national survival, as a people who can live together honorably. if we let lying, cheating, and stealing become an accepted way of life, it's not just a few dollars that will be lost, it's the spirit of the country that will be lost. the decision is ours. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. government is the problem. >> if ever a policy reflected a president's own character, it's reaganomics. >> we have faith in our program and we're sticking with it. to the paid political complainers, put up or shut up. >> the president was hit. >> the story from middle east sources is that iran has helped the united states free a hostage from lebanon. >> they called it the reagan revolution. but for me it always seemed more like a rediscovery of our values. once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will

end. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ thank you.

>> we're faced with an unprecedented situation in this country today. jimmy carter's demonstrated inability to govern our nation. but i have faith in the greatness of the people of this country. this country has everything that it always had before, except the leadership in washington that this country requires. >> reagan put a lot of energy and effort into 1980. the economy had been through a recession, and in addition to that, the united states had been embarrassed by the iran hostage crisis. the country wanted to turn the corner and ronald reagan held the promise of all of that. >> america is turning to a new political direction for at least the next four years. to the right. >> republican ronald reagan rode an electoral vote landslide to the white house and republicans also swept to control of the senate for the first time in a

quarter century. >> reagan conveyed a sense of optimism and hope. the secret to his success was that he made people feel good. >> even though reagan had been a fairly successful governor of the largest state in the union, he was still doubted for his odd background for a politician as having been a hollywood actor. and he was very controversial. he took a lot of outrageous positions. >> in this present crisis government is not the solution to our problem. government is the problem. >> for 50 years americans had been looking to government to solve their problems. when reagan gave his speech, that marked a 180-degree turnaround in the american political conversation in the trend of american politics. >> can we solve the problems confronting us? well, the answer is an unequivocal and emphatic yes. and after all, why shouldn't we believe that?

we are americans. god bless you, and thank you. >> we have a report. i'm just told that the associated press reports that the hostages are leaving tehran. they say that the hostages are leaving the airport. >> for 444 days, 52 americans were held halfway around the world. a sign of carter's weakness and reagan comes in and, poof, they're released. >> they're free. they're free, mr. president. they're free, mr. president. we've had press reports that they're free. we've had press reports. what do you have to say about that? what do you have to say? >> only one thing to say. thank god. >> you could not have had a more stunning beginning to a presidency. the whole last year of the carter administration is defined by the hostages and now in the first hour of reagan's administration they're free.

that's a case where the image absolutely defines the reality. >> i just won't call them hostages. they were prisoners of war. >> if the hostages had not been released, reagan would have been forced to focus on the hostage crisis. with the hostages back, he was free to focus on the economy. >> inflation and unemployment are threatening the american way of life as never before. and without a change of policy these intolerable conditions will get even worse. >> inflation flared again last month, almost doubling the rate of the month before. >> in 1967 inflation was 2.9%. last year it was 12.4%. >> people were afraid. people had begun to think that america was in a kind of relative decline. >> we had high unemployment and high inflation. which at the time was thought to be impossible under the existing economic orthodoxy.

so it required something new to change that problem. >> if we can lower the rate of increase in government spending, up there ahead is daylight. >> today we have found 72% of the savings that we would have to achieve in order to meet that $53 billion reduction target. >> reaganomics was basically if you give what they call the visiting class the money, then it would trickle down to the bottom of the pile and cutting taxes would increase revenues. >> the president spent the day deal with brush fires on both the right and left of his new plan for the economy. the cuts he wants to make in the budget and in income taxes brought out into the open some disagreements among his supporters as well as his opponents. >> reagan says cut back. >> we say fight back. >> reagan says cut back. >> we say fight back. >> the administration has gambled our future on a dubious

plan that does not deal with the relentless spiral of rising prices, wages and interest rates. >> i've read an awful lot about how we're going to really hurt the poor and things of that nature and this administration with our cuts. that is absolutely not what we're going to do. >> reagan came in with a very savvy staff that understood the challenges they faced to try to change things in a radical way. but they did come up against an entrenched washington culture and a democratic establishment that wasn't just going to roll over for ronald reagan and let him get his way. >> if we do nothing else in thus administration we're going to convince this city that the power, money and the responsibility in this country begins and ends with the people, not with some cinderblock building in washington, d.c. thank you very much. >> mr. president -- [ gunshots ]

[ screams ] >> get down! >> get out of here! >> we interrupt. there's been a late development. shots reported fired outside the hotel where president reagan spoke a short time ago. here's bernard shaw. >> details are very sketchy at this moment. we don't know precisely what happened. we don't know the sequence. first of all, the president is safe. >> wait a minute. this is frank reynolds. i'm on the air and i'm trying to get more information. here, we have a report that the president's adviser for political -- for political affairs. lynn has told reporters at the hospital that the president was not wounded -- >> he was. he was wounded. god. he was -- the president was hit. he is in stable condition. all this information. we have one more bit of information. the bullet that struck the president has not yet been

removed, and he is not undergoing surgery at this time. he was, however, struck in the left chest. the last word we had from notinger is that he was conscious and that his condition was described as stable. dear god. ahoy-hoy. alexander graham bell here... no, no, my number is one, you must want two! two, i say!! like my father before... [telephone ring] like my father before... ahoy-hoy! as long as people talk too loudly on the phone, you can count on geico saving folks money. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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we were told that a decision is now being made on whether to operate on the president to remove the bullet from his left side. >> when the word came, it sounded as if the president might not make it through the night. might die on the surgeon's table.

>> i'd emphasize the president's condition is stable and that we were informed by jim baker that he did walk into the hospital. >> i was at the white house. the information coming in was incomplete. they weren't fully up to date on what was happening with the president's condition. and then when they found out how serious it was, they wanted to reassure everybody. >> coming indirectly from one of the surgeons is that the bullet as we have reported once before did miss the president's heart. missed by an inch. >> he told mrs. reagan, "honey, i forgot to duck." >> what? >> "i forgot to duck." and then when he got into the operating room, he looked at the doctors and he said, "please tell me you're republicans." >> reagan relied on this group of advisers. jim baker as his chief of staff, a really skilled, shrewd political insider. ed meese, a counselor to the president. and michael deaver, he is in charge of the media operations. this troika ran the white house. >> the assassination attempt and aftermath elevated ronald reagan's popularity to a new high. the latest nbc news/associated press poll shows his job rating jumped ten points.

>> reagan understood that he was getting this sort of sympathy reaction. everybody was rooting for him all of a sudden because they didn't want him to die. they didn't want to lose a president. so without missing a step, he goes right into what the message is. we've got to get this tax and spending bill passed and we've got to do it now. >> mr. speaker, the president of the united states. [ cheers and applause ] >> it was just like the movies. reagan was a true american hero. >> the president looking very jovial, very healthy. >> i was seated in the well of the house there when he was addressing congress. it was magic. everybody was so grateful that his life had been spared. it was a stirring moment. >> if he wants them to stop, they're not going to stop for a while. >> they handed president reagan and the republicans a major victory. for the second time in his drive to cut the federal budget, president reagan got what he wanted by a house controlled by

the opposition party. >> reagan comes off with a victory in congress and the recovery from the assassination attempt looking very strong, very bold. like a very determined leader. >> the workers united can never be defeated. >> good evening. the strike began as scheduled at 7:00 local time this morning. its impact was immediate. many flights delayed. many more cancelled. >> the air traffic controllers worked terrible hours. they were underpaid. they wanted a big raise. they didn't get what they wanted. they said we're going to go out on strike. >> they were the only union in the country that endorsed ronald reagan. but, by law, they were forbidden to strike. >> they were in violation of the law. and if they do not report for work in 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated. end of statement. >> what? he actually did that? and it's kind of like hitting the mule on the head with a 2x4. that got people's attention.

>> this afternoon, president reagan started firing the strikers and the government claimed it was ready to rebuild the whole system without them. >> this sent a powerful message to different parts of the electorate. many unions were terrified when they saw this. it also sent a bigger message about the type of leader he'd be. he was not scared to do what was controversial. >> if ever a presidential policy reflected a president's own character, it is reaganomics. it's so personal it barely qualifies as an economic theory. but the trouble is reaganomics is not working. >> it's been the single overwhelming failure of the reagan administration. more than 12 million americans out of work. the highest rate of unemployment since the great depression of the 1930s. the tax cut did not give the economy the supply side kick that had been promised. business got steadily worse. factories closed. layoffs, bankruptcies. the federal deficit skyrocketed.

>> inflation had been brought under control and quickly, a remarkable accomplishment, but ata terrible cost. >> reagan was trying hard to kill inflation as fast as he could. that was working. the problem was interest rates were going up to 18%. it's like chemotherapy for the economy. it kills a lot of other things along the way. >> the government can live with high unemployment to curb inflation. that seems to be a very high price for us to have to pay. >> this is supposed to be the land of opportunity. it's not anymore. it's the land for the rich and the poor can go to hell. >> i think we're going to have some hard times for the next few months while we had predicted as you well know a stagnant economy none of us had predicted the stepping over into recession. >> when david stockton came in and said the deficit is not going down, the deficit's simply getting larger, reagan apparently was shocked. perhaps he had been too beguiled by his own supply side rhetoric.

>> reaganomics, as it was called, was not generating enough revenue. the theory that if you detax the rich everybody will be better off because they'll invest that money turned out not to be true. >> these are not especially happy days for budget director david stockman. the december issue of the "atlantic" monthly has a long article about stockman in which he's quoted as saying things he no doubt wishes he had not said. >> i got an early copy. i could not believe it. the president gave a news conference that day. i kept waving my hand. he didn't call on me. so i chased him out. >> your budget director more or less says that the economic program is wrong. it creates inflationary -- >> no, i don't. i'll ask him what he said,

though. >> he had no idea what i was talking about, clearly. so i broke the story that night that the budget director blew the whistle on this plan. >> what he still contends were off the record conversations, stockman expressed disillusion. stockman refers to naive supply siders. the whole reagan plan is premised on faith. none of us understands what's going on with all these numbers. >> it was very, very damaging. a lot of people wanted him fired, but i thought we had to keep him because he knew more about the budget than anybody. so i prevailed upon the president to not fire him. >> we have faith in our program and we're sticking with it. to the paid political complainers, let me say as politely as i can, put up or shut up. >> president reagan standing in the nbc/ap poll has gone from a high of 65% approval after he was shot to a low of 43% last fall. that's a bit lower than any previous president at that stage of his stay in the white house. >> we lost big in the 1982 midterms. and everybody was blaming the bad economy on our tax cuts and spending reduction. >> i remember thinking, okay, the bubble's burst. and when a president sinks like that, and i had just seen it with jimmy carter, you just don't come back.

and i did believe that. he's not going to come back.

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in lebanon. and at least 115 were wounded. those numbers may rise considerably higher. >> i was sound asleep, and this bomb went off. you could feel it shake across beirut. it was so massive. it was devastating. >> a truck filled with explosives was driven into a compound, the midst of a marine battalion headquarters, and the explosives were detonated. the four-story building collapsed on about 150 or 200 sleeping marines. >> the guy was wearing green fatigues and driving a yellow truck. he says he'll always remember the guy was smiling. >> israel had gone into lebanon to try to create a buffer zone against the palestinians, the plo. >> a battalion of american marines came out to separate the israelis from the palestinians and oversee the withdrawal of the plo from lebanon, but it got sucked in to the lebanese civil war. >> the civil war is between

christians and muslims, and to the muslims it looked like we were supporting the christians. >> a big debate broke out afterwards. should we have ever put our marines in that kind of vulnerable position when they didn't have a clear politician. they were just sort of sitting there. >> the united states in the middle east was faced with an array of small forces, little cells, underground, not knowing who they were, where they were and even what they wanted. >> there are no words to properly express our outrage, and i think the outrage of all americans. >> do you have any idea who did it? >> are we going to take reprisals, sir? >> reagan call the killing of the marines "the saddest day of my presidency, the saddest day of my life." i think it was the low point of the reagan presidency. >> a question that must be asked is why 241 men were killed by terrorists, yet this country wasn't outraged. there were no demonstrations, no marches.

little outcry. the reason? within 48 hours of the bombing, the united states invaded grenada. >> about 1,900 u.s. army rangers and marines this morning assaulted the small island which measures only 12 miles by 21 miles. grenada's population is about 110,000, roughly the size of cedar rapids, iowa. >> there's a coup, allegedly a communist coup, and reagan seizes on this to stage an invasion. >> the united states received an urgent formal request to assist in a joint effort to restore order and democracy on the island of grenada. >> an american troop carrier was passing by on its way to lebanon. so all they did was turn that combat-ready ship into grenada. >> marines took control of grenada's airports and began broadcasting a soothing message. >> your cooperation will ensure

that peace and democracy are restored in the near future. >> at least at a psychological, maybe even a moral level, reagan was doing something in grenada that he wanted to do in lebanon but couldn't. he could do it in grenada and show the world the united states would take action to defend its interests. >> reagan was lucky. he had the good fortune to have an easy military victory just eliminating our memory of what had happened in beirut and replacing it with this scene of the military rushing ashore in the caribbean. >> the world has changed. today our national security can be threatened in far away places. it's up to all of us to be aware of the strategic importance of such places and to be able to identify them. the events in lebron and grenada, though oceans apart are related. not only has moscow encouraged and assisted the violence in both countries but it provides direct support through a network of surrogates and terrorists. >> what he really cared about

was this cancer on the world. so if there was a marxist regime anywhere and somebody was trying to take it down, he'd be for them. >> perhaps by coincidence, the u.s. greatly expanded its military presence in central america. a big battleship joined two aircraft carriers in the waters off nicaragua while denying all the while anything special was happening. >> in nicaragua where there was a leftist regime in place, the united states was supporting the nicaraguan contras in their effort to overturn the sandinista government. >> it was an evil bun chrks tch sand northeastas, and he was going to overthrow them and the heroes were the contras that were going to do it like our fathers at lexington and concord. >> we are complying with the law. the bolland amendment, which the law. we're complying with that fully. >> the boland amendment passed unanimously in the house and says the united states cannot provide funds for the purpose of overthrowing the government of

nicaragua. >> when congress tried to cut american funding off for the contras, reagan believed it was his obligation, a moral obligation as well as an obligation to american security, to make sure the contras continued to get funding. >> the last of the u.s. marines left beirut today for the relative safety of the 6th fleet warships offshore ending a 17-month peace keeping mission which brought lebanon no closer to resolving its internal strife. >> after a series of bombing of american targets lebanese factions realized their impact was very short-lived. so these groups in lebanon began nabbing americans. >> in beirut today the united states was again the target of lebanon's shadowy men with guns. they kidnapped american diplomat william buckley. buckley is the embassy's contact man for the rival christian and muslim factions. he is the third american to be kidnapped in beirut in six

weeks. >> and it kept happening. it was not all at one go. they were taken many months apart but it kept adding up and adding up and adding up. it consumed the reagan presidency. >> every day, almost every day he'd ask his national security teams, intelligence briefers, any news on the hostages. is anything happening? is there something we can do? >> there's a chink in reagan's armor. he was softhearted and he did feel a sense of obligation that he had to do something to get them out. sfx: [cell phone dialing] no. no, no, no, no, no. cancel. cancel. please. aaagh! being in the know is a good thing. that's why discover will alert you if your social security number is found on any one of thousands of risky sites. the new school year is almost here. and a new iphone from t-mobile is the best way to keep in touch. or keep tabs on their "extra curricular" activities. he skipped orientation for the beach? he takes after me. you know it's true. oh yeah.

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government economists have taken another look at how fast the economy grew during the first quarter of this year, and today they said it was surging ahead even faster than they first thought. the jobless rate was down to 7.8%. that means 700,000 people found jobs during the month. >> when we took office the american economy was in the tank. so did it take a while to get out of that? you bet it did. we were correcting what had gone wrong before. >> the economy starts to bounce back in 1983. gas prices are falling. the stock market is rising. you start seeing inflation go down. employment go up. so by 1984, they have an economic revival to pitch. >> it's morning again in america. and under the leadership of president reagan, our country is

prouder and stronger and better. >> it was a brilliant ad, and it worked. there was no chance a democrat was going to beat that. >> a u.s. political summit meeting takes place in louisville, kentucky, not to resolve differences but to exploit them. ronald reagan meets walter mondale. just about everybody is calling it a major opportunity for mondale. >> he doesn't need just to win by a nose. he needs to win to stay with it by five or six or seven lengths. he needs to do well because he starts from so far back. >> the question of ronald reagan's age had always been in the back of minds of a lot of people. he was by this time the oldest american president, and he was well into his 70s. >> i -- as i say, i feel that we have a problem here to resolve.

>> when reagan in the first debate against walter mondale looks confused, speaks too long, gets lost. it's not just that walter mondale won that debate. it's that people fear, is ronald reagan lost? and for the first time they start talking about the age issue. >> it showed without cue cards and teleprompters the great communicator doesn't always communicate all that well. >> we had six dress rehearsals last time. plus loading him with computer statistics. the man was absolutely smothered by extraneous material. and this time we're going to let ronald reagan be ronald reagan. >> the mantra let reagan be reagan was let's take advantage of what we've got. the strongest thing, our best political asset is ronald reagan being himself, communicating with the american people. when he was showing his personality, his ideas and rhetoric, he generally succeeded. >> going into tonight's debate a new nbc news poll indicates the race continues to narrow. >> i think the audience out there tonight will be looking at ronald reagan in a new way.

i think in louisville the myth or the mystique of the great communicator was dented, perhaps irreparab irreparably. >> president kennedy had to go days on end with very little sleep during the cuban missile crisis. is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances? >> not at all. mr. truitt. and i want you to know that also i will not make age an issue of this campaign. i am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience. >> it brought down the house, and it was his house by then. >> there were several times during his first term when i thought this man is not going to be re-elected president. i guess what i underestimated was how much the public really loved and liked this man. >> it now appears president reagan has won and has won big. his aides say they're seeing a

victory of historic proportions. there's the national totals. >> so many people act as if this election means the end of something. to each one of you i say, tonight is the end of nothing. it's the beginning of everything. >> it came as a surprise this morning when president reagan announced that two of the leading figures of his administration are going to change jobs. >> by the time the four years was over, i was pretty worn out. regan said, why don't you and i change jobs. we took it to the president. he thought it was a great idea and we switched jobs. >> the troika staff system which kept the president on an even keel folded into one man. >> it turned out to be an unsuccessful experiment. >> don regan was not cut out for that job. don liked the sound of chief but not of staff. >> i am not the president. i am not taking charge of anything. ronald reagan is in charge of this country, and like a good caddie, i tee up the ball for

him to take a smack at. >> reagan needed good advisers. in the second term he doesn't have the same quality of people surrounding him. it has huge political effects for the president. >> from nbc news, this is "today." >> good morning. former hostage david jacobsen is a step closer to u.s. soil at this hour. jacobsen was freed sunday after 17 months of captivity in lebanon. >> because we are still negotiating for the other hostages we're not going to say anything more about what process we went through to get mr. jacobsen out. >> american policy is that we don't negotiate with hostage takers, we don't make deals, we don't pay ransom. but reagan hammered on his staff to find a way to get those hostages out. >> today the story from middle east sources is that iran has helped the united states free a hostage from lebanon. >> in a bizarre tale worthy of a thriller, iran's news agency reports robert mcfarlane, president reagan's former national security adviser, recently made a secret visit to tehran. iran says mcfarlane came seeking

help in freeing hostages led by pro-iranian groups in lebanon. >> i didn't believe the administration could be that clumsy. it seemed so unlike all it stood for, all it claimed, all it promised. >> why not dispel the speculation by telling us exactly what happened, sir? >> in the name of god, would you please just be responsible and back off? thank you. >> mr. jacobsen, how are we to know what is responsible and what is not? when my hot water heater failed it rocked our world.

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in spite of the wildly speculative and false stories of our arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages. >> mr. president, the record shows that every time an american hostage was released there had been a major shipment of arms just before that. are we all to believe that was just a coincidence? >> chris, the only thing i know about major shipments of arms, as i've said, everything that we sold them could be put in one cargo plane and there would be plenty of room left over. there was no deception intended by us. >> for the first time, reagan

seemed to be at sea, not knowing exactly how to deal with this particular problem. and it was a debilitating experience, and the president showed it. >> it became clear even in the government that things were going on at the nsc that not everybody knew about, and so the president asked his attorney general ed meese to investigate. >> and now i'm going to ask attorney general meese to brief you. >> do you still maintain that you didn't make a mistake? did you make a mistake in sending arms to tehran? >> no, and i'm not taking any more questions. >> what about secretary schultz, sir? >> in the course of the arms transfers, which involved the united states providing the arms to israel and israel in effect selling the arms to representatives of iran, certain monies, which were received in the transaction between

representatives of israel and representatives of iran were taken and made available to the forces in central america which are opposing the sandinista government there. >> there was an audible gasp in the room. cynical, jaded reporters who have seen and heard everything gasped out loud. >> there it was, smoking gun proof of the connection between these two programs and the fact that part of this administration was using the money from the sales of arms to iran to fund the contras. >> the shadowy figure we've been hearing about at the center of today's extraordinary revelations is oliver north. his facts, his public testimony is what the country is now waiting for. >> oliver north, who worked in the west wing, had this idea, well, since we're selling weapons to iran and there's certain profits that are coming from these weapons, and since we're not supposed to be selling these weapons so we can't exactly announce the profits, these are basically off the

books, let's take those profits and let's use them to support the contras. we can kill two birds with one stone. >> the problem was both of those schemes violated american policy and violated the law. so when they were exposed, it all came crashing down, and ronald reagan was left trying to explain why his administration had actually violated his own policies. >> vice admiral john poindexter has asked to be relieved of his assignment as assistant to the president for national security affairs. lieutenant colonel oliver north has been relieved of his duties on the national security council staff. >> at the time i thought, this is another watergate. felt that way. >> when the iran/contra story broke it seemed to play into various strains of the narrative about reagan. here's this hollywood actor who

really doesn't know what's being done in his name. or that he was clearly lying to the american people about this. >> one of the more poignant things is the president's letter from february 20th of this year. he says i have no personal notes or records to help my recollection on this matter. try as i might, i cannot recall anything whatsoever about whether i approved and the simple truth is, i don't remember, period. >> very early in the iran/contra story a riff off a famous watergate line showed up. what did the president know and when did he forget it? >> it was very serious. his political opponents and the american people saw something they didn't approve of. and we could see his numbers were dropping. and the whole presidency was at risk. >> tomorrow morning the iran/contra congressional hearings move into their most dramatic stage. lieutenant colonel oliver north will testify in public for the first time. >> colonel north, please rise. >> oliver north's appearance before that joint committee is one of the historic moments in '80s television because there was a guy, almost more than

reagan, who understood what the images were. >> one question the american people would like to know the answer to is what did the president know? >> throughout the conduct of my entire tenure, i assumed the president was aware of what i was doing and had, through my superiors, approved it. >> ollie north said everything he did was in the service of what he understood ronald reagan wanted, and everything he did was really just done out of love of country and it was very tough for those politicians in suits to knock that testimony down. >> i did do it. i was given a mission, and i tried to carry it out. >> but part of that mission was to shield the others who were giving you the orders. >> that is the part of any subordinate. >> president reagan still wasn't talking about lieutenant colonel oliver north's testimony. but he did suggest he could hardly wait to do so. >> i'm not going to comment until the hearings are over.

>> but don't you think -- >> then you won't be able to shut me up. >> the white house states flatly the president did not know about the diversion. but officials here are still bracing for the testimony next week of john poindexter, a man who unlike north met with the president every day. sometimes with no one else in the room. >> did you at any time tell the president that proceeds from the iranian arms sale were being used to support the contras? >> i don't -- i did not. the important point here is that on this whole issue the buck stops here with me. >> if there had been evidence that reagan knew about the diversion of money from iran to the contras in nicaragua, there would have been serious calls for his resignation. but ronald reagan managed to

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my fellow americans, tonight i want to talk about some of the

lessons we've learned. i was stubborn in my pursuit of a policy that went astray, yet the buck does not stop with admiral poindexter as he stated in his testimony. it stops with me. i am the one who is ultimately accountable to the american people. >> one thing that's very different is even if what reagan did was a horrible plunder at least it wasn't for political gain. this wasn't a dirty trick against the opposition party. so it wasn't the same as watergate. a lot of americans didn't want to go through that again. they wanted to give the president the benefit of the doubt. >> ronald reagan was thought of as the teflon president because reporters couldn't touch him. he could make mistakes but the voters didn't care. they cared about reagan's grand vision of a better country. >> the president appeared relaxed and happy as he visited friendly nebraska country today. his spokesman reported that right after his speech last night the white house received 1,145 positive phone calls. >> it's time to get down to the real business at hand, to move

forward with america. >> reagan didn't recover >> george bush played a major role in everything we have accomplished in these eight years. america needs george bush and barbara bush as first lady. >> george bush will be the 41st president of the united states. >> the election of bush for the american people was we want more reagan, we want more of what we had. bush was the closest thing to a

third term for ronald reagan. >> ronald wilson reagan, the 40th president of the united states, in two days he leaves office as our oldest president and as one of the most popular ever. >> ronald reagan was the chief architect of the 1980s. you don't always identify a president with the years, but in this case the '80s should be identified as the reagan years. >> they called it's reagan revolution, and i'll accept that. but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery. a rediscovery of our values and our common sense. as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. once you begin a great movement there's no telling where it will end. >> the very firmness of his rhetoric enabled him to be a pragmatist. so with that faith in ronald reagan as he's our conservative warrior. the fact that he raised taxes,

the fact he appointed two pro-choice supreme court justices, the fact he signed and advocated a bill for amnesty for 3 million illegal immigrants, they forgave all that because ronald reagan had been for so long their champion. >> president reagan understood that we judge our presidents on the basis of what they get accomplished, and he understood politics, the art of the possible. that together with the fact that he was a beautiful human being, those were the secrets to his success. >> the last day he just sort of lingered. and then finally they said, "mr. president, it's time." and the photographer came in. the stage was set. he turned away from the desk, went to the door and through.

the actor leaving the stage. it's that reagan magic that he had. and it was real. it was magic but it was real. >> on the big issues, the revival of the american spirit, the reignition of the american economy, ronald reagan succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. as for his critics, many still frustrated, even angry, but they do concede that ronald reagan leaves washington an enormously popular figure, and in this day and age that alone is an historic achievement. >> announcer: on the next "'80s." >> there is one sign the soviets can make that would be unmistakable. mr. gorbachev, open this gate.

mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. >> announcer: "the eighties." >> announcer: "the eighties." next on cnn. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause. they reserve under themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat. >> the russians are gearing up for war. >> the senate today approved a record $136.5 billion defense budget. >> the largest anti-nuclear protest in u.s. history. >> president reagan is now much more eager to meet with the new leader of the soviet union. >> do you have an agreement, mr. president? >> mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall.