with that. and we should be able to disclose in a reasonable amount of detail what is this sort of boundary surrounding this request, what is going on there. and we had engaged in conversations about this and in terms of our ability to be more transparent in our transparency report and finally when we reached an impasse we said we are going to -- we will not abide by this. we will just -- we will sue you over our ability to be more transparent with our users and people of the world. and so that's what motivated it and it continues to motivate it. i think there are other companies that i think share our opinion but i think we just took it another step and forced the issue. >> and could you -- we had an earlier brief conversation about

values. when one thinks about the culture that -- the shared values that hold twitter together, that make it what it is, i would imagine that when you are making a decision about how aggressively to pursue an issue like that, it does come back to very fundamental values. so can you talk a little bit about how that particular decision about transparency connects to the values of the firm? >> at the end of the day some of this is not all that complicated. we end up running the company in more or less some kind of golden rule type of way which is as we conceive of and implement these policies, what we as users want to exist in a product that has these policies. and by and large that's what we're rying to do. forthere's an environment surrounding us that is unfavorable we try to go about and change those things.

now i would say some of these types of decisions, including the decision to sue our own oe government are internally pretty uncontroversial because i would say as a leader shship [ muted that it's not in a group think way but we have -- [ muted ] and they reflect the values of the users we have on the platform. it's a responsibility and earlier we were talking about the free speech movement. i -- i believe that there are handfuls of companies in the world -- and you can probably count them on two hands -- that transcend being companies and become themselves a movement. i think twitter is one and with that comes real responsibility.

people are depending on us to be able to achieve things that go far beyond business or just culture. it's actually achieving higher purpose. so as we go about our business, these are the types of fairly weighty things we're considering day in and day out. >> an interesting notion about when an interprize becoenterpri movement. how about the public offering of twitter? does the change of ownership and control, did it have an affect? >> you know, i think when we were in the process of going public a lot of people -- there were many folks on the sidelines saying all of twitter's talk of being purpose driven or what have you, get ready, it's all going to go out the window. and i tactually think that when part of the significance in some

way is of our lawsuit was eye opening for many of these people. like, oh, wow, these guys are going to stick to the values they've been having all along. but of the speculation that exists around how becoming a publicly traded company would change us i think somehow some way part of the -- this was the conspiracy theory premise of it all oh, now that they become a publicly traded company and are beholding to investor interests, they will sell out their values in order to adhere to these financial pressures which have existed all along. ps, those pressures did not exist all along. it never was the case in all of our time that sort of tension that we experienced day in and day out was a tension somehow between everyday users and business interests. that was never the source of the

tension. the sort of the tension is sort of what we were talking about earlier which is the tension that exists between one group of users and another group of users. and how do we navigate those waters? those tensions still exist. but being a publicly trading company i don't think has really -- has done nothing to change our values or how we've approached going about our work i think it's brought maybe a slightly brighter spotlight. but it's -- for those of you who will go out and be parts of publicly traded companies pre-and post ipo, i hope you'll come to realize it is just yet another moment in the company's evolution and then you go public and then you wake up the next day and go to work. that's how that is. >> you obviously love your job. what do you love most about your job? >> i do think it goes back to the idea of it being a movement.

because i think you can work at any number of companies organize organizations but there are few opportunities that you have in life -- we were -- earlier before we were hopping on stage we were talking about these sort of four precepts that you have here at the business school and i love this fourth one of beyond yourself. what an inspiring plank to have on your platform. and what i love about my work and what i really just have long been inspired by in technology generally is if you're lucky you get to be part of a company that is a movement, that is beyond itself, that's beyond any one of us and the impact that you get to have on the planet starts to go beyond, yeah, okay, i went to work and i sold a widget versus

i went to work today and i changed the world for the better. it sounds trite but i think that certainly for us we got to see this and the technology -- in twitter's case, it begins to take on a life of its own and we use in ways that we would have never anticipated in -- and it's inspiring, absolutely inspiring. >> it really is. biz stone wospoke to us and we were walking back and one of our employees who had grown up in iran walked up to us as we were coming on to the premises here and she talked about how influential twitter had been for her family and she had some remarkable stories and it was right there. somebody i see everyday talking about her family and the role that twitter played. i know you know -- you hear those stories often but it was very poignant.

>> we hear them often and we see this unfolding but -- and i was actually just talking to some of the employees, a group of employees who just started yesterday and they were asking basically about does this ever get old? do we ever come to work and get jaded by, oh, yeah, this extraordinary thing happened. no we don't get jaded by that it doesn't get old. i came to work a couple weeks ago and as a user got to see somebody who's tweeting images of our planet from geostationary orbit. that doesn't get old. hopefully if it does get old we should go do something else because i think no we never thought that these things would be used in this way but, yeah, it's -- it does change the world and now sometimes in more trivial way, too, but sometimes extremely profound ways. >> absolutely.

absolutely. so your job is different than a lot of people's roles. could you talk a little bit about maybe some -- on the personal advice front some risks that you took that sort of opened up some pathways that might not have been there in your career? >> yeah, so -- and please since another one of your planks is to question the status quo, so do not take my status quo as the gospel. but i -- so now my responsibility at twitter is overseeing our communications team and public policy team and media partnerships team and it's a departure from really what i was doing earlier in my career which was working on political campaigns and electoral politics is a perfectly noble profession. but i think that the main insight that i had was that my

hunger for participating in that process was facilitating some form of social change and what i realized at a certain point was that the impact that i myself could have on that social change was pretty limited and i was living on the east coast at that time and i was looking back to the west coast where i grew up and i was, like, that's where the change is happening. those are the people who are really revolutionizing the world. i want to be part of that. and i say coincidentally it's not that unlike what happened during the free speech movement where you had people who were literally watching newsreels at the time on the east coast of the united states of what was happening here in berkeley and saying "i want to be part of that thing." and i guess the lesson that i would give on this is that -- and when i look back on it, i had known for some time that

electoral politics -- i wasn't getting what i wanted to or needed to out of it and i think it probably took me longer in hindsight than it should have to make the change. and i think -- i talked to people, particularly new grads to work with us a lot about this where you may not be certain what your sort of calling is and what your passion is and in that case keep experimenting. but the flip side of that is there are many people. and if you really push them on us, they will tell you. they will say i don't know what my calling is but what i'm doing isn't that. and yet they don't have the courage to make the change. and so for me, the main lesson was when i knew that that wasn't my calling, it probably was, i don't know, a year, a couple years before i really owned that

and said, you know what? i'm going to honor the fact that i know this isn't the right path for me and go and pursue something else. >> and part of that transition, i think, for all of us is that to koernel of that notion of facilitating social change. we don't always know what that kernel is. once we identify a kernel, then the options that are likely to be more aligned become a little clearer. that's what -- i'll tell you, for me part of the insight that i had came out of trying to create a little bit of distance from it and saying okay, what is it that i'm doing? what's the pleasure that i derive from this. what is it that's inspiring to me about it? is this the best venue for me to be living that out? and even in the world of media and communications and public policy i didn't necessarily know that that was the job but i did -- the insight that i had

was it seems like technology is the general venue for me to live this out. >> great, great. >> and you as -- gabriel, as a leader, as a manager, what is your leadership style? how is -- your thinking on leadership, how has it changed in the last few years? >> so my thinking on leadership and management is in some ways -- is many ways informed by my experience in political campaign which is if you were going to have -- first on management and then i would just say on leadership. but if you were going to try to create a petri dish of how not to manage people you would have created a political campaign. it is -- and i suppose to be fair it's been a long time since i've worked on a political campaign so let me just give that space the benefit of the doubt and say maybe a lot has

changed in the meantime. but at the time in this country, at least -- so you have an environment where it is very transaction-based. you have a bunch of people trying to win something by a certain date. and it doesn't lend itself to really nurturing people over a long period of time and invest in their careers and growth over a long period of time. it's really transactional in that way. so for me, so much of i would say my approach to management and then more broadly leadership was informed by what not to do and i think the beauty of the technology industry is you end up getting a lot less experienced people who bring really, really new ideas to the table and if you can embrace that. and so i would say to the

question of my leadership style i really, really try to give people a ton of room to make a lot of small mistakes and i believe that as leaders and managers and, you know, again some time from now you can have someone else on this stage who says, yeah, i want people to fail and it's easy to say and i think you can't just say that. you really need to -- especially for less experienced people -- you need to go out of your way to force them to make mistakes. and i remember i had someone who worked for me who was so risk averse and i would say you know, you really need to make mistakes. you need to be taking more risks and we have these kind of quarterly objectives and measurable goals, a lot of companies have these things and

i'd said to her, look, here's what's going to happen for you when you set out your quarterly goals. i want you to put in there that you're going to make a certain number of mistakes. at the end of the quartermistak. at the end of the quarter, we're going to report back on the mistakes you made and what you learned from them. unless you are really deliberate with people about this, it's not going to happen. so i guess my style is letting -- encouraging people to take risks, encouraging them to make mistakes. and having an understanding that they are unable to make catastrophic mistakes. somebody who is working for you makes a catastrophic mistake, that is your responsibility as a leader that they could even make a catastrophic mistake to begin with. you put them in a position where they can make small mistakes.

even there is something that is cataclysmic, you gain trust as a leader. >> it's terrific. those are the stretch assignments as well. it just popped into my head. one of our faculty nobel prize winner williamson was giving a commencement speech. and he was mentioning that he had a ph.d. student in this case. but there was a project he was describing what he wanted the ph.d. student to do. and the ph.d. student said i don't know if i can do that. and he said i wouldn't have asked you to do it if i didn't think you could do that, right? there's a validating element of pushing people to places, obviously. that's a great management style myself. >> can i ask one more question about culture and then we will open it up to the floor. i know we have a lot of questions and thoughts in the room. so when you think about your

sort of role on the senior team in help to go shape and strengthen and keep healthy the culture. the norms and values within twitter, can you say a little bit how you think about that role and that inward-facing role. >> yeah. this is -- so culture is a living, breathing thing. and i think as -- especially in the technology world where you have companies like twitter that are young. twitter will turn nine later this year. for some you imagine, my god, this has been there forever. it has not been there forever. not even close. and yet because of i think this sort of truncated cycles of our role in the media and technology worlds, there's a sense of attachment to things, including culture. so even in companies like ours,

there is this sort of pull to preserve parts of our culture. >> yeah. >> and at twitter -- >> and are they well identified? >> they are. we have certain -- like you have these core values. at twitter, we have a number of them too. and we want to create a culture where the values continue to exist. but that's different from preserving culture. and i actually think -- so inwardly facing, our responsibilities of the leadership team is to create an environment where those types of values can continue to flourish. and also being really open-minded about when some of these things are falling down. i'll give you a specific example. we have two core values, which are deliberately in opposition to one another.

one of which is to be rigorous and get it right. and another is to ship it. we talk about launching things and shipping things. now, it is like just get it out the door. be rigorous and get it right is a very different, slower, thoughtful value. and those two things are at odds with one another. and when, as a company we felt like, hey, the fact that these two things are at odds with one another is slowing us down, creating tension we don't need and headlands that are counterproductive, i guess. then it's our responsibility as a leadership team, one, to acknowledge this. pause i think where companies tend to fall down is these things sort of massively exist. oh, this is happening. no, it isn't happening. you'ring about this. you sit at that table.

if you're doing nothing, you're just standing by, then you're facilitating this apparent counterproductive thing to happen. one, acknowledge it is going on. two, acknowledge for everyone outside of that room that it's going on. say, hey, look, even if it's the case and we don't have the answer, this is something we're thinking about. and are trying to address. and i think part of us as a culture, we were talking earlier about our external transparency report. we try to be pretty radically transparent internally too. so as a leadership team, sure, we're deliberating a number of things. we can share that with the company even as it's happening. >> that's great. that's a great internal norm. some of the difficult conversations that aren't usually framed that way. usually we think about manager

and direct report and something didn't go right. but this notion of saying, hey, this is attention in a work environment. we don't have the answer yet. but let's talk about it and think about it. that's a great example. questions from the audience, please. let's open it up. we have a couple microphones. we want to make sure to capture it in the video. and we also i think have the capacity for questions to come in from remote. please, ma'am. >> a recent article on mpr highlighted the role that twitter was playing in citizen journalism in mexico with the violence that was erupting. and one woman's act was impact. it stated she had died. and i was curious, in these violence situations what response, if any, does twitter have? >> i'm not familiar with this one. so the account -- the material was going out from her account is not true. >> she was reporting on the

violence. >> i see. >> and no one was entirely clear if she ever was a real person or not. >> i see. i would say in the context of violence or any kind of crisis kind of situation, part of -- we get this question a lot, actually. because i'll give you a slightly more tame example than violence in mexico. but still it relates. in the aftermath of hurricane sandy, there were accounts on twitter of flooding in this place. people even had these falsified photos of certain places that were under water. in this case of mexico you had, hey, twitter and other social media seem to be giving rise to potential information. as i was saying earlier. it is, i really do believe, one

of the most extraordinary platforms that ever existed. it can be a vector for the viral spread of misinformation. but what i always point out in this context is the spread of misinformation in the context of some kind of a crisis, breaking news situation, is not new. it far predates certainly social media the example i would give from sometime after i graduated from here was the balling of the federal building in oklahoma city. before social media you had established media. and the news accounts at the time were that there were people of a certain ethnicity who purportedly executed that bombing. the difference, though, and i think this is the key distinction in what the sort of double-edge sword of social media is.

you're right. it can absolutely be this vector of misinformation. but what i would order is i don't remember exactly the confines of it. if you go back, i promise you it wasn't minutes that misinformation was out there. perhaps somebody here knows exactly how long the duration was. it seems to me it may have been days in many were circles the the fundamental change is that you have on one hand with platforms like twitter an opportunity for incredible on the ground reporting. i'm standing on the hudson river. there's ape plane. it just landed there. here's a picture. we later find out this is true. or i'm standing on the corner of un water. un p.s., it's not true. the beauty of social media, though, it has accelerated the time, i think, of debunking these things. so i would argue if we were able to rewind the tape to the

oklahoma city bombing, that tragedy, were we to have had a platform like twitter you might have accelerated the time it took to debunk the misinformation that was out there. yeah, that misinformation exists, but it can get put back in its place even better and more quickly. >> thanks for that. >> congress is in recess for the summer district work period. all this week we are bringing you american history tv in primetime on c-span3. tonight, a look at the major speeches of our nation's 40th president, ronald reagan. up next on american history tv, a panel discussion from regent university ronald reagan symposium. democratic revolution, challenges to fostering global freedom. it focuses on the speeches that defined president reagan's administration, including what

became known as the evil empire speech and his 1987 west berlin mchale gorbachev to tear down this wall. this is an hour 10 minutes. >> good morning. welcome. i'm delighted you chose to join us for the 10th annual ronald reagan similar pose pose yum on this cold winter morning. i serve as dean as here. i would like to introduce one of our senior leaders to greet you at this time and kick off this conference. he's a distinguished scholar and academic, served as dean of arts examine sciences, author and editor of five banks, and currently serves as the executive vice president for academic affairs here at the university. please help me in welcoming to the podium the doctor.

[ applause ]. good morning. i want to thank you for the 10th annual ronald reagan symposium. this year's theme, the challenges of fostering global freedom, connects to the university's mission and the distinctives of the robertson school of government. individual liberty, represented democracy and constitutional government. more importantly, this symposium should lead taos think about the grander theme of statesmanship embodied in one of the great presidents, ronald reagan. political issues come and go. statesmanship lives on in the minds of the people long after its physical embodiment creased

so exist. it is a testament to that fact. thank you for attending this important event and thank you dean patterson for your leadership and helping us never to forget the giver. thank you. [ applause ]. we'll follow the program you have there. we will hear from three panelists. and then a question and answer time. and a break. we'll follow the schedule as you have it. i'll moderate this panel. a former speech writer for three presidents, including service as president ronald reagan's director of speech writing. president reagan also nominated him to a term on the national council of the humanities.

he has appeared in numerous venues, "the wall street journal", american enterprise, and "the new york times" our second speaker is mr. craig shirley, "new york times" best-selling author known for two critically acclaimed books on ronald reagan. "rendezvous with destiny" and "reagan's revolution, untold story of the campaign that started it all." mr. shirleyy is the first reagan scholar at eureka college, former decorated contract agent with the central intelligence agency. welcome. our third member is kathleen k.t. macfarland, fox news. she helped in the nixon, ford, reagan administration, aide to henry kissinger, secretary of defense casper wine berger and later as principal, deputy

assistant secretary of defense and pentagon spokesperson. in 1985, she received the defense department's highest award given to a civilian for her work in the reagan administration. she's a much sought after speaker and writer for her commentary on international affairs. ladies and gentlemen, coming to speak now is the honorable arum basham. [ applause ]. good morning. i am very happy to be here in virginia for this occasion because i have a particular personal reason for remembering the westminster address that president reagan gave. i was director of speech writing at the time. and of course i was there. but something happened shortly after the speech where i was walking -- i had been to london before. i was showing a few people

around. pastor shop that had all of these model soldiers. there were hundreds of them. one caught my eye. it's strange. but it caught my eye. a single figure. and i bought it. and i still have it. in fact, i have it right here. it was -- it turned out it was a figure of a member of baylor's virginia continental. and i don't know. i didn't know why i was attracted to it. years later when someone traced the family tree i discovered that my great great great great -- and i forget. maybe there was one more -- grandfather had been a baylor. so this is a home coming to me for virginia at the same time as it is a commemoration for ronald reagan's westminster address where i accidentally bought my great great great great great grandfather.

the whole point of the westminster address was a defining moment. speeches come and go. and you could arbitrarily assemble this -- any number of speeches. but westminster was a keystone and arch that reagan gave amongst many others that define the cold war, defined how we felt the issues, the principles behind things. and that step by step led to the end of that cold war a at any rate. and the collapse of comp nymph, which very few people thought was going to happen. how did he do it? and how important were the words? i'll concentrate on the speeches. that is what i did. that is how i worked with him first of all, i will tell you what he didn't do.

that is what other people sometimes do wrong when they are trying to exert american leadership globally. while i was working on my remarks for today, i happened to also be revealing two books that made me think more about what i had to say and reminded me of it. the first was a book about woodrow wilson and chief foreign policy adviser. and as i read the book and wrote the review, some thoughts occurred to me which helped explain why woodrow wilson failed and why ronald reagan didn't. i'll just read a short excerpt. when it comes to presidents, the brightest are not necessarily the best. there are at least three other qualities that matter as much or more. the presidential greatness of men like washington, lincoln, fdr, and ronald reagan was due at least as much to these qualities as it was to raw

intellect. and then there was woodrow wilson. a brilliant scholar with high ideas but temp rament alley and judgmentally sustained leadership at the presidential level. wilson was a prime example of a type all too familiar in public life, a self-proclaimed progressive. he doesn't really like people very much. his conceit, his conviction that he was always the smartest guy in the room and his particular version of a presbyterian god had chosen him as a unique messenger. in fact, it's one thing to recognize god. it's another thing to think you're god. woodrow wilson had that problem. all of that rendered him unable to cope as part of the

presidency. it was a problem that ronald reagan emphatically did not. i remember fdr referring to al smith as the hope warrior. i think ronald reagan was the happy cold warrior. he fought the cold war but he was not a belligerent man. he was a man of strong principles with a moderate personality in the sense of -- he was close to people instead of being closed to people. which is why he was able to reach out to people politically.

a whole new term spwerld the vocabulary, reagan tkpwrat, starting in the '80s. those are some of the things that made it possible for him to do the things that he did. the review just ran in the washington times a few days ago, tuesday. it was a book about abraham lincoln. as i looked, and i know this is virginia. i'm not asking you -- it's too late to have to vote for or against abraham lincoln, so don't worry. but lincoln was a master of words. in fact, a titled the review "abraham lincoln k. a man of his words," with an s. as i will explain in a minute, he and ronald reagan and a few others was a president pore his words. he will be remembered for his words because of his gift for expressing his ideals was quite

powerful. and i tried to -- well, i just started. as i was doing the review of the lincoln book, i started thinking more and more about ronald reagan. i think you'll see why. most presidents are defined by what happened while they were in office and what others write about them afterward. few paint annen during self portrait in their own words. in the 20th century, only franklin roosevelt and ronald reagan imbedded themselves in history largely through their living words and images. fdr villa radio and film and ronald reagan with television as well. part of the reason is the positive impact of their words. fdr told us we had nothing to fear but fear itself. we overcame the great depression and liberated the real axis of evil.

president reagan told mr. gorbachev to tear down that wall. great rhetoric matched by great eventsis remembered. otherwise, it's just words. only one 19th century president, american president, attained the same level of successes as a leader. and he had things in common with ronald reagan, which is why i started thinking about that as i wrote this review. abraham lincoln -- well, basically he suppressed himself in a way that the vast majority of his fellow countrymen, without ever seeing him in person or seeing very often a photograph of him, without ever hearing his voice, he burned his image into their souls. they both came from modest

backgrounds. ronald reagan became president at a time when you needed presidential speech writers because of the incredible number of speeches you have to get. legal pad, yellow sheet, handwritten with very few corrections would come out of whole short speeches or whole sections of speeches that ronald reagan had done himself. that is not true of many presidents, i know. the other thing is that abraham lincoln, and i won't do a direct paraphrase or quote from the article. abraham lincoln is a man of modest preparation, very bright. he had to work very hard to get it at a modest, small, very good liberal arts college at a time when a bachelor's degree meant something. and at a time in fact, when you graduated from the sixth grade and you can spell better than i'm afraid many a ph.d. today. abraham lincoln also had

something going for him that no politician has before. there was one book that he was raise odd in almost every american home at the time. and it was a book that besides its beautiful and inspiring message had beautiful and inspiring language. that was the king james bible. and if the gettysburg address had begun with 87 years ago instead of four score and seven years ago, we might not even remember it. we wouldn't remember it with the same intensity. because there was a biblical imagery to it that gave it a a majesty and which was even more powerful in those days. and then he linked it four score and seven years ago, our forefathers. he linked it to his founding fathers. so he wasn't just talking about the north against the south at that moment. and then as he went through it and said now we are engaged in a

great civil war, he linked it to the tragedy of the civil war. but he then reconnected it and tried to make people understand that as bad as it was, it wasn't being done for nothing. because he talked about the the forefathers and a rebirth of freedom, which was carrying it forward another step. which is what america is all about. constantly moving forward with humane values, principles, honor. so that it ended, even though it was a dedicated of a solitary, awe inspiring and future looking note. that was a gift ronald reagan had in his speeches. and in westminster he defined the ideals and the values. he said in various other speeches too during the course

of his career why we had to do this. why we had to do things that were very practical and material like the strategic defense initiative, which was ridiculed as star wars. and as one of the advisers i remember saying teddy kennedy thought he was being very clever when he referred it to as star wars. that's one of the popular movies ever made, it has a happy ending, and the good guys win. and that's what happens. so it backfired. ronald reagan called the soviet empire an evil empire. i remember when people asked me why did he say that? well, because it isn't. haven't you noticed? it took a little fancy footwork. that expression was introduced at a -- what was a minor speech in the sense that it wasn't the

state of the union or billed as a foreign policy speech. it was a speech of evangelicals in florida, orlando, with the result that presidential speeches, the drafts are always circulated to the secretary of state, defense, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. and one of their senior staffers is supposed to review them. but there are a lot of presidential speeches at any given time. that was sort of all the bottom of the pile. a lot of people were like, oh, that is just some speech to broadcasters so that the initial draft with the wards evil empire in it didn't get spotted by them. and the observations didn't start pouring in until we already got a draft to the president. the guy that happened to be on duty the day that the draft went in fellow named slim kramer. he and i said there are going to be a lot of people upset about this word. but it's their job to find out, and i'm not going to tell them about it. and let the president see it. then you start getting the phone calls.

as director of speech writing, once they have gone to the president, i had to keep track of things and the changes. so once it had gone to the president and came back out and he kept it in, if you got a call from a senior deputy from the secretary of state expressing, the secretary of state feels this needs to come out. well, i feel the secretary of state must tell the president this must come out because he kept it in. and if the secretary of state wants to tell the president and can convince him, that's his job and more power to him. well, nobody did. reagan kept it in. it made history. of course he caught all sorts of criticism at home. they always said he was wrong. they always underestimated him. it was one of the best things he had going for him. it was brought home to me how much speeches like that meant. i had been a speech writer twice before for presidents. i loved doing it for reagan. i like doing my own writing.

so i told him i'll not stay forever. so i quit near the first term. i was with a group of other writers and journalists and when we varsa, budapest, and east berlin. and the people i met there, this was just when the wall was coming down, when you could say that ronald reagan's prophecy had been fulfilled. and the people on the other side of the curtain. i was over there with many of them said his words were more than words and this couldn't happen without him. and thank you very much. and my great great great great grandfather thing. [ applause ]. >> thank you, doctor, and thank

you to the university. it's an honor and privilege to be here. i'm proud to be on the panel with k.t. speaking of this time of day reminds me of what ronald reagan once said about the collision of time and day and age. and when you speak. he quipped that the definition of middle aim is when we are faced with temptations and you choose the one that will get you home in bed by 9:30. as a side note, i'm glad to tell you i just this week turned in the man script for "last act," which is the third book i have written on ronald reagan about his post-presidency. and contrary to popular belief, he didn't go back to california. he announced he had alzheimer's and then passed away. it took three years to complete.

i was asked not too long ago about writing, was it profitable. is it books or op-eds or speeches. and i thought for a moment. the most profitable form of writing is ransom ones. i'm also working on a book about reagan in the wilderness. it goes to the point of this conference here today. from 1976 to 1979, he went through a complete ideological makeover. and because reagan in this time ends up rejecting the containment and the policies which had dominated american policy towards the soviet union to the time of the famous long telegram in which he advised truman to contain the soviets. this has been our policy through

40 plus years. and he comes to believe in this time in the late 70s that the soviet union can actually be defeated. it earned an establishment who thought the soviet union and berlin wall were things of permanence. henry kissinger equated the west with athens and the east of sparta. the president did sign over the objections of dick cheney, chief of staff at the time. and he said in 1979 he could support every republican running for president except ronald reagan. he also once said how did it ever occur to anyone he should be governor, much less president. 12 years later, after his election in 1992, he was given

what turned out to be farewell remarks to the republican party at their convention in houston. he had made other speeches in 1993 and 1994. but this was his last speech to a national convention starting in 1960 when he was simply a private citizen and head of democrats for nixon. at this time, of course, in 1992, the soviet union had already surrendered, collapsed. due to his misfortune, george bush did not make this event, the event of our lifetime. and the greatest struggle of our lifetime which billions were spent, national defenses raised, a president assassinated over, 30,000 american boys dying, cold war eruption. went nearly unremarked and no one noticed. this was in my opinion a great tragedy because the american people needed to be told that

soviet communists lost and the south vietnam were not in vain. and moral right triumphed over moral evil. that's why reagan called it an evil empire. and he never backed away from it to the night he died. he was understandable restrained yet it seemed to some he was itching to give the greatest speech of his lifetime. and i think most of us would agree it was a speech that franklin roosevelt or john kennedy, reagan could have given in their sleep. some ways later, reagan addressed the matter without embarrassing bush. and he did so at the houston convention, which is widely regarded as one of his greatest and yet overlooked. he was trying to stitch back together a divided republican party in 1992. i'm not going to do his -- i'm

not going to try to reflect his voice but i will read what he said at the houston convention. "we stood tall and proclaimed communism was history, we never heard so much ridicule from our liberal friends. the only thing that got them more upset was two simple words, evil empire. but we knew then when the liberal democrat leaders just couldn't figure out. the sky would not fall, america restorld their strength and resolve. the sky would not fall if an american president spoke the truth. the only thing that would fall is the berlin wall. he continued, i heard the other speakers at the convention saying we won the cold war. and i couldn't help wonder who did they exactly mean by we?" reagan knew. he always knew. going back to his days in hollywood when soviet agents,

pro vac ters. but the soviets always had a political head established in the united states of america. soviet agents threatened to throw acid in his face in the '40s. and in the 1960s said they had a bowl at headquarters with reagan's head on it. he hired private security to protect his wife and two children. a strike by a communist leaning union in 1946 shut down the studio where reagan was beginning to film "night on to night." he told congress, we man into a one man battalion, ronald reagan. it was later learned to be funded by moscow. two men tried to lay gasoline bombs and throw into their home where nancy and their son was sleeping. they