reagan, he was a man of good cheer. he was determined when he got in that office to do some things that he saw or both important and necessary. the economy, that to care itself when he left office and to stretch her back to normal, the economy was roaring. the unemployment had gone back to normal, whenever it is. but i think his biggest success was in his foreign policy. i'm not going to get into the caribbean stuff, but his dealings with the soviets, he faced them down. these were some serious situations. they had 3600 great big warhead missiles pointing at this country. we would have been destroyed. and from the cold war days on, right after world war two there was a policy, probably a decade of what they called containment. i was part of that. we were trying to contain the soviets expansion, the communist expansion, vietnam was part of that. and various other places. and then that's sort of morphed over with henry kissinger tow policy of peaceful coexistence when nixon got and. going to try to be friends with the com

but the thing about reagan reagan, he did not care. it bounced off him. >> and got his goat. but he is determined when he got in the office to do things as interest rates back to normal unemployment had gone back to normal. but his biggest success was foreign policy. dealing with the soviets, these words serious situations. use were paid warhead missiles. we would have been destroyed. from world war ii, there is a policy that is a decade called containment. merry try to contain the expansion. vietnam was clearly a part of that. that morphed with henry kissinger to peaceful coexistence. we would try to be friends with the communist. reagan in thought i will kill them. others say they treat the people like barnyard animals. he made a value judgment but he made it. here is his initial problem. everyone died on him. kept thinking these guys were 80 years old drinking vodka. gorbachev was well educated. he was an educated man and reasonable. reagan thought he could reason with him but it did not start off well. he got a lot of flak when he came back and gorbachev would not do it.

similarly, reagan saw or felt the transforming nature of sdi. now, a lot of us thought strategic defense was very helpful. in fact, i had written an article for the heritage foundation policy review a year before the inauguration saying we should really go revive strategic defense. but we considered it not revolutionary but complementary to traditional deterrents. i was amazed in november of 1985 during the first summit between reagan and gorbachev, the first u.s.-soviet summit in seven years, when the soviet delegation spent 75% of their time in very agitated nature about sdi. i remember taking aside pat buchanan who was then the director of white house communications and saying" pat, don't they understand, this is just a presidential speech. after 2 1/2 years after the president gave his speech on march 23rd, 1983, advocating sdi, the pentagon had done virtually nothing on it. it was just rhetoric. it was just presidential words. and i remember pat saying" don't tell them that. they think it's a real program that the pentagon has under way". s

and people made fun of reagan.hat was a bad time for bond of and it's probably ill advised, but i watched it. it's not a bad show. it makes a guy look like a fool. when you look at things like the hasting hard they were very, very good movies. this guy was a very good act they are and he was proud of a lot of good act or strata was willing to hold in a newly empowered and john wayne. all of these guys -- walter pigeon, edwin g robbins. and so he was doing well in the movie business until world war ii breaks out. but what he had done because he loved any stock in the money to ride horses coming in now, when he was college and all that. so they had a program. what is now ocs, officers training school and he became a lieutenant in the united states, very forgot to write in the best horses for free. one weekend a month. olympic team toward, you know, now with? the calvary became the laws are anorexic is going overseas, but his website was so bad that the next night and said your eyesight is too bad to leave the united

tanked this is unemployment is the unemployment rate during the reagan and first term of the reagan administration it was the worst recession since the great depression two years into his first term unemployment spiked above ten percent hitting almost eleven percent similarly following george w. bush's tax cuts for the rich president obama's first term was crippled by high unemployment and tanking economy even worse than reagan's in terms of timing although unemployment under obama never hit as high a point as reagan's it lasted longer see it out here during the end of reagan's first four years in office the unemployment rate had dropped much quicker than it has under president obama's so why did reagan's economy improve so much faster than obama's the emperor answer is simple and predictable it was massive government spending with borrowed money with the help of a mixed congress democrats controlling the house republicans controlling the senate just like today only reversed reagan quickly expanded the size of government during his first term we've been new investments mostly in the

they let reagan say a few words. the young americans for freedom which was a youth group supporting reagan out of california, very conservative kids. they rented vans and went all over kansas city and bought noise makers and plastic horns and things and sustained the demonstration after reagan spoke that lasted so long, it pushed ford's acceptance speech past primetime. it was the strength of those -- i could actually hear the horns in that clip you just played. >> that was 1976. four years later another sitting president, this time jimmy cart carter, who you worked for in '76 being challenged by the left from ted kennedy. he ultimately lost the nomination. in new york city at madison square garden he gave this speech the night before jimmy carter was nominated. >> and someday long after this convention, long after the signs come down and the crowds stop cheering and bands stop playing, may it be said of our campaign that we kept the faith. may it be said of our party in 1980 that we found our faith again. may it be

i mean, two reagan terms, bush was reagan's vice president. we'd been there two reagan terms. that's eight years and one bush term. the press particularly were tired of us. they really were tired of us, and we were climbing a high -- a tough mountain. there was another minimum wagon problem. that's reason number one. i think a lot of people were tired of us. we'd been there 12 years. it's very hard to keep the white house for more than eight years, for any party, if you go back and look at history. there's not many times when it's happened, and we had kept it for 12. secondly, we had a little fellow from texas named ross perot that you may or may not have heard of, and -- and he took -- ross perot took 19% of the vote. clinton got 43%. bush got 38% and perot got 19%, and our polling showed us perot was taking two out of three votes and when you take that and you get 51%. when people say he didn't cost you the election i think he did. i'll say it again. i thought he did for 20 years, and i still think he did, but the third thing was our fault, absolutely, and that is instead of

ronald reagan. recovering the voice of theodor roosevelt, president ronald reagan, a democrat turned republican, worked to resurrect the american identity, built on religious morality and shared family life. this time for the world to know our intellectual and spiritual value, rooted in the source of all strength, he stated in his famed 1981 speech at notre dame. a belief in a supreme being and a law higher than our own. in time of crisis and challenge, reagan said elsewhere, families kept safe our actual churt heritage reinforced spiritual values. he added it is time to recommit ourselves to the concept of the family. the concept that must withstand the trends of lifestyles and legislation. from 1986 until the end of his presidency three years later, reagan gave mounting attention to strengthening the nation's family system. the family provides children with a haven of love and concern. he told the student congress on evangelism. for parents, it provides a strong sense of purpose and meaning in lif

reagan. i went over to her, i said, mrs. reagan, i was in reykjavik last week, and i wrote your husband a postcard. she looked at me like i was a little crazy. she said, you did? i said, yes. it was just such an emotional thing being there ten years after the summit. and she said, what did you say in your postcard? i said, mr. president, i'm back here at reykjavik ten years later, reliving the experience, and was just amazed to think back at what a sensational job you had done 12 years earlier on behalf of the country and how exceptionally proud i was to have served you then. sincerely, ken adelman. and i mailed it. i didn't know nancy reagan very well. she looked at me, and she started to cry a little bit. i started to do the same. then i thought, what a great honor it was in the seven years i was in the reagan administration, every time i walked into the white house, i had a chill in the back -- the hair on the back of my neck stood up. i felt, what an honor it is, what a privilege to serve this great country. and i looked

being true to ourselves as reagan was.country was founded upon. that was not a winning formula. we had to sell ourselves short in order to win the election. we found we did not win the election. jimmy carter went about the process of weakening america on every possible front. now we have a similar election coming up in 1980. we have barack obama, up four years of weakening america in an area that that would disturb president reagan as much as any. we have a president who has talked about leading from behind. talking about reducing our military and pulling back from america's influence in the world. we have a president who does not believe that america is a source for good. ronald reagan, shining city on a hill. to president obama, we are a source of policy that required this president to go around the world and repeatedly apologized for america and what we have done in this world. ronald reagan would never apologize for the greatest country in history of the world. [applause] we have a very similar theme. we have a preside

political career and ronald reagan as governor of california and ronald reagan as president of the tranny. he's also done biographies of jimmy carter and winston churchill. he has a distinct background reduce active in a number of organizations including the pacific research institute. he's had a great deal of experiences, a bradley fellow, here at the heritage foundation and also has done a number of things, including being a member of the california citizens compensation commission, and in various other academic pursuits. but today for our purposes he has done a particularly important thing, and that is look at the modern presidency, that is from woodrow wilson through the presidency of barack obama. one of the things he has done is looked at it from a different angle than most be writing about president. he has looked at from the standpoint of how have presidents done in regard, particularly in the modern era, in regard to what the constitution and the founders had in mind for the presidency of the united states. this distinguishes him from a number of the people who have done biograph

ronald reagan did this. ronald reagan did this in 1983 for social security. it's the only solution. it's going to have to happen again and it will happen again the fight is going to come on how much for spending restraint and how much for revenue increases. and one other thing president reagan was right about when he said the american people are not undertaxed, we overspend and that's true. and i think there's been some recognition, i hope there's been, in this current administration that the spending cuts are going to have to exceed the revenue increases. >> rose: most people believe, that i think. they would even do 3-1, perhaps. >> i think so, too. >> rose: but on the platform of all the republican candidates they offered 10-1 and nobody was opposed to it. >> but charlie you know why they did that? because there's no spending restraint. revenue increases without spending restraint don't get you there. revenue increases with spending restraint will reduce your deficit and debt. if you don't reduce spending at the same time you go for revenue increases something like rudman-holling

zombies normally feast on human flesh but zombie reagan and zombie thatcher. they feast on the middle class more than thirty years ago margaret thatcher and ronald reagan rose to power in the u.k. and the us preaching it was our economic idea based on devouring social safety net programs and redistributing that wealth to the very very top because they said it would one day trickle down on the rest of us in those thirty years none of that wealth has trickle down and the so-called economic theory more like a religion created by a deranged prophet name milton friedman has been proven to be a resoundingly. a failure that's only done one thing to make the already rich mind bogglingly richer then again that may have been the point all along reaganomics has produced wealth inequality in the united states not seen since before the great depression and it disappearing middle class for the median income in america now just a bit above twenty six thousand dollars a year but despite the overwhelming evidence the reagans and thatcher's bizarre economics are doing incredibl

signed into law by ronald reagan. continuing resolutions 1988. tax increase by ronald reagan. because we had huge long-term structural budget deficit issues that we needed to fix. and we can't get the republican party to agree to raise taxes on someone who makes more than $1 million a year! and we're going to cut education. we're going to cut infrastructure. we're going to cut research. cut funds to community colleges. we got to build an economic system for the 21st century. that means asking the wealthiest to sacrifice, to contribute, and then we make these investments and balance the budget in a long-term, balanced way. ronald reagan was willing to do it. i hope all you guys who mention him in all of your speeches would follow his lead and help us with a balanced budget. do this over a moderate way in the long term. we can continue to make our investmen investments. >> i yield now one minute to mr. blumenauer from oregon. >> thank you very much, mr. yarmuth. i think this is, in fact, reasonable. it's part of the bigger picture. i think pledges that will never raise taxes are

the distinction with reagan, reagan was cutting tax rates and deregulating and not bailing out detroitpresident obama has one of the largest tax hikes scheduled in his budget in the history of the earth. i don't see why people are going to buy into that. >> well, larry, i was listening to what ann said a moment ago. yes, there are millions of people who are unemployed but there were millions of people unemployed when ronald reagan said that in 1984. the unemployment rate was 8% then, it's 8.3% now. it's ton a trajectory going downwards. you can point to gm but gm is now the world's automaker, they had the most profitable year ever last year and at the same time this president has been very successful not on in creating jobs but also in dealing with foreign policy issues. he killed osama bin laden here, took out gadhafi in libya. he's been remarkably successful. considering where we were three years ago, it's amazing he's been able to accomplish what he has. >> ann coulter, mitt romney says america's economy is in a weakened position. he won the michigan primary in a great comeback by c

and this is why if ronald reagan is interesting. he goes to eureka college, tiny little place and if you study closely what you can see it's like harry truman who didn't finish college, only modern president didn't have a college degree, they both of their particular political the machinations or their own self education. in ronald reagan's defense case it is the years in hollywood and traveling around the country when he's reading of the early modern classics of the american conservative movement whitaker chambers witness, the economics and one was in his reading and the speeches, he's doing all of that on his island. i think it's possible but ronald reagan could have been ruined by the conventional ivy league education. and, so that would be the most interesting. harry truman read history from a very early age and one of the things he says, and i quote in my book, something like a person sits here at this desk in the oval office ought to know his american history. good for him. contrast sharply, i can't resist, contrast sharply wi

so reagan comes in and he puts in pro-growth economic policy. cuts taxes, cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% ultimately to 28%. first to 50%, en to 28%. and cut back on some regulations. guess what happened? after two years, in june of the third year of the reagan president, 7.5% or whatever it was growth. and it kicked off a boom, an economic growth boom that created hundreds of millions of new jobs. >> rose: but when he made those decisions it was a tough political call because there was a lot of pain inflect and people were saying this is bad politics. >> yes. >> rose: and theyere the throat of pulolckerecau of who what he was doing to squeeze out the inflation >> yes, they were. and volcker took a lot of heat and president reagan took a lot of heat and guess what? the policies worked. >> rose: it's smart politics because you do it at the beginning of your term because if it turns things around by the time the election comes around again you'll be in a better place. >> that's correct. but president obama came in under somewhat similar cir

reagan, you just see him waving in the distance. he doesn't have to say what his accomplishments are, he can point to the cheering crowds. and i think that sort of drawing in the warm feeling of america, is a reminder from the '70s to '80s, people did feel better about america and america's role in the world. there was a lot of self-doubt. jimmy carter called it malaise in the 1970s. and i think these commercials both really tapped very effectively into the change of the american mood. >> we're talking a darrell west, the author of "air wars," coming out in its sixth edition. one of the massage from your book is that the ads need to reflect the times. obvious point, but if you can elaborate on that. >> it's important to keep that in mind because a lot of people think you can advertise anything and basically persuade the people that people are kind of stupid, it's easy to manipulate and mislead them. but when you look at the history of campaign advertising, often times, the most effective ads play into some public value or public opi

in that sense, and i'm going back to president reagan. played a tremendous role. he would never -- he would always say plainly and clearly, when he -- i remember that so well, tear down that wall, mr. gorbachev. despite their friendly, open relationship he was really attached in a human way. no wonder he was suspected at some point he was too friendly with the united states, and would later be denounced gorbachev as a traitor. he's called sometimes a traitor. no one knows. but that's the thing which happened, but before gorbachev would fall in that category of traitors, when i spoke openly for reforms inside the kgb and my experience in the united states was not a waste of time, i learned that in a free country you have to have several organizations dealing with security and intelligence. you cannot combine them in one fist because that one fist is a road to dictatorship. that's exactly what happened in russia, only kgb, no one else. the giu military intelligence was all infested with kgb informants. and the defense department. they would not move around freely. w

cuts to an institution that reagan helped to build it?the tribes of the reagan military -- the cold war, the great threat of air time, ended without a single shot being fired. the gulf war is where we decimated the world's fourth largest army in less than one month. remember reagan + three legged stool, the compass that keeps us focused on our conservative principles. when we are strong and when we stick to those principles, america does wonderful thing. we cannot walk blindly through this defining. in our nation's history. we cannot ignore the lessons of the past. i believe in optimism. i believe in confidence and i believe with your support, we can stage a resurrection of this great country. we have taken our lelicks and this past decade has been tough but we have an aborted revolution, a civil war, a great depression, two world wars, and nicole. warps every -- and a cold war. every time we get dropped we climbed m ofat. our job as californians and as americans is to stiffen that result. the ability to control our on destiny is what mak

we are the descendents of reagan, reagan in that generation, held that torch high, told those tyrantsplause] >> they were no different. the people of the greatest generation, the people of reagan's generation were no different than the people here today. they did what they had to do. they stood up and they rose to the occasion, to preserve freedom. ladies and gentlemen, what is necessary now in america to preserve freedom is for each and every one of you to engage in that struggle in this election do not be those people that reagan talked about, who would have to tell their children and children's children what it was like to live in an america where men were free. you don't want to ever have that conversation. and unless we do the right thing in this election, we will be the generation that allowed that torch to go out, that beacon of hope for the world. the best way to make that happen is to make this election like the election of 1980. don't make it who can best manage washington or be the ceo of the economy. we need someone who can talk and strike blows for big things like reagan

no one, that is, except ronald reagan. president reagan had a vision.nd it changed the world and made it a safer place. but he also knew the importance of a strong military as well as good intelligence. as you will learn today, information provided to the president and his advisers is critical. in all fairness, things wen'

no one, that is, except ronald reagan. president reagan had a vision.nd it changed the world and made it a safer place. but he also knew the importance of a strong military as well as good intelligence. as you will learn today, information provided to the president and his advisers is critical. in all fairness, things weren't always easy nor were there full agreement on the course of action. and those disagreements probable caused some consternation in washington. today we offer an insightful look at that amazing period of our history. we have assembled a stellar group of speakers and panelists who will provide important perspectives and perhaps some lively discussion. our keynote was there on the front lines with ronald reagan. and we are quite fortunate to have him with us today because he graciously agreed to modify his schedule so he could be here. but unfortunately he has to leave at the break because he has to catch a red eye to go back to new york this evening. ken adelman has an impressive resume. author, professor, senior government official, a

well, as it turns out president reagan was practical. i mean really pragmatic guy who had his own ideas and who wanted to finish with the system of -- whatever it waist russian system without a single shot. that's how margaret thatcher said that. the soviet system fell apart without a single shot. and president reagan played a tremendous role in bringing down the soviet system. well, as i mentioned earlier, there is a growing restoration of the soviets. i mean, not in the worst ways. system in current russia. and this is what you have to to bear in mind. the soviet intelligences have been revived. and as i said earlier about the three pillars of the old days, the three pillars are kgb as i said number one, russian church number two, russian business people who are willing to collaborate. if they do not they are in london like mr. berizovski, godfather of mr. putin by the way. well-known billionaire and i met in washington one day years ago. and he told me how he picked up putin. he thought that he would be his kind of sort of a player an

she said she never was able to accomplish what reagan accomplished in america. she said the reason the british national health care system. she said once government has their hooks into you, once government makes you dependent upon it for your very health and your lives and that of your children and your loved ones, it got you. [ applause ] they got you. and there is no amount of tributes you will not pay to get what you think you need to preserve your health and more importantly the health of those that you love. that's why obama care is the number one issue in this race. it is a race -- it's an issue about fundamental freedom. it's about whether you will be a generation that will be the generation that reagan talked about. he said freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. we didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. but must be fought for, protected and handed on to them to do is same or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like in the united states when men were free

me while i work full time actually there's always this whole time this is a modern version of what reagan did to mentally ill people what it is a modern version of what reagan did to middle that's exactly right it's also an assault on all up it's not just the poor and i'm just the elderly it's everybody's it's satellite up one percent except for the top one percent get grants really always a tax break. and those of us who've had to work all our lives . so you work on the only dock for a trucking company you load trucks you get on concrete for thirty forty years and now you find. your back hurts every day your feet hurt every day your legs hurt every day and now you find out oh you can't retire until you're seventy and not only that that insurance policy medicare that you've been paying into your whole entire life and it's not there for you there if you get out surely adventure and you got to go your way the insurance company can president you know here's real life. my mother was a school my father was a bad dismissed or my mother was a schoolteacher she had a massive heart attack six mont

did to mentally ill people were hit is a modern version of what reagan did to millie that's exactly right it's also an assault on all up us it's not just the poor that's just the elderly it's everybody it's a light off one percent except for the top one per se get three trillion dollars in tax breaks. and those of us who've had to work all our lives. so you work on a role in a da for a trucking company you load trucks you've been on concrete for thirty forty years and now you find. your back hurts every day your faith hurt every day your legs hurt every day and now you find out oh you can't retire until you're seventy and not only that insurance policy medicare that you've been paying into your whole entire life it's not there for you know it's there you get out you're a good example sure and you've got to go where your insurance company president you know here's a real life. my mother was a school my father was a bad miss minister my mother was a schoolteacher she had a massive heart attack six months before retirement she died eighteen hours later that's what life is like for work

michael dukakis was photo in a tank in opposition to reagan star wars fiasco cause people think he was weak on defense and actually served two years in the army was very strong on defense george mcgovern who ran against richard nixon in one thousand nine hundred eighty two was portrayed by next as people say if he dove in fact he'd been a bomber pilot during world war two successfully completing thirty five missions including one where plane had one hundred ten bullet holes in the fuselage and wings lost his hydraulic power had an engine on fire yet he made an emergency landing on a strip that was so short it killed many pilots before him but he pulled it off and was awarded the air star with three oakleaf clusters bottom line in politics perception is more important than reality and while you can come up with instances of republicans being stuck with such wrong perceptions republican political operatives love to spread this stuff about their their enemies in this primary republican strategist working for santorum and gingrich have been happy to label romney this way so would be intere

rumble and in tonight's daily take we regularly drug companies to the products don't kill us why did reagan's appointee wendy gramm you regulate financial products letting them kill our economy and those recent spain. you need to know this. we do begin. in two closely watched primaries down south tuesday rick santorum pulled off a clean sweep winning both held by alabama and mississippi despite outspending santorum five to one in alabama and the reader want to mississippi romney got third place in both contests other words his wall street super pac donors were no match for rick santorum is wall street super pac donors newt gingrich fiction finish second in the two states which is own campaign spokesman had said before and word need to win states to remain a credible candidate but based on his concession speech last night gingrich doesn't seem to be going anywhere. we will continue to run a people's campaign i believe after the primaries are over will be obvious that the so-called front runner in fact didn't get there and from that point on we'll be in a whole new conversation. so much of the

reagan was solid. for years i've been out leading the charge on the issue of radical islam, authoring bills against syria called the syrian accountability act, the first program, first sanctions program put in place on the iranian new mexico program back in -- nuclear program back in 2006. even though george bush originally opposed it as did joe biden and barack obama. but i fought because i understood, just like reagan in his time understood that the threat to western civilize saying now radical islam. and i'm not afraid to call it what it is. [applause] ronald reagan had the courage to stand up and counter to all of his advisors and call the evil empire the evil empire. we need to call radical islam in iran exactly what it is. evil and that evil regime must be replaced by the iranian people with a government that reflects the values of the persian people. [applause] there is one candidate in this race who has just like reagan, dedicated a tremendous amount of their time and energy -- when i left the

there is only one ronald reagan.only republican candidate with the views of the reagan administration. that is, rick santorum. we are in the 16th congressional district. i want to say the names of our delegates who are pledged to represent rick santorum in tampa, florida. you've got to go down and vote for each of these people in order for us to win the 16th district. one of them is over here to my koczinski.dennis kaniewsk another of our delegates from princeton, and illinois. khristine arndt. and from the county of ford, jan peterson. her husband is serving as an alternate delegate. kristie shilling is here, the wife of congressman bobby shilling. let's give her a round of applause over here. the great congressman from the 16th district is here. and i am from henry county. i will be on the 17th district out. i am running with a rich galva.rom, the mayor of diyal i'm also running with james radel, from erie, illinois. and from sterling, ill., k. farris. do not forget to vote for your delegates. thank you very much.

i mean reagan didn't want to raise taxes. >> jon: reagan didn't want to raise taxs?on: but he did it eight times? >> no. he had a congress with whom he raised taxes a number of times. when i talked to him about it, the big tax increase was the '2 tax increase. >> jon: you're not the only one he talked to. he told me he did it eight times. >> the '82 tax inkurri he said was the biggest mistake of his presidency because, of course, remember he was promised, oh, if you raise taxes we'll give you $3 spending. >> jon: he kept raising them in '82, '83, '85. so would you have run somebody against him? >> no. the good news is.... >> jon: why not? >> well, one he hadn't signed the pledge. >> jon: (laughing). it's a good thing it's not reductive. >> look, the reason why the pledge works is that you have... we now have the experience from the reagan years that if you raise taxes, it doesn't reduce the deficit. the other team will simply spend the resources. >> jon: there was a huge tax cut and he went from a surplus to a deficit. does that put any kind of doubt in your mind abo

megyn: michael reagan is chairman of the reagan group.pt sounds a little familiar to him in terms of our democratic leader saying something along these lines to russia. what do you mean? >> well, what i mean is you go back to 1978. you have ted kennedy make contact with the kgb in russia to try to undermine jimmy carter to allow ted kennedy to win the aelection away from jimmy carter. in 198 oh goes to his friend john tunney to contact the kgb to tell them he agrees with their afghan policy. and if indeed he will support ted kennedy in what what he wants to do, he will send barbara walters and walter cronkite to moscow to make him look good in front of the public and the united states of america. 1980, jimmy carter goes to arm & hammer. he -- you let the soviet jews go back to israel. carter if reelected will remember you after he's reelected and be good to the soviet bloc. 1983. kennedy wakes up again and through john tunney reaches out again to the soviets and says, i'll help you with reagan if you will help the democrats win the electi