their employees. and so as an employee of ge, he got this conservative literature to read and he had a lot of to read it because he hated to fly. so he would take the cross-country train from l.a. to new york, and he would be reading these right wing books and periodicals. and he basically converted himself through that, through that process. and so his career kind of came a dormant phase. he wasn't really getting that acting roles. and i think his agent him a job

in as a emcee or less in las vegas to introduce some acts and so forth. but what led to run for governor of of california? where did he get that idea of. well, he was developing ambitions as he became more political and as his acting career waned. and then he assumed a pretty high profile role in 1964 as a leading spokesman for barry goldwater. and in fact towards the end of the campaign, he gave this speech that was televised nationally, a time for choosing speech, which was this electrifying debut, the national stage. and a lot of republican ends when they were listening to ronald and barry goldwater speak on the same platform and they said, gosh, i wish goldwater spoke as well as because, you know, goldwater was, as i'm sure you remember, was very hard edged. he was not warm and cuddly guy. he knew what he believed. and he was going to shove it down your throat, whereas reagan, as a journalist said in the mid 1960s, his personality

was like warm bath water. it was soothing. he could repeat the same as goldwater, but could deliver with a smile. he can make people like him and not feel threatened by him. and so after, you know, the goldwater campaign he started, you know, at running himself and he thought that in 1966, pat brown, father of jerry brown, who was the two term governor of california, thought pat brown's popularity was waning and that pat brown would be vulnerable to a challenge. and in fact, that turned to be very accurate because he beat pat brown by a million votes. so he won 1966. and in 68, he makes a short campaign for president trying to beat the presumed nominee, richard nixon. was he really was that a half hearted effort? did he really think he could be president after two years as governor? it was somewhat halfhearted, for sure. but he did declare himself. he did try to he he did go around the country trying to stump up votes. but then when he and he didn't even come close, he basically pretended it had never happened

he kind of went down the memory hole and he ever having really run for president in 1968 and said it was just like a few over fervent supporters. and i talked to one of his aides and he said i was shocked i mean, reagan and i were on the campaign together with going around the country to get votes. how could you forget that this happened? but he tended to rewrite history the way he it to be, not the way it actually happened. so he serves two terms as governor and then he decides to run president again in 1976 against the incumbent republican, gerald ford. and he came very to beating him. that he expected he would actually have a chance to beat. ford and how come he didn't actually the nomination, though he came close, he did expect to beat ford. i mean, what was what was really in reagan's mind was he thought that in 1976, richard nixon would be completing a second term of office and leaving office. and he thought that he, ronald reagan, would be the natural to -- nixon and. so he didn't he was a staunch

supporter, never imagined that nixon would be forced to resign because watergate. and so he was shocked ford became president. and he did not have a lot of respect for jerry ford. he viewed as kind of an accidental president. he thought the job should really be his. and of course jerry ford didn't have a lot of respect for ronald reagan either. and so that set up this bruising primary battle which went on almost the way to the convention. and reagan came pretty close. but you know, he also came close to a very humiliating defeat. and he if he had lost the carolina primary, he probably have been out of the race early on and may have been able to run again in 1980. but he was and in the south carolina primary, jesse helms and his political north carolina north carolina sorry, by jesse helms and, his political machine and so as a result of that, he did very well in the south and came very close to ford. so he said the ford at the convention in 1976. i support you i'm going to

campaign for you in ford a lot of support from reagan in that campaign he got some i say a lot ford was kind of aggrieved afterwards that he thought that reagan didn't do enough for him. right. so carter's president and reagan, he deciding he's going to run for president again regardless of how carter performs or he he didn't like how carter was doing any energized his campaign and a 78, 80, 79, i think he he was looking to run. i don't, i probably had not made a decision right away. that was kind of surprising because know, he was getting into his seventies at that point. not a lot of you know, not a lot of people thought that he would be running, you know, at an advanced age. but he was convinced could do it. and then, of course, once carter, you know, ran into all of his problems with the iran hostage crisis, with the economic woes that created a massive opening. and so a lot of republicans were lining up to run against reagan was 69 when he was running an age that was then considered old. now be young to be president. right.

he'd be heavyweight young to be president. he's going to be president. so when he was running 1980 against carter, it was widely thought that reagan was a nice guy, not that substantive. and was thought that maybe if he had ford as, vice president ford could give him some experience. and whose idea was that? and was that ford pushing that idea? was it reagan's idea, and why did it not actually happen? i think it was a lot of republicans pushing that idea who were kind of nervous reagan and didn't think that he was really up to job. and so it was really people like henry kissinger and alan greenspan who were close to ford, who i think are the primary movers and shakers behind that. and it actually came pretty close to happening. but then it kind of fell at the last minute. one on the floor of the convention walter cronkite was interviewing gerald ford. and cronkite said, well, so if you're the running, this would be kind of a co-presidency, right and ford sort of agreed with that. and reagan was watching us in his in his hotel suite. he was shocked because he wasn't signing for a co-presidency.

and so that pretty much the end of that. then why did he call george herbert walker bush, who called his economic program voodoo economics? why didn't he offer him the vice presidency? well, because reagan was the ultimate pragmatist and he wanted to do what was necessary to successful. and his aides were telling him that after ford, bush was by far the best choice to unify the party and reassure people about reagan, bush had, you know, washington that reagan liked. so he was he was you know, he was willing to put ideology and litmus tests aside and do what he thought made, give him the best of winning. and that was it. so runs against he gets the nomination he brings bush in as his vice president has one debate for carter with carter, the week before the election. and he is seen as having won that debate. there you go again. now, the famous. there you go again. what he was saying, as i recall, was something carter had said. but what carter had said, it turns out, was actually factually accurate. that's not it was i mean, i write about this in the book was

it's it's kind of amazing. there you go again. was one of these killer lines because it fed into this popular conception at the time that the media was feeding that carter was kind of mean because carter had this reputation for being kind of a goody goody. but the media was trying to get across that. no, he was actually others mean streak and reagan was kind of playing off of that because on the debate stage, carter said, you know, governor opposed medicare, which was he did oppose medicare. not only did he medicare and medicaid, he said that were socialized medicine and and passing medicare and medicaid would lead to the total loss of all freedom in, the united states. i mean that is a documented that he said all of that but what you know reagan's killer reply was there you go again then he denied that he had opposed medicaid, saying that he had supported an alternative bill that was just as good, which was not true because the bill would have covered about one or 2% of seniors in this country. not all of them. so it was completely false. and yet he got away with it. it was a it was a great line. it was a killer line that that

is a remember today. so reagan won overwhelmingly overwhelming election and why did he pick jim baker who had not been part of his club close supporters in? california was not really that well known to reagan. did he pick reagan? why did he pick jim to be his chief of staff? well, in some ways picking jim baker, i would argue, was the most important decision his entire presidency. and it was a sign again, why picking baker's best friend, george bush as vice again, it was a sign of how reagan was, because as you said, baker had no relationship. reagan and far from having a relationship with them, he had worked against reagan twice in 76 and 80 to try to deny him the nomination. and normally presidents do not. their opponents campaign manager as white house chief of staff. and so the assumption was he was going to appoint ed, who was his chief of staff in sacramento. but mike deaver and stu spencer, to reagan aides realize that

meese was not organized enough, didn't understand enough, was not effective enough to be effective. white house chief of staff and they went to nancy reagan and. they went to ronald reagan and said, no, you know, i think you really should pick, see, see how you like this jim baker guy. and reagan got along with baker and the world by creating this troika of officials with baker as white house chief of staff. very quickly, he became by the most powerful official and in some ways the prime minister of the united states. and he was really responsible for a lot of the success of the first term. i would argue what was the nature of the ronald reagan nancy reagan relationship? an intense early close marriage and she did he rely on her for personnel advice and things like that? it was a wonderful love story. and, you know, sitting at the reagan library could go through box after of of of letters and of holiday cards that that ronald reagan sent to reagan. you know, every every valentine's day, every birthday,

every thanksgiving, every christmas, every new year. how much loved her. very, very sweet to read. and you know what? he was a wife. she was away for even a few days. he would be writing in his diary how desperately he missed her. and so had a very close bond. but it wasn't. and and, of course, their marriage was primarily about love. and in a way that almost made even their kids like they were left out because she really his top priority but she was also a very effective political partner for him although she did not and want to again this is another myth. some suggest that she pushed him to the or she pushed him into politics. neither of that is true, as far as i can tell. nancy didn't really have any political belief. she didn't really have much political ambition. but what she wanted was whatever was the best for her, ronnie, and she understood that her husband wanted to be in politics. so she was going to be make that as successful as possible. and she was you know, she was kind of one of his aides described her to me as of the chief personnel officer of reagan inc. she would hire and fire. she very suspicious. she would look out for interest

where he was so optimistic sunny, almost pollyannish that he never imagined anybody could be doing anything wrong. she always assumed that somebody was doing wrong and would ferret out. so what would you say is the biggest accomplishment he had in his first four years as president? well, i think the accomplishment in his first four years was probably, you know, reviving the economy, although and the armed forces, although on economy side, i think you have to say that paul volcker probably deserved more credit than reagan because. it was volcker who, you know, took inflation out of the economy and that the economic rebound in 1984. but, you know, i think that reagan did play an important role in kind of reviving people's spirit and reviving their faith in america after all the turmoil and troubles of the 1970s. so reagan was going to run for reelection. he's running for reelection at the age of i guess he was 73 or four when he running for reelection. so he's running against mondale. he thought he was going to run against mondale mondale, got the nomination after beating off

gary hart. why did that election turn to be such a landslide? well because reagan could plausibly proclaim it was morning in america because he got very lucky that the very severe recession hit the country from 81 to 83 was over and we were entering a very strong period of economic recovery. i think the economic growth rate in 84 was something like 7%. and of course it declined in the next few years. but it hit this post-recession and he was basically able to advantage of that. and, you know, he pulled u.s. troops out of lebanon after disastrous bombing in the marine in beirut. and in 1983. so we weren't involved in any wars anywhere. and he could plausibly argue that he had brought back peace and prosperity. and he has a debate with mondale in that campaign where he has another famous line which also you could say is a little disingenuous us in some respects. and what was that famous line? well, there were two you know, he had these debates with mondale on the first one. he really screwed up not as

badly as, you know, biden up, but he screwed up. and there was a lot talk that he was too old and he out of it and he couldn't be president. and all that kind of stuff. and so that was in the second debate. he got a question age where the baltimore sun correspondent tried to ask they tried to approach the age issue delicately by saying, you know, during the cuban missile crisis, president had to go without sleep for 20 hours at a time. could you that at your age, mr. president. and, you know, reagan got a little smile on his face and said, you know, i will not use for political purposes my opponent's age and inexperience against him. and that was brought down the house. and even walter mondale to laugh. and he was later admitted that, even as he was laughing, he was understanding that the was over and that very instant, so many second terms have problems. the principal problem in the second term of reagan was iran-contra what was that and how did reagan manage escape that problem? well, i think the real problem in the second term began when jim baker, the white house chief of staff, and don regan, the

treasury, decided it would be a good idea for them to switch jobs. and they presented as almost a fait accompli to reagan, a half an hour oval office meeting. he said, okay, sure, whatever. and so they did. and this turned out to be a disaster. don regan was, a horrible white house chief of staff, as jim baker said to me, you know, don, like chief part of the title, but he didn't understand he was staff. you wanted to be the ceo of the united states because he had been ceo of merrill lynch before. so and he didn't have good political instincts. and as a result of things kind of went haywire in the iran-contra affair, which was an initiative started by reagan's national security advisor, bud mcfarlane, and to try to get hostages held by the iranians free. and this something the hostages, their fate of the hostages was something that really anguished reagan. he really was desperately worried. he wanted them home. and so but mcfarlane got, this bright idea of selling weapons, iran to get the hostages released and it worked for little bit, but then the iranians kept taking more hostages. so at the end of the day, it

wasn't actually working. but then mcfarlane successor as his national security adviser, john poindexter and his aide, all of our north got another bright idea, which was to divert the profits from the sale of arms to iran to support the nicaraguan contras. the the guerrilla fighters, even congress had forbidden the government from supporting the contras. and so this was inviolate of what was known as the boland amendment. and that is something that cut potentially gotten reagan impeached, except that poindexter said he never reagan. and so that was basically what saved reagan's presidency, because could plead ignorance of the diversion funds to the contras. when reagan was generally thought not to be paying as much attention to details. so you can credibly say, i didn't really exactly. you know, you could argue that he got into the iran-contra. i mean, think big picture. ronald reagan, great leader, but a poor manager, hands off manager, often didn't know what his aides doing. and so you could argue that the reason he got into the iran-contra affair in the first

place was because he was a very poor, hands off manager. but the reason he survived the iran-contra affair was also because he was a very poor, hands off manager, because, you know, if -- nixon had said, i had no idea about the diversion nobody would have believed him. but when ronald reagan said it, it was plausible so towards the end of the administration, there's a decision about who's going to be the next president. and his vice president, george herbert walker bush, is running for the nomination. it wasn't given to him. and why did reagan not endorse him right away? he has been serving loyally for years. why did he not endorse him? he had some reservations. well, first off, i would say that they they were not particularly close. you know, the bushes were never invited to the family quarters and eight years of the reagan presidency. barbara bush and nancy reagan really loads another, you know, george and ron got along better, but they were not certainly close personal friends. and i think, you know, reagan harbored some doubts as to whether bush was a skillful

enough politician, whether he was tough enough to actually win the presidency. and so he was not going to short circuit the primary process. he did not endorse bush until it was apparent he was going to be the nominee. it is said that when they first got together and were going to run in the 1980 convention, that mrs. reagan said to mrs. bush, you know, you should lose some weight and dye your hair. any truth to that. it's it's i don't know, but it's plausible they they didn't they sent to not get along. okay. it was kind of interesting because again, nancy was was a very different personality type from her husband. and her husband got along with pretty much everybody, including george bush, including mikhail gorbachev. and nancy had these famous feuds with bush as well as with rice, gorbachev. so was there any evidence that there was that reagan had alzheimer's was towards the end of his administration or that come subsequent? well, the diagnosis certainly came subsequently. the hard question to answer is, did he have alzheimer's when he

was already in office? and i actually asked one of his alzheimer's doctors that very question. and the answer i got was that he certainly the precursors of of alzheimer's, the plaques in the walls that cause alzheimer's, those were certainly present in his brain when he was president. but that doesn't mean that he had dementia. i would say he the the evidence suggests he did not. i mean if you look at the handwriting, for example, in his diary, it was pretty clear and legible from the beginning to the end of his presidency. but there was you know, you could tell there was a natural slowing down in the second term as he was getting up well into his seventies and his aides noticed that he was not as involved in his second term and doing things like rewriting speeches, other things that he had done much more of in his first term. he was slowing down, but it's it's almost impossible to distinguish the impact of that at a very early of the impact of alzheimer's from, just the normal aging process of somebody who's in their late seventies, who almost died in 1981, was shot, lost a lot of blood. so he'd been through a lot of talk or i to go through that and march of his first year in

office, he's shot by john hinckley. and at the time people said, well, he wasn't coming close to death. it okay, not a big problem. but now we know he came very close to death. is that right? he but it was really i titled chapter on the shooting finest hour because was really his finest hour. and that was when he really cemented his bond with the american people because he showed unbelievable grace in the most adverse as he was literally at death's door. he was joking around, he was telling nancy reagan. honey, i forgot to duck. he telling his doctors as they were about to operate on him. i hope you're all republicans. you know, when when when people heard that, i think it established kind of a personal bond between the president and the public that had not been there before. now, when he left office was criticized for making too much money, some speeches and so forth. but we were million dollars in speeches in japan, which seemed like a lot of money at the time, was a lot today. what would you say is the main thing he post president was to

get his library off the ground and now the popular presidential library. what would you say he accomplished, if anything, post president? well, he didn't have a lot of time post-presidency because he left the presidency in 1989. he was diagnosed with alzheimer's in 1994. and i think, you know, his real accomplishment post-presidency, anything he did, it was what happened in the world? because, you know, the berlin fell, the soviet union collapsed. then a lot of people gave him a lot of credit for that. so his historical record, you know, went up dramatically. he left office. so he considered very conservative when he came on the political scene. but today in the republican, would he be considered a moderate or a centrist or not conservative enough? i think today he would probably be considered a rino. republican name only. i mean, remember, this was guy who, you know, in 1986 signed the simpson-mazzoli act which legalized millions of undocumented immigrants there was what would today be called an amnesty bill. and that was something he signed. he also advocate hated

eliminating the border between the us and mexico and creating what became as the north american free trade agreement. these are all things that are anathema, i think to most republicans today. reagan had four children with his first wife, jane wyman. he had a daughter, then he had an adopted son with jane wyman, and then he had two children with nancy. right. what was his relationship with those four children? it pretty distant because he really had a distant relationship with almost everybody except for nancy. i mean. i talked to his kids about that and their view is he was they liked him and they still like him. he was a very genial, likable guy, just he was on the campaign trail, but they didn't see a lot of him because, you know, a lot of the time, the fifties and early sixties, he was out touring the country on behalf of ge. so then he would come home for a weekend. they would go out to his ranch, which in those days was located in malibu, and they would really enjoy hanging out with their dad. but then he leave again. it would really be nancy, who was them. and he was also, by the way,

very conflict averse. he didn't want to dig deep into into personality conflicts. he wanted to avoid them as much as possible. and so he often didn't know what was really going on with. and he kind of wanted to avoid hard conversations. i guess i would say. so he often didn't really know what was going on with his kids, even when, you know, maureen had, an abusive first husband or patty was struggling with some addiction issues or. you know, michael, as he later revealed, had been as a as a boy. these are all things that ronald reagan didn't learn until many decades after the fact. so reagan had, a better situation than you or i with respect to hair. he had a lot of dark hair was that dark hair that was that died or was that just natural? well, always denied a dye job. but i think there was some suspicion that he wasn't being entirely forthcoming there that could. kitty kelley certainly argued that nancy reagan's stylist had been secretly touching up his

his hair. but i think he did have pretty naturally, you know, dark hair. so what would you like most people to remember about ronald reagan? well, i think that i would like them to remember he was a complicated personality that, you know, he was often accused of simplistic views, but he certainly was not a simple man. and was there was a lot more to him than it appeared to be on the surface, including things like i just pointed out, the fact that he was so conflict averse and person which you would not expect from somebody who said, mr. gorbachev tear down this wall so he could be very confrontational politically, but not very confrontational at all in his personal. and that's you know, he was actually in many ways kind of a shy introvert, a person who his of a good time was sitting in front of the tv watching bonanza. he didn't want to hobnob with people. he wanted to read. he wanted to be by himself as as stu spencer, his long time political consultant, said he would have made pretty good hermit, which you would not expect somebody who was seemingly so gregarious and outgoing. so the bottom line, i think

there was a lot more to ronald than meets the eye. so we've just your entire book in 30 minutes. amazing achievement. you are you are a great interview. i should want to buy and read this book, having heard is i assume there's a good reason why somebody buy it. why don't you give us that reason before we have questions from our audience? well, i think although you have done an amazing job covering a lot of ground and 30 minutes, i can just i, i can attest that there's a lot in this 800 page book, and i think it's a pretty good and pretty interesting story book. i read the book force and i, i read i think every major reagan biography. i enjoyed it. you had a lot of things in there. i didn't know and i highly recommend for anybody that wants to know more about that president. so who has questions? stand up here and ask a question. hopefully not a statement. no matter he pointed sandra day o'connor as first female on the supreme court was that to cement a legacy, set a history or what was that thinking, that whole process, the thinking was that

in 1980 he had a gender gap. he was doing much better with men than with women. and, you know, through spencer suggested to him that one way to rectify that would be to promise to appoint a woman to the supreme court, which he did and then there was, you know, some right wing opposition to sandra day o'connor. there were, you know, some some hard core anti-abortion activists that were opposed to her nomination because they thought and rightly, as it turned out, that she would not overturn roe v, but reagan didn't really care that wasn't really his obsession. and so he mainly just cared about having a a justice who would be tough on crime and would not release criminals. and so was you know, he was he met, you know, sandra day o'connor love talking with her about her time on growing up on a ranch and riding. those were his passions. and so, you know, it was a done deal once once he met sandra day o'connor. thank you. i'm so reagan as a communicator. he had those radio speeches

before he got to office time for choosing the challenger speech, part of his success was probably his and his presence, but also maybe the ideas. so how much of that was and how much of that was his speech writers? well, he certainly had very skillful speechwriters, but i would point out to you that ronald reagan was an very expert speech giver long before he had any speechwriters back. in the fifties and sixties when he was writing own speeches. and he would you know, he these index cards and he was always writing these index cards. and basically his school of politics was working for general electric because went from plant to plant all across the country. and he had to basically give a stump speech. he would often speak about not just company issues, but also about political issues. and he was always reading, always down facts or things that he thought were facts or quotes. and he would shuffle his cards around and give his speeches and, you know, against lou spencer, who i keep citing because he was of my best interviews and somebody who knew reagan better than just about anybody going to the 1960s. and stu, one of the great

political consultants in history, even though, you know, he's not on tv, hasn't written a lot. he hasn't written a book, but stu said to me, you know, reagan was, the best speechwriter he ever, not just the best speech cover, but also the best speechwriter because having grown up working in radio in in his twenties, he understood how to write for the way that people hear not for the way that they read, but for the way that they hear. and so he was brilliant at communicating orally, whether, you know, speeches, radio, television. he was he was -- good at. all of that. thanks. okay. so what lessons from reagan's presidency should america pay attention to today? gosh, well, there's a lot them. i mean, i think one big lesson is the need for, you know, inspirational and optimistic leadership, because that was essentially who ronald reagan was. that was a large part of his success was the way that, you know, he he saw america a shining city on a hill and kind of inspired americans after some of the disaster and defeats of

the 1970s. and so i think he why it's so important for the to be an effective and inspiration communicator, but also as we were discussing, i think the reagan presidency offers a cautionary tale. what happens if the president is too hands in his management style and doesn't actually know what's going on throughout the government? there were a lot of scandals, including, for example, at hud and other departments that he was completely unaware of. and there were, you know, foreign i mean, he got the big things right, especially relations of the soviet union. but there were also a lot of other disasters, like we mentioned, and lebanon and things that did not work out so well because he was not really attuned to those issues. he was not really involved in the nitty. and there was also an awful lot of personality conflicts in his administration and often especially between secretary of defense caspar weinberger and secretary state george shultz. those guys couldn't stand one another and they were constantly going at it and he would not sort out their disagreements. and so the result was often kind of a policy muddle. i didn't satisfy anybody. so i think, you know, the

positive lesson from the reagan presidency is, is how important it is to have this president who communicate so clearly, effectively and inspirationally again, the cautionary tale is that the president also needs to be able to to manage the government. thank you. you're great. thank you. at the risk of just going over stuff that you've already gone over a lot, i would like to dig back into the kind of that the rightward drift of ronald reagan through the fifties and sixties from a person who know was not only a democrat but a union person. and he have had some fairly strong democratic leaning beliefs in those years. and so he had to get rid of them somehow. and you mentioned the, of course, huge influence of the g time, but he was also somewhat beholden, i guess, to the given in work. so, i mean, is that are there

any other sort of sources of information or influence that would help that? and did he get mostly any sort of economic view of conservatism from g versus a social political view or both? probably some both were more on the economic side, i would say he became a staunch anti communist in the years after world war two, when he was at the screen actors guild. and again, he battled what he thought was this communist takeover of hollywood, in fact, was was really just a standard labor dispute. one union that was mobbed up and in bed with the studios and another one that was more radical and an odd you know, was was smeared as a as a quote unquote red union. and he he believed that that was something the fbi was telling him and others were telling him. so he became an ardent anti-communist in the late forties, early fifties in hollywood. but i think he became more of an economic conservative in 1950s as a result of work for ge,

where he was reading human events, he was reading national, he was reading all these, you know, hayek and all these other authors recommended by g. and so he by the early 1960s, he was pretty far to the right for somebody who had described himself in the 1930s as an ardent new dealer who's whose hero was franklin delano roosevelt. many thanks thanks. on the nixon tapes, reagan was caught in conversation with president nixon using some very derogatory slurs, bigoted language. he also correct me, if i'm wrong, opposed the 1964 civil rights act. what insights do you have about ronald reagan's views on race and race relations? well, reagan always said i am just plain and capable of prejudice. and he always cited the fact that his parents taught not to be bigoted. and i think there is a lot of truth that. but i think the and it's certainly true that you know when talk to his kids they will tell you that he raised to avoid

bigotry. but i think it's also true that he had a long political record of utilizing white backlash politics for his own political advantage. i mean, he became governor in 66, in part by on this backlash against the watts riots, which terrified people and, you know, also opposing the rumford fair housing act, which was law in california, prohibiting discrimination on the sale or rental of housing and as you rightly said, he opposed the 1964 civil rights act. he opposed the 1965 voting rights act. he regularly played to white backlash politics with coded appeals talking about law and order, about welfare queens. in 1980, he infamously went to a state fair in mississippi and talked about states rights. and you're site where in 1964 three civil rights workers had been slain. so he did have and the slur that referred to on the on the nixon

library tape i think was was probably an aberration. i certainly ask people who knew him very well and i think are pretty honest that used those kind of terrible language in private and they said no, they never heard him talk like that possible he was just playing up to richard nixon. but it was certainly very disturbing to hear that. and i think it's an indication that he was not as colorblind as he claimed to be. and but certainly, you know, whatever he said in in private, he certainly had a political record of catering to white fears of civil, which i think is is certainly one of the things that has to be weighed the balance on assessing his his presidency. okay. time for one more question, i think, or maybe more here and there. and then we're forgotten. okay. or your next and then your next. okay. max, you spent a decade writing this book, it's been published two months before we go to the polls. how do you want this book to speak into the current moment that we're in? well, i mean, it wasn't you know, it wasn't it wasn't written to be to be released a

political season? i mean, i get i started it more than ten years ago when, you know, the only thing anybody about donald trump was that he hosted this show, the apprentice. so it wasn't to have any kind of political impact. and it's not i mean, it was really just designed to provide a a balanced and objective overview, ronald reagan's life. but i think it's certainly something can inform the current moment, because obviously, ronald reagan was a very different republican president from. donald trump. and i the differences are are pretty evident and apparent. and i think it's a reminder of how the republican party has changed in our lifetimes. and it's maybe perhaps a an idea of how it could, again, in the future. i mean, the the fascinating thing is that, you know, when ronald reagan came along, people said that reagan was moving the republican party to the right. but today, if the republican party adopted, they would be moving to the left. that's how things have changed over the course of the last 40 years. i final question.

okay. young british. so i'm still catching with american history, but it right that reagan played a role in persuading evangelical christians to vote republican and he certainly yes he he certainly to evangelical christians he worked with the moral majority and other groups that were just a political force in the us in the late seventies, early eighties i mean, reagan himself was although he was certainly religious personally, he was not ostentatious, ostentatiously. he didn't wear his religion his sleeve. he didn't go to church very often as president. but he certainly made a very active outreach to white evangelicals. and those formed a big part of his. and so he you know, he was he came out after having signed a very liberal abortion law in california. he had regrets about that and came out as an opponent of abortion. but, you know, it was always kind of his support for social

issues, was always carved, kind of carefully balanced. then i talked to one of his aides who said, you know, to present to to to reagan when they were walking out to the marine 111 day, he said, you know, mr. president, how come you know, i know you feel very strongly about abortion. you know, how come you don't do more about that? how come you don't highlight that more as an issue and reagan's reply was, well, you know, a president has to pick and choose as battles. and that's, you know, there are other issues that i'm more focused on. and that was so he never prioritized social issues, but that was certainly part of his. well, let me give you one reagan story to conclude. so ronald reagan, as you know, was actor, but not a leading actor, maybe a actor, they would call him. and at the toward the end of his acting career, they were trying to get other things for him to do a las vegas act. i mentioned earlier. so anyway, he kind of got into politics and so forth when he became of united states, there was an issue that all the hollywood studios were against. there was something called the fincen rule. and so the studios were upset.

what the reagan communications federal commission chairman mark fowler was trying to do and is to reverse a rule that was very favorable to the studios. so day reagan is out doing some meetings and the studio heads had organized meeting and they came in at the oval office and they were waiting for reagan to come back. and so we had, i think, eight studio heads all the most important people in hollywood are there. and then reagan comes in the oval office, coming back from his meeting, and he sees them all and he says, wow, if i could have gotten a meeting with any of you, i'd still be in the motion picture business. okay. he was he was one of the wittiest presidents that for sure, and spontaneously. woody, thank you very much for this book and thank you for being and thank you all. thank you for this great conversation. something.