i hoped with ronald reagan the line or joke about hard work. but reagan really did work hard. he worked hard on his speeches. he rehearsed them over and over, even the ones he delivered hundreds of times before and he rewrote many of them entirely from scratch. he did this, because he recognized, as james baker told me, that giving speeches is one of the president's most important duties. reagan's gift was his ability to speak candidly about the realities of the age while still presenting an optimistic vision for the future. in his best speech, most. he ramably in my mind at the brandenburg gate, found a way to defend american interests and inspire people to believe that the world really could become a better place. and the challenge for our current president and i think all those that succeed him will be to do the same. i've now spoken for longer than ronald reagan did in berlin so i hope you enjoys book and i'm ready to take any questions that you might have. thank you. yes, in the back. >> i have a question. thank you very much for your presentation. during this time period

reagan didn't have any of these same preserveations. just one line in a 28-minute address but he made it clear it was the one thing he wanted to say. he told the speechwriters when they met him and gave him the drafts and asked what he thought, that that was the one line, and when the speech writers learned this was the one thing reagan wanted to say, that was all the ammunition they needed to fend off the attacks and the efforts of other people in the administration to take the line out. now, it's possible reagan was just relying on an old actor the sixth sense for a killer line but there may be a simpler xran explanation. he thought it would work. reagan believed in reaching out to gorbachev and pushing him to pursue change, calling on him to open the brigade and dare down the wall in reagan's view might implore him to do it. coinciding with conservatives on both sides of the wall. a few days before we arrived the east german state police clashed with hundreds of east german youths who had tried

but reagan starts to telling jokes. so tell some of the little things that reagan was doing and what gorbachev did in return, because this is wonderful inside stuff. >> reagan, who obviously was a professional had an enormous stock of jokes. they used to say that bob hope had a vault full of jokes with files and whatnot. reagan did have that in his own head, but that's one thing. the gift of that is picking the right joke at the right time. >> exactly. no, that's brilliant. it's brilliant. >> the right point. and one of the -- jack made the point said that gorbachev picked up on it. one of the jokes he loved to tell was had john met yvonne. and john said, the united states is a better country than the soviet union. i can walk up to the white house and say that ronald reagan is doing a terrible job leading the country. and yvonne said, well, what's the big deal about that? i can walk up to the kremlin and go to gorbachev and say i think ronald reagan is doing a terrible job. >> and then? gorbachev, jack? >> well, gorbach

reagan. and so we go up to new york for the speech. and nancy says, when do you think we should get there? i said you were scheduled to speak about 11:30. i said we'll g there about 11:00, 11:15. nan say says, no, if i want people to listen to me, i ought to go earlier and listen to them. what an unusual, refreshing comment. so we got there about 10:15, as i remember. plenty of time to thereon other people. the hall was practically empty. and i don't know whether you have ever had nancy with those big brown eyes look at you, and she said, "george, doesn't anyone want to hear what i have to say?" and so not knowing what i was talking about, i said, don't worry, nancy. everybody knows when you are going to speak. when you get ready to speak, the place will be jammed. and it was and she gave her speech beautifully. and at this place, the convention was that if you sat in your seat and if anybody from another country wanted to say something to you, they came by your seat. well, the whole place ca

reagan and i were the verifiers. he had an awful lot of faith in his vice president, in george herbert walker bush. he thought he was the right person to carry on his presidency, into george herbert walker bush's presidency. he knew that the relationship with the then soviet union would be solid. that's why we brought george herbert walker bush with us. there is a great photo, i'm sure you have in your archives, it's the only time i was ever allowed to play advance man in the white house. when we went to governor's island in new york harbor, since i came from new york city, from brooklyn, new york, the backdrop of governor's island is the statue of liberty. what symbolized that lunch was gorbachev flanked by reagan and bush which appeared in all the newspapers, all the front pages, ""time"" magazine when it was a thick magazine and "newsweek." that became the symbol. he had no qualms about george herbert walker bush. he knew what his values were, and he knew where he would take the country in the aftermath of eight y

. >> reagan-esque. >> there you go again. >> president reagan, excuse me. >> reagan's legacy is causing a bit of a fracture in the gop. >> ronald reagan would not necessarily pass the litmus test. >> president reagan -- excuse me. >> what can mitt romney do to appear more human? >> he's had a little trouble relating to joe six pack. >> an opportunity to insult some more small business owners on the quality of their cookies. >> first off, doughnuts, anyone? >> would you see if one of those chocolate -- one of those chocolate goodies finds its way -- >> doughnut, referred to as a chocolate goody. >> i'll be do some testing on that one right there. >> mitt is just your average blue-collar fan of drasage. whoo! i just get swept up. >>> tomorrow, president obama and mitt romney will deliver dueling speeches on the most important issue to voters in judging by the candidate's travel schedules, the most important state in the presidential election. the speeches on the economy will take place in ohio. president obama will speak in cleveland. mitt romney will speak in cincinnati. and mitt romney

asked reagan to show him how to do it. the two men actually had a brief saluting clinic they are in the century plaza office of the president and it reminded me that it was eisenhower who taught kennedy how to press a couple of buttons on the phone and make a quick getaway by helicopter and it was johnson he taught nixon where the tapes were although that may -- johnson may have had a scheme up his sleeve about that. it's not just in matters of policy the men who are in commanders in chief pass on tips. this is one where a former president had a particularly keen understanding of the world of public perception played in leadership not just about public officials by private ones, very important. clinton would learn that and he would come to salute every time he got off the helicopter just as president reagan had done. it was passed on further when i think george w. bush went to visit clinton when president clinton was leaving office in george w. bush asked clinton -- he said to him, you didn't used to be such a great speake

he went to meet with reagan because reagan by now is actively seeking the 1968 nomination. he is beginning to attend primary sand pick up delegates. he has the right wing of the republican party completely back over. people like william f. buckley saying there's no one else to vote for except ronald reagan and here's richard nixon who thought he would have a stately walk to the nomination suddenly having to contend with this newcomer from california who he had met in 1947 when he was a young congressman. they have known each other for a long time and had correspondents in the year 1916s but by this time they are on opposite sides. as we found throughout the story would be friends and sometimes rivals before either of them reach the oval office. this is the picture most people at walter reed. ike house >> we have these partnerships with reagan and nixon. presidents of the same party often have a more complicated time getting along with each other than presidents of different parties and we see up to this day. with president obama and president clinton obviously their relatio

reagan played. but reza gorbachev played, i would say, a parallel role and probably in the strict political intellectual sense even a greater role. she had a ph.d. in sociology. she was actually better educated than gorbachev. and he has often said in private that she taught him a lot. and he didn't mean just about life, but she brought him books that he needed to read that he didn't know. it's not correct to say that gorbachev wasn't a politician. he grew up in exactly the same bureaucratic rough-and-tumble party apparatus that yeltsin did. they just turned out to be different people which reminds us that that apparatus was more diverse than we often thought it was. but certainly today as gorbachev turns 80 and his wife has been gone ten years, eight years and the sadness of her absence is plainly with him any time you get him near the subject. he's beginning to write about and think through the influence that she had on his life. and in some of the pages he's written, he actually says, i became go

i mean, two reagan terms. bush was reagan's vice president. we had 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 tough mountain. there was another major problem. that's reason number one. i think a lot of people were tired of us. we had 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 are not many times when it's happened. we had kept it for 12. secondly, we had a little jug-eared fellow from texas named ross perot that you may or may not have heard of -- [ laughter ] and he took -- ross perot took 19% of the vote. clinton got 43%, bush got 38%, and perrault got 19%. and our pollings showed us that p perot was taking two out of the three votes from us. you add that and we have 51. when people tell me oh, he didn't cost you the election, i say i'm sorry, 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

he's really intrigued by reagan.e likes the optimism and he secretly begins to write letters to some of reagan's friends to help him cope with the charge, which in the states is that reagan was too much of an extremist to represent the republican party. eisenhower's letters to reagan to cut us through middlemen are astonishing. for example, there is a charge that you tend to close to the john birch society in the early 1960s. as a spurious charge, but it kept coming up. eisenhower had script press conferences. we should find someone to assess question american should answer it this way. he goes through several letters and he is doing it while nixon is trying to seek the gop nomination. he is a very interesting prospect at eisenhower secretly hoping reagan and 66, 67, 68 pamela fagan is contesting contesting for the gop nomination are used to be ex-vice president. >> and his daughters about to start dating and will marry the full classic familial kaslow. >> can you talk about this picture because you understood it bet

reagan was confronted. he had been in berlin once before, but he was confronted starkly right in front of us with this mammoth creature called the berlin wall with crosses pointed -- painted on the wall where people had been shot and killed. it was an unbelievably emotional moment. we departed right from there to the brandenburg gate. i had the honor of being in the limousine with the president, and in these days of teleprompters he was using a prepared speech, not a teleprompter. and everybody refers to him as the great communicator, and part of the reason is that he always rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, and so one last time he was going through the document, through the speech on his lap in the back of the limousine, and we got to that paragraph, and as peter pointed out, the president turned to me, and said, it's going to drive the state department boys crazy, but we're going to leave that line in. and 20 minutes later the signature line of the eight years of president reagan. but let me also add

he needs to say, ronald reagan wanted that. ronald reagan would have endorsed that. but i think it's actually more interesting to look at what jeb bush is doing because while he's declaring his independence from grover norquist and his party, he's also delivering a kind of vote of no confidence in mitt romney even though he's endorsed him. because i see that as -- it is a bizarre statement for someone if you think -- it's not something you say if you think your party is headed to a great win in november. it's really the kind of thing you hear the morning after an election where you've done very badly. i really wonder what's up with that. >> he's already anticipating a potential loss of mitt romney, should we say? i don't want to put words in your mouth. do you think he's ginning up to that point? >> that's the way i took it. if you're saying we need to race revenues and you -- he also went on to criticize him, you know, quite directly for his immigration, for his really anti-immigrant policies. >> right. >> you know, those are not the kinds of things you do if you ar

was saying in terms of productivity, reagan did raise taxes. he also cut taxes enormously. if you look at what he did in the '86 tax reform act, he gave democrats things that they wanted. he eliminated taxes for the lowest income americans. that was reagan's idea so he could get democrats to the table. the moment in that entire cycle that you will never see today, reagan went on tv, had an oval office address that i am going to cut your taxes, it's going to be more fair, everyone is going to see a change in their taxes. then the democrat came out to give his response and said mr. president, we're with you. that will never happen. >> that will never, ever happen. exactly. >> there's an important -- ronald reagan is a very difficult symbol for the republican party, in part because he's this kind of like symbol of all that's great. he's like norman rockwell, and people forget a lot of the sort of nastier bits of the history. i think importantly, what we're talking about, is he was able to stand for the idea of having principles but being able to m

reagan very, very well. do you really believe that he thought that you could hit a bullet with a bullet? and in spite of the negative things about his adviser could have told him about the difficulty of star wars working, do you really believe that ronald reagan thought that star wars would work? >> did reagan really think star wars would work? or let me add to that, or did you think he should have used it as a bargaining chip? i'm adding that on. >> he hoped that one could develop a defense against ballistic missiles. he would say -- and i think sincerely, and he told gorbachev -- all i'm asking for is the right to find out whether it is feasible, and if feasible, economically viable. i think it will be -- i hope it will be. now, and the thing was that as i would say, the reason i don't use star wars, because this was ballistic missile defense. now, a lot of people put up ideas that you're going to put interceptors in space and so on. certainly by the time they went to iceland, it was clear to us in the whi

the reagan we knew of the last eight years in office. >> i think that was ron reagan. >> speaking at the rnc meeting of the members. but he made that exact same point that ronald reagan would not pass the litmus tests being created within the party today. >> that was michael who said that i thought he was further right than his father. >> yeah yeah. >> i thought he was further right than his father. >> ron reagan speaking as an expert. eyebrows raising here. republican republican, mainstream conservative official use like affirmative action and vouchers. for him to say the party has moved so far from the conservative center is pretty amazing stuff. >> yeah, it is. i imagine, when i hear jeb speaking, i'm listening to a guy who think i saw his moment kind of pass and it wasn't able to take advantage of it. >> well, it's a moving target, isn't it? >> that's true. >> that's true enough. i think he's right. it isn't so much policies that separate let's say reagan from today's republican party. it's a willingness to deal with your opponents. so reach across the aisle. you were in a privil

you know the spending under reagan and this is obama and this is that point this is how reagan got out of that how much higher unemployment than we have right now ten point eight percent he got out of it by government spending as economist paul krugman points out and by the way continue you know throughout his term as economist paul krugman points out government employment grew by three point one percent during reagan's recovery while republicans today have forced government employment to shrink by two point seven percent during the obama recovery the government spending during the first two and a half years of the reagan recovery increased by ten point two percent that's what you're seeing here under the obama recovery republicans of handcuffed government spending increasing it by only two point six percent what does all this translate into well thanks to the massive infusion of government spending during the reagan recovery the more money that was pumped into our economy working people this is this is the unemployment number you see how high they got under reagan and and it started f

eight years without ronald reagan. i covered ronald reagan for the "washington post."f the more personable, down-to-earth guys. what is striking to me, because when he came in the white house, he was so famous. you don't understand, for my parents, ronald reagan was well-known as spokesman and movie star. he goes to this period, when he is channeling gerald ford and the intense politics. i was the low man on the totem pole and ronald reagan would make time. make sure i wasn't getting screwed. telling you, a special guy. >> dana: a great memory. i said in the break, one of my earliest memories is watching that speech. later on i read peggy noonan's book. and she talked about how it was put together. we talked about the normandy speech. it's interesting how involved president reagan was, he wanted to get the message right to honor heroes. >> eric: interesting story about d-day. a window, they could only attack, we can only hit beaches on or around the full moon. window opened on june 5, 1944. closed immediately because of the weather. opened up for a couple of hours on j

we remembered president reagan's concerns. after a yearlong interagency review, we concluded that the conclusion strongly advanced u.s. security, economic and environmental interests and the administration's first priority list in 2002, we told this committee there was an urgent need for senate approval of the convention. we reviewed the concerns in 1982. we concluded the concerns had been addressed by the amendments to the convention in 1994. the other western countries that president reagan and secretary rumsfeld had successly purr sue persuaded not to sign the treaty had all joined the treaty after the treaty was amended. between 2003 and 2009, senior bush administration political appointees from the department of defense, state, commerce, interi interior, homeland security testified and sent letter to this committee and other committees strongly endorsing the convention. defense department appointees twice testified in favor of the treaty. president bush himself issued statements in 2007 and 2009 urging the senate to appro

reagan was a conservative and tip was a liberal. i lived through it. reagan was a congress. tip was a liberal, but they could agree on tax reform, on fixing social security. anything that -- every moment of the day there. i think it's very interesting if you can find common ground. you can make a better contribution to the country. any way, here's jeb bush drawing the line between his father and reagan as well in the republican party and that party of today. he made it as a breakfast today. here he is, read this to you. ronald reagan would have been based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad. they would have a hard time if you define the republican party as having an orthodoxy. it doesn't allow for disagreement or finding common ground. and you know, i see that. it's very strange, michael, because you had to contend with those new forces, but you have to wonder about what do the people come to washington elected as members of the house, i'm not knocking everybody. they get elected as much anything else. anybody else. t

a very narrow win for an incumbent president, but, of course, ronald reagan, governor reagan, had been running for president two or three times before. he was an extraordinarily tough competitor and challenger, and we felt fortunate to win the nomination, even though we won it narrowly. then we started -- after the -- after the nomination, president ford asked me to chair his general election campaign against jimmy carter because, as i said, rogers martin, who had been chairman, developed cancer. we started out 25, 30 points behind. on election day the two candidates were dead even. we only lost by 10,000 votes out of 81 million votes that were cast, so it -- those close elections are tougher to lose quite frankly sometimes than the blowouts, but that was -- i was chairman of the president ford committee in the general election. >> okay. the relationship with president nixon, did president ford consult with president nixon on foreign policy, and were they friends? >> i can't answer that because i was -- i was in the campaign and not really in the white house. i was over at commerce for

ronald reagan came to the country. and he did not have the luxury of saying what we are doing is working. let's continue it. what we were doing had wrecked the economy, what we were doing had caused the u.s. to lose the first war. what we were doing had causesed the united states to follow second to the soviet union and for the only time since world war ii in the early '80s, the early '80s were the only time since world war ii where side of the value scale was on the wane and the other side was on the asensation, so ronald reagan could not come to the country and say what we are doing is working. and he could not speak to a republican country, because 52% of the country called themselves democrats. so, instead of making an appeal to keep things the way they are, and not take a chance of risk, the election that so many conservatives cared the most about, the one i think you trade all the others for in some ways is 1980, when ronald reagan had to come to this country and say we appear to be in the dulldroms and losing ou

and he said when reagan was becoming--nofsiger worked for reagan in the--in the governor's mansion, too, in california as press secretary. and he said, you know, as reagan got more popular and--and more powerful and more of a national figure, people would start gathering around him who were not ideological conservatives--businessmen who wanted to preserve the status quo and cut taxes and all kinds of opportunists; and he called them fat cats. and--and nofsiger always mistrusted them. because he--he--nofsiger is a bedrock ideological conservative and he always made sure that reagan got time with joe coors 'cause not only did joe have deep pockets and was willing to write checks, but joe coors kept reagan centered and focused on these conservative principles. and nofsiger said, 'i really didn't have to do much because they really become--became close friends.' and reagan would fly out to colorado and just hang out with joe and holly and, you know, have dinner with them and sit around the house and talk and they became--they became real friends. i don't know if you remember the radio addre

came out of the imagination of ronald reagan. i will say something about that, but allowed the rest of it to come in these hall ways and from people who have been associated with this foundation for a long time. as someone who is kind of a new convert to the republican party, but not such a new convert to conservatism, this is like being in the cathedral. i am honored in that sense. rob alluded to the fact that i switched parties a few weeks ago and did it the new fashioned way and i did a listing on my blog about it. i have gotten some attention, some publicity for it. not of it not deserved. it is a little bit unusual for someone who used to be a democratic elected official to switch parties. it is unusual for an african-american democratic elected official to switch camps. i get all of that. i want to put it in perspective. 2008, president obama got 53% of the vote. by the way, that's the biggest margin anybody running for president of the united states has gotten since george hw bush got 54%. relative landslide in our closely

glaring difference is ronald reagan raised taxes 11 times, in fact. the tax equity and fiscal responsibility act of 1982. the highway revenue act of 1982. the social security amendments of 1983. the railroad retirement revenue act of 1983. the deficit reduction act of 1984. the consolidated omnibus budget reconciliation act of 1985. the omnibus budget reconciliation act of 1986. the superfund amendments and reauthorization act of 1986. the continuing resolution for 1987. the omnibus budget reconciliation act of 1987 and the continuing resolution for 1988. that was the longest intro i have had since this show began. nicolle, it gave you plenty of time to think perhaps of the answer to this question, which is if mitt romney is a republican in the model of ronald reagan, do you think he will raise taxes? >> i want to go back to what you said about jeb bush, because what jeb bush was saying wasn't that reagan was too moderate to be a republican by today's standard. it was that he was too productive. what reagan did, and that list was a list of legislative

you're right reagan exploded federal spending so you know we got to do something about that reagan did do that and yes you can going to do it as the president is going to tax your right and so you have to look at the other half of it when ronald reagan came into office corporations are paying twenty nine percent of the cost of federal government right now the pain seven percent so there's two pieces to this first of all going after income tax is the problem there is really rich people don't always make their and they don't make their money through income the distribution value here is just really not that much the bigger let's do away with capital gains tax that the one of the reagan was the guy who said do you think that a millionaire in the us a bus driver should pay shouldn't pay the same tax rate he said that's crazy that a millionaire paid less than a bus and this is indicative of what's wrong with just having two parties here this is what we've got into this is just mudslinging at election time this is not going to get done we have real problems they need to be solved so what do

and reagan had them. and he pursued them.e would be very comfortable today with the tea party and republic party. in fact, i think he would say as paul ryan said after the 2010 election where you have got a radical change in direction of the republic party, pau ryan said we had lost our way. we had entertained this kind of moderate conservatism as his father, the bush father said kindler and gentler as george w. said compassionate conservatism. that was a variation they did. but i think the republics have spoken that was not the way to go. this is a return to arrestingism. >> isn't it true though that ronald reagan and tipp o'neal had a very strong relationship that was back and forth and there was legislation that was embraced by both parties back then and reagan was a master at basically selling his point of view, which was conservative to a liberal guy like o'neil where that kind of has vanished now on both ends. i mean, barack obama is not calling in the conservative people for consultations. so it has vanished on both si

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they never gave reagan that respect.ll high and mighty ... >> i think they should be able to ask any question. >> he wasn't going to answer the question. he never does. >> he calls on his favorite reporters, his lap dogs, that's it. >> that's true. >> he knew what he was saying was basically contradicting what he said a year before and he would be challenged on it, and that's why he got very thin skinned about it. >> this guy wasn't going to get an answer out of this. he was just trying to disrupt him. >> when we come back, i'm shocked, but david axelrod rips into obama. we've got the tape. you didn't know that existed, did you? more of our great, great, great american panel coming up. >> sean: we continue with our great, great american panel. even though david axelrod said this in 1994, it's so appropo to the fact that the president has now played his 100th round of golf as the country suffers. listen to axelrod in 1994. >> although it started to run out on bush. he couldn't say we're out of the recession and technicall