Fiscal disaster or political theater?
By Patrice Hill- The Washington Times
The White House is warning of financial Armageddon this spring if Congress fails to raise the Treasury's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, but many on Wall Street are skeptical that the looming spending clash will produce anything but riveting political theater.
Wall Street ratings agencies are not particularly worried that the U.S. Treasury will be forced into default, and some traders and investors say they are less concerned about the market impact of an extended partisan spending war than its potentially adverse effect on the economy and the nation's social fabric.
Republicans, though far from united over what to do about the debt ceiling, nearly all want to couple the measure with some kind of major spending cuts or reforms.
Some freshman Republicans backed by the tea party say they will not vote for any increase in the debt ceiling at all, in a bid to force draconian, immediate spending cuts. Others are drafting a plan that would allow selective increases in the debt to finance Social Security payments, military spending and interest payments to Treasury's bondholders.
A leading Senate conservative and tea party favorite, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, wants to attach a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution on legislation that would increase the debt limit.
The proliferation of Republican plans to try to force major spending cuts and reforms as their price for raising the debt ceiling has prompted dire White House warnings that such plans risk forcing the Treasury into default and setting off financial turmoil in markets worldwide.
But to David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's Corp., both sides are manufacturing an "artificial crisis."
He expects the clash over the debt limit to be mostly "high-octane political theater" rather than a major market-moving event. But he said there's a small chance the highly charged political atmosphere could produce a real blowup.
"It's a political game of chicken — a way of making the other side flinch," he said, adding that credit agencies take a dim view of what has become a ritual fight over the debt limit that occurs each time it is put before Congress.
"The problem with games of chicken, of course, is that there is always the risk that neither side flinches," however "irresponsible" that might be since Congress already has approved the spending increases and tax cuts that caused the debt to rise, Mr. Wyss said.
The Treasury can employ a number of "exceptional measures" that would extend the deadline for passing a debt-ceiling increase by some estimates into July or August. Once the limit is reached, the government would either have to cut spending immediately or put off paying its debt obligations in a first-ever default on U.S. government securities.
"Default by the U.S. Treasury could cause significant and long-lasting financial and economic disruption," Mr. Wyss said, but "we don't believe there is a significant chance of this occurring, as implied by our 'AAA' U.S. sovereign credit rating and its stable outlook."
Mr. Wyss added that "temporary delays in raising the debt ceiling will most likely have no effect because such delays have occurred many times before."
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was not so nonchalant about the looming spending clash in an appearance before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday. He stressed the danger of letting Treasury's borrowing authority lapse and sought to discourage Republicans from crossing that threshold.
"Failure to pay interest on the debt would create an enormous crisis in financial markets," would raise the interest rates that Treasury pays for years to come, and would make reducing the deficit much harder because of the higher debt payments, he said. "We could have a seizing of the system that would be quite detrimental to the economy."
Mr. Bernanke also was cool to the strategy championed by some Republicans to enable the Treasury to keep making debt payments and payments on a few politically favored programs while prohibiting borrowing for other spending programs. He said that plan would present "technical" difficulties that would have to be worked out, at a minimum.
Mr. Bernanke's warnings about letting the debt ceiling lapse echoed Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner's prediction earlier this year of "catastrophic damage to the economy" that would be "potentially much more harmful than the effects of the financial crises of 2008 and 2009."
On Wednesday, Mr. Geithner conceded that "there's always a little political theater" over the debt legislation and expressed greater confidence that Congress "will act as it always has to meet its obligation."
David Greenlaw, an economist with Morgan Stanley, said he expects only a "modest impact" on financial markets from a "major political battle" peaking in July and August, when the ceiling is close to being reached after Treasury exercises various stalling measures and accounting gimmicks to delay the crunch.
Mr. Greenlaw said no one can be sure how the political drama will play out.
House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, has said he will use the debt-ceiling resolution as a vehicle to try to force spending cuts. At other times, however, he has said that legislators will act like "adults" and raise Congress' self-imposed debt ceiling when needed.
Among other things, "it's not clear that his message is getting through to the rank and file," Mr. Greenlaw said, noting that Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, is leading the charge for the tea party in circulating a petition opposing any further hikes in the debt ceiling.
The tea party plans are reminiscent of a move by House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the GOP's 1995-96 standoff with President Clinton, in which he declared that it was better to default on the debt than to not balance the budget. He relented after his stance became a political liability for the GOP.
The 1990s confrontation, which produced extended government shutdowns as well as threats of default, had "noticeable spillover effects on the bond and currency markets," Mr. Greenlaw said.
"We expect to see an extended period of threats and counterthreats play out over the course of the spring and summer, leading to auction delays … and investor uncertainty," Mr. Greenlaw said. The "showdown could rattle investor confidence" a bit.
But after much storming about, he predicted the debt ceiling would be raised and the confrontation would accomplish little in terms of forcing significant spending cuts or budget reforms.
The $50 billion to $100 billion of discretionary spending cuts demanded by House Republicans, for example, would do little to lower $1 trillion deficits for long, he said.
"What's really needed from the standpoint of fiscal reform are long-term measures to reign in the deficit" such as the reforms in Social Security, Medicare and taxes recommended by President Obama's deficit commission in December, he said.
That point was made by the Fed chairman and Mr. Wyss as well.
Robert Dugger, managing partner at Hanover investments, expects this year's debt-limit confrontation to cause a few ripples in the markets. But he said it will mostly serve to highlight that the country is in a period of civil strife as it moves toward a period of budget austerity.
"Civil tension is rising," he said. "Budgets contain the fabric of civil commitments that hold us together."
Mr. Dugger thinks the drastic budget cuts being pushed by conservatives will bring out resistance from the left wing and result in strikes and labor stoppages as seen among New York City sanitation workers and government employees in Greece when confronted with draconian budget cuts last year.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/10/debt-ceiling-debate-stirs-up-speculation/print/
Friday, February 11, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Pat O’Brien Instruction for Ronald Reagan
Thomas F. Roeser 9 February 2011
Probably the most interesting thing I learned from Ronald Reagan in the four hours I spent with him before getting him to the plane to Santa Barbara in 1979 was not his Chicago abode or watching him fix the bathroom plumbing in the O’Hare Hilton room but his genius for soft theatricality in politics.
For the hard-arguments were not on his side.
You must remember the political conditions that existed then. A major conservative columnist was James J. Kilpatrick, 59, a syndicated columnist who tangled each Sunday for nine straight years as the crotchety rightwing voice paired against Shana Alexander every Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” This was before cable, before the Internet. There was only broadcast television and Kilpatrick…formidable and convincing (living down the fact that he had been a forceful even racist segregationist in the `50s) …syndicated to 172 papers…was the most prominent right-wing voice of the time—far more powerful than George Will has come to be. Or William F. Buckley for that matter. Buckley had an elite conservative magazine. Will was a bow-tied intellectual, a columnist, with the maddening proclivity to trace tax policy back to an offhand remark made by William the Conqueror to his mistress in 1066.
Kilpatrick was the average guy conservative.
Kilpatrick made all kinds of news in 1979 when he pronounced that for the upcoming election of 1980 “Ronald Reagan is a little long in the tooth,” saying he missed his chance by inches in losing the nomination to Jerry Ford—but the future demanded somebody more viable than a 68-year-old ex-movie actor and governor. Sixty-eight was then fearfully old to run for president, as medicine was not so advanced; there were no heart bypasses such as saved me from death in 2004; no operations for subdural hematoma, the delicate brain operation which spared me from certain death–after a four-hour surgery in 1985. People checked out regularly in their late `60s with no weeping or gnashing of teeth. For proof check the obits today. People are in their late `80s, mid-`90s.
So Kilpatrick’s sentence of Reagan as too old was devastating. Not only that but in January of 1979 Reagan’s longtime adversary, Nelson Rockefeller, died of a massive heart attack at 71. It did not assuage things that Rocky was engaged in a strenuously amorous physical pursuit at the apartment of a 27-year-old girl devotee research assistant who at his command did not call 911 but helped the old codger dress and cabbed him to his Manhattan office before she made the call whereby by the time the wagon came the billionaire philanthropist was dead. (She doesn’t have to worry about her old age now by the way—her finances are all taken care of. So long as she doesn’t write a book.)
I was far from a close Reagan operative in 1979…although the only Quaker officer to be for him—the remainder following the CEO and playing it safe by being for John Connally… but I was close enough that I could perceive the Reaganites were gravely shaken by Rocky’s death. Besides there were a whole younger crop—Connally who for the life of me I never saw the attraction although that year he graciously lectured at my Kellogg school class at Northwestern…Poppy Bush (GHW) former CIA director, UN ambassador and China emissary…white-thatched, self-righteous John B. Anderson later to bolt the party and run as an independent…the ever-present Bob Dole, then as ever unburdened by ideological conviction…Howard Baker who was a prominent Republican Senator…and Phil Crane who was running to Reagan’s right. And a host of little guys.
Social conservatives like me really had no choice but Reagan although intriguingly he had signed the most liberal abortion bill in the U. S. as California governor (almost but not quite tied by Rocky in New York). But Reagan had hit the sawdust trail and became an outstandingly articulate advocate for pro-life with an evangelist’s fervor. Connally was pro-abort as were Baker and Bush (known as “rubber George” because he urged the government to dispense far more condoms than they had been to developing nations). Anderson was an angry fire-eating patriarch about “a woman’s right to choose.”
Dole was on the issue as he was on everything else. He had beaten an abortionist doctor in a close race in Kansas where he became an instant pro-lifer but after being returned to the Senate had shut up about it. Crane…then probably the handsomest dog running with jet black hair and flashing smile… gave lip-service to it but he really was more of a libertarian and as with everything else in the House was inactive…”he comes down to take his meals” Henry Hyde said of him… being content to while away his time on frivolities…for which he ultimately whizzed away his solid district.
Reagan was not only the most viable pro-lifer and excepting Crane a sort of walking Cato Institute…to the right of everyone else. People were still rubbing their scabs about Vietnam and everybody was skittish of undue foreign entanglements…were talking détente… but Reagan was touting “why not victory?” Everybody was generally in favor of ERA (except Crane of course) but not Reagan. The Watergate scandal was still resonating and Republicans were flirting with more and more 1st amendment control over campaign donations—but not Reagan. He wanted unlimited campaign donations so long as they were made public right away.
Everybody was for gun control—but not Reagan.
*********************************************************
When he finally fixed the plumbing in the room and sat down to the steak sandwich, I said this:
“I’m really for you but for the life of me I don’t see how you’re going to win. We have a lady in this state, Phyllis Schlafly…”
He said, “I know and like Phyllis very much.”
“So do I,” I said….”but she ran twice for Congress and couldn’t get elected.
Now when he was sensible and a conservative, I was very much for John Anderson…until he got goofy. He’s one hell of a debater. What I want to know is…you’re going to have to debate these guys. Your positions are the same as mine. And given the prevailing temper of this country for liberal ideas, how are you going to sound different than Phyllis Schlafly? The other thing is one guy who is just your age and who co-founded ADA with you when you were a Democrat, Hubert Humphrey is rat-a-tat a walking encyclopedia. You’re not.
“ What I’m getting at is this: Are you just a cult figure of the right…making great speeches…a movie actor who happened to hit it right in California with a vibrant Orange county conservatism and an inept governor in Pat Brown? In essence how do you sell this thing?”
The cops in the room were aghast at my frankness but this is what I did all the time. Fortunately for me, at Quaker they liked it and not only tolerated it but welcomed it…and even encouraged me to get on the radio and WTTW as a commentator and write for the Sun-Times—so long as I didn’t identify Quaker with my views.
Digression: I was usually identified on WBEZ as “a corporate executive.” Bruce DuMont almost upended me years down the road by identifying me as “a cereal executive with offices in Quaker Tower.” End of digression.
I added: “For example, Carter is a detail man….Connally is a former treasury secretary. He can talk debentures that sound persuasive even though most people think he’s talking dentures. John B. Anderson…a longshot… is a student of legislative policy. He talks about a bill and how it appeared in subcommittee …how it was changed in full House committee…how the Senate fooled around with it and changed it such-and-such…how the conference committee rectified this and that—adding a section saying this and that.
“Bush gives off a séance about national security stuff he can’t tell us about because he headed the CIA. Then when he talks about foreign policy it’s stuff he picked up at the UN. Ask about China and he’s been our emissary.
“ I guess I’ve only heard you give exhortatory speeches but how are you going to make out in the scuffle of debates in primaries leading up to the convention?”
This was too much for one cop who went to the bathroom and stayed there for awhile.
Reagan said: “I learned something when I did `Knute Rockne’. Did you ever see it?”
I said I see it regularly when I’m up at midnight every Saturday.
He said: “Let me tell you that I think the answer to your question I learned when I made the film.”
Inwardly I groaned. But he told me something that changed me from that time on…convincing me that I was munching steak with a political genius…one who could well change the dynamics of Republican politics from then on.
**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/the-pat-obrien-instruction-for-ronald-reagan/
Probably the most interesting thing I learned from Ronald Reagan in the four hours I spent with him before getting him to the plane to Santa Barbara in 1979 was not his Chicago abode or watching him fix the bathroom plumbing in the O’Hare Hilton room but his genius for soft theatricality in politics.
For the hard-arguments were not on his side.
You must remember the political conditions that existed then. A major conservative columnist was James J. Kilpatrick, 59, a syndicated columnist who tangled each Sunday for nine straight years as the crotchety rightwing voice paired against Shana Alexander every Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” This was before cable, before the Internet. There was only broadcast television and Kilpatrick…formidable and convincing (living down the fact that he had been a forceful even racist segregationist in the `50s) …syndicated to 172 papers…was the most prominent right-wing voice of the time—far more powerful than George Will has come to be. Or William F. Buckley for that matter. Buckley had an elite conservative magazine. Will was a bow-tied intellectual, a columnist, with the maddening proclivity to trace tax policy back to an offhand remark made by William the Conqueror to his mistress in 1066.
Kilpatrick was the average guy conservative.
Kilpatrick made all kinds of news in 1979 when he pronounced that for the upcoming election of 1980 “Ronald Reagan is a little long in the tooth,” saying he missed his chance by inches in losing the nomination to Jerry Ford—but the future demanded somebody more viable than a 68-year-old ex-movie actor and governor. Sixty-eight was then fearfully old to run for president, as medicine was not so advanced; there were no heart bypasses such as saved me from death in 2004; no operations for subdural hematoma, the delicate brain operation which spared me from certain death–after a four-hour surgery in 1985. People checked out regularly in their late `60s with no weeping or gnashing of teeth. For proof check the obits today. People are in their late `80s, mid-`90s.
So Kilpatrick’s sentence of Reagan as too old was devastating. Not only that but in January of 1979 Reagan’s longtime adversary, Nelson Rockefeller, died of a massive heart attack at 71. It did not assuage things that Rocky was engaged in a strenuously amorous physical pursuit at the apartment of a 27-year-old girl devotee research assistant who at his command did not call 911 but helped the old codger dress and cabbed him to his Manhattan office before she made the call whereby by the time the wagon came the billionaire philanthropist was dead. (She doesn’t have to worry about her old age now by the way—her finances are all taken care of. So long as she doesn’t write a book.)
I was far from a close Reagan operative in 1979…although the only Quaker officer to be for him—the remainder following the CEO and playing it safe by being for John Connally… but I was close enough that I could perceive the Reaganites were gravely shaken by Rocky’s death. Besides there were a whole younger crop—Connally who for the life of me I never saw the attraction although that year he graciously lectured at my Kellogg school class at Northwestern…Poppy Bush (GHW) former CIA director, UN ambassador and China emissary…white-thatched, self-righteous John B. Anderson later to bolt the party and run as an independent…the ever-present Bob Dole, then as ever unburdened by ideological conviction…Howard Baker who was a prominent Republican Senator…and Phil Crane who was running to Reagan’s right. And a host of little guys.
Social conservatives like me really had no choice but Reagan although intriguingly he had signed the most liberal abortion bill in the U. S. as California governor (almost but not quite tied by Rocky in New York). But Reagan had hit the sawdust trail and became an outstandingly articulate advocate for pro-life with an evangelist’s fervor. Connally was pro-abort as were Baker and Bush (known as “rubber George” because he urged the government to dispense far more condoms than they had been to developing nations). Anderson was an angry fire-eating patriarch about “a woman’s right to choose.”
Dole was on the issue as he was on everything else. He had beaten an abortionist doctor in a close race in Kansas where he became an instant pro-lifer but after being returned to the Senate had shut up about it. Crane…then probably the handsomest dog running with jet black hair and flashing smile… gave lip-service to it but he really was more of a libertarian and as with everything else in the House was inactive…”he comes down to take his meals” Henry Hyde said of him… being content to while away his time on frivolities…for which he ultimately whizzed away his solid district.
Reagan was not only the most viable pro-lifer and excepting Crane a sort of walking Cato Institute…to the right of everyone else. People were still rubbing their scabs about Vietnam and everybody was skittish of undue foreign entanglements…were talking détente… but Reagan was touting “why not victory?” Everybody was generally in favor of ERA (except Crane of course) but not Reagan. The Watergate scandal was still resonating and Republicans were flirting with more and more 1st amendment control over campaign donations—but not Reagan. He wanted unlimited campaign donations so long as they were made public right away.
Everybody was for gun control—but not Reagan.
*********************************************************
When he finally fixed the plumbing in the room and sat down to the steak sandwich, I said this:
“I’m really for you but for the life of me I don’t see how you’re going to win. We have a lady in this state, Phyllis Schlafly…”
He said, “I know and like Phyllis very much.”
“So do I,” I said….”but she ran twice for Congress and couldn’t get elected.
Now when he was sensible and a conservative, I was very much for John Anderson…until he got goofy. He’s one hell of a debater. What I want to know is…you’re going to have to debate these guys. Your positions are the same as mine. And given the prevailing temper of this country for liberal ideas, how are you going to sound different than Phyllis Schlafly? The other thing is one guy who is just your age and who co-founded ADA with you when you were a Democrat, Hubert Humphrey is rat-a-tat a walking encyclopedia. You’re not.
“ What I’m getting at is this: Are you just a cult figure of the right…making great speeches…a movie actor who happened to hit it right in California with a vibrant Orange county conservatism and an inept governor in Pat Brown? In essence how do you sell this thing?”
The cops in the room were aghast at my frankness but this is what I did all the time. Fortunately for me, at Quaker they liked it and not only tolerated it but welcomed it…and even encouraged me to get on the radio and WTTW as a commentator and write for the Sun-Times—so long as I didn’t identify Quaker with my views.
Digression: I was usually identified on WBEZ as “a corporate executive.” Bruce DuMont almost upended me years down the road by identifying me as “a cereal executive with offices in Quaker Tower.” End of digression.
I added: “For example, Carter is a detail man….Connally is a former treasury secretary. He can talk debentures that sound persuasive even though most people think he’s talking dentures. John B. Anderson…a longshot… is a student of legislative policy. He talks about a bill and how it appeared in subcommittee …how it was changed in full House committee…how the Senate fooled around with it and changed it such-and-such…how the conference committee rectified this and that—adding a section saying this and that.
“Bush gives off a séance about national security stuff he can’t tell us about because he headed the CIA. Then when he talks about foreign policy it’s stuff he picked up at the UN. Ask about China and he’s been our emissary.
“ I guess I’ve only heard you give exhortatory speeches but how are you going to make out in the scuffle of debates in primaries leading up to the convention?”
This was too much for one cop who went to the bathroom and stayed there for awhile.
Reagan said: “I learned something when I did `Knute Rockne’. Did you ever see it?”
I said I see it regularly when I’m up at midnight every Saturday.
He said: “Let me tell you that I think the answer to your question I learned when I made the film.”
Inwardly I groaned. But he told me something that changed me from that time on…convincing me that I was munching steak with a political genius…one who could well change the dynamics of Republican politics from then on.
**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/the-pat-obrien-instruction-for-ronald-reagan/
Emanuel resurfaces in Blagojevich case
Ousted governor claims prosecutors have withheld recordings of calls between his chief of staff and Emanuel
By John Chase and Annie Sweeney, Tribune reporters
The specter of Rod Blagojevich resurfaced Tuesday in Rahm Emanuel's run for Chicago mayor, thanks to a court filing by the ousted governor, who faces a retrial on federal corruption charges.
Emanuel caught a public relations break when the second trial for Blagojevich, a former political ally, was moved back from its scheduled January start to April 20. That has made it easier for Emanuel to sidestep questions about his role as an intermediary in late 2008 between Blagojevich and then-President-elect Barack Obama over whom the governor should appoint to succeed Obama in the U.S. Senate.
In a court filing late Monday, Blagojevich's legal team claimed prosecutors have withheld recordings of alleged telephone calls that would show the former governor was not trying to sell Obama's seat for personal gain, including at least one call between Emanuel and Blagojevich's former chief of staff, John Harris.
The calls would help prove Blagojevich was simply orchestrating a legal political deal to name Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan to the post, his attorneys argued. Blagojevich believed Emanuel could help him broker the Madigan deal, according to the filings.
Emanuel and Obama were mentioned repeatedly in the first Blagojevich trial, but evidence suggested they were wary of the former governor and there was no suggestion they did anything wrong. Blagojevich was convicted of lying to federal investigators but the jury deadlocked on more serious corruption charges.
After a campaign speech Tuesday, Emanuel said he wasn't concerned the matter could hurt him in the Fed. 22 election. He noted a widely publicized report by the Obama administration detailed contacts between Emanuel, Blagojevich and Harris and noted nothing improper occurred.
"The report of over two years ago indicates there were about four conversations and it also indicates a conversation about Lisa Madigan," Emanuel said.
The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/ct-met-chicago-mayor-race-0209-20110208,0,1900439.story
By John Chase and Annie Sweeney, Tribune reporters
The specter of Rod Blagojevich resurfaced Tuesday in Rahm Emanuel's run for Chicago mayor, thanks to a court filing by the ousted governor, who faces a retrial on federal corruption charges.
Emanuel caught a public relations break when the second trial for Blagojevich, a former political ally, was moved back from its scheduled January start to April 20. That has made it easier for Emanuel to sidestep questions about his role as an intermediary in late 2008 between Blagojevich and then-President-elect Barack Obama over whom the governor should appoint to succeed Obama in the U.S. Senate.
In a court filing late Monday, Blagojevich's legal team claimed prosecutors have withheld recordings of alleged telephone calls that would show the former governor was not trying to sell Obama's seat for personal gain, including at least one call between Emanuel and Blagojevich's former chief of staff, John Harris.
The calls would help prove Blagojevich was simply orchestrating a legal political deal to name Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan to the post, his attorneys argued. Blagojevich believed Emanuel could help him broker the Madigan deal, according to the filings.
Emanuel and Obama were mentioned repeatedly in the first Blagojevich trial, but evidence suggested they were wary of the former governor and there was no suggestion they did anything wrong. Blagojevich was convicted of lying to federal investigators but the jury deadlocked on more serious corruption charges.
After a campaign speech Tuesday, Emanuel said he wasn't concerned the matter could hurt him in the Fed. 22 election. He noted a widely publicized report by the Obama administration detailed contacts between Emanuel, Blagojevich and Harris and noted nothing improper occurred.
"The report of over two years ago indicates there were about four conversations and it also indicates a conversation about Lisa Madigan," Emanuel said.
The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/ct-met-chicago-mayor-race-0209-20110208,0,1900439.story
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
II: HOW I FOUND REAGAN’S CHICAGO ABODE—AND MORE.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Marking the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, this is a continuation of the story of our having lunch in 1979 at the O’Hare Hilton which led to the discovery of his abode in Chicago (1914-15). ******************************************************.
John Sears said to meet Reagan at Allegheny airlines at Gate K-8 at O’Hare.
“One thing,” he added. “There’ll be two Chicago cops there, in uniform. They’re off-duty and doing this on their own because they love the guy. This is their way of helping out. I don’t think the Police Department knows about it but that’s their problem. Believe me you’ll find them helpful.”I asked why.“You don’t get it, do ya? A lot of people don’t. This guy [Reagan] is one of the most familiar of Americans—because he’s been in the movies since 1937, hosted `Death Valley Days’…gone on to be governor, has had his own radio program on and on. Because the guy’s more familiar than most politicians, you’re going to have to have some help getting through the crowd—believe it!”
I didn’t….because for years I had met dignitaries at O’Hare and escorted them to their limos. The week before I picked up John Connally and we walked through the concourse with only a few heads turning. The month before I did the same with Poppy Bush, two weeks before that with Bob Dole…the winter before with Howard Baker. The last real political celebrity I ushered in was in 1964 when I picked up Everett Dirksen. It took awhile to get him to our limo because he looked like…well….Dirksen—hair askew, jowls sagging, eyes bugged out, wearing a rumpled suit with shoulders sprinkled with snowy dandruff , lips pursed, not unlike Bert Lahr playing The Cowardly Lion in `The Wizard of Oz.’ But even so it was not a strenuous exercise. Some people wanted to chat with him but I kept saying, `Sorry---the Senator has to keep moving; he’s late for an appointment!”
“I’ll give you a tip,” Sears said. “You’re going to want to take him to the Seven Continents [the elite restaurant at O’Hare]. Don’t. You’ll never get a word in. Get a room at the O’Hare Hilton and order lunch. Order him a lean steak sandwich and a coke. The cops must be with you. You don’t have to buy their lunch. They’re happy just to be with the guy.”
I did it—ordered the room in my name; had the key in my pocket and ordered four lean steak sandwiches with cokes….for all of us: Reagan, me and the cops.
******************************************************
I got to Gate 8 and there was only me, the gate attendant and the two cops. The plane’s arrival was called and we….the cops and I…waited for everybody to debark. The last guy off the plane was Reagan, hair meticulously combed, superbly trim in a blue suit, red tie—and carrying his own overnight bag. One cop sprinted to his side to take the baggage check for pickup downstairs.
Thanks, he said. Here it is. Guess we’ll meet you at the car. He gave me a warm glance for reassurance. I introduced myself: Tom Roeser from Quaker Oats.He bobbed his head deferentially and said, so softly I had to put my ear near his lips (and in those days my hearing was perfect), said with eyes twinkling : Well tell me, do you fellas still make the old-fashioned steel-cut?
Steel cut is the coarse oatmeal with part of the edible hulls included that your mama said would put hair on your chest.I said yes.
They served it at Eureka, he said (referring to his college in southern Illinois located between Peoria and Bloomington where he graduated in 1932 when I was age four).He added: You could live on that even if you ate nothing else.I asked to take his overnight bag. He smiled and declined. At 68 he was trim but his face, ruddy, lined and craggy, showed every year. And he did have a small hearing problem. In the concourse when people engaged him, he instinctively put a cupped hand to his left ear.
I noticed we were gradually being surrounded by gawkers.“Ronald Reagan?” one guy asked. His voice wasn’t that loud but in the way things do, it attracted others—those who are quick to note when something’s happening in a crowd.He nodded, modestly. Here I must point out a distinct contrast. Hubert Humphrey’s centennial comes this May. I was assigned to cover him in Minnesota for a wire-service as he sought a second term in what was 1954’s most important Senate targeted contest. Like Reagan, Humphrey was born in a small town, above a drug store…and after years in politics had huge visibility. But Humphrey’s style was 100% different. He’d do the standard political thing, barge up pushily like a small town convention barker, pump hands, toss out pointed, often funny reposts.
Reagan…maybe because of his low-key-appealing unassuming nature had people in the concourse barging up to him. By that time we started walking and by the time we got to K-6 we were picking up quite a few gawkers.“Governor!” a guy shouted: “Do you think you can beat Carter?”Well, he said, somebody better!The famous lean, craggy face opened in a grin, cupped his hands around his lips and asked softly-- Had enough?
There was a loud response: “Hell yes!” said one guy.Now we were at K-4.
“Folks,” shouted the cop to the walkers who numbered about forty , “we have to keep on movin’.” “Ron!” shouted a guy on the other side of the concourse—and Reagan stopped, some of those trailing us bumping into each other. Yes?
“I got a bet with a guy here for $50,” he shouted. “What was your name in “King’s Row”’? They encircled him now, he lowering his head in a kind of new-guy-in-town attitude.Drake McHugh, he said softly.
“See that?” the guy said to his pal. “I was right! Fork over the dough, Henry!” Henry, Reagan said quietly, almost to himself, yet everybody heard: If you had gotten to me first, I’d have told you and you’d still have your fifty! The crowd, now reaching more than sixty, roared. The guy said: “Hey, he called me Henry—Reagan did!”
Now we had a good hundred around him as we got to K-1 and the escalator going downstairs under the street to the O’Hare Hilton. He stopped and turned to the crowd.Here’s where I get off! Good luck everybody—and thanks! “Have you ever seen anything like it?” the cop said to me.
I answered truthfully: No, never. It’s an answer I can give today 58 years after the first political candidate I ever covered. Upstairs in the hotel, our lunch and his baggage were waiting. He took off his jacket and went to the bathroom to wash his hands. He came out a minute later and said:Guess what? What? He said, cupping his ear: Hear that? Leaky faucet.
“Watch this,” said a cop. “We’ve seen this before.” Reagan said: As I told them (nodding to the cops) when I used to travel the mashed potato circuit and even before when I had to make out-of-town appearances, I’d every so often get a hotel room with a faucet that leaks just like that one in there.…so, he said, I’d bring along these.
He opened his overnight case and after fiddling around pulled out a purple cloth kit something like your mother had for her fancy silverware knives and forks. Except lined up were silver wrenches of different sizes. He pulled one out carefully and marched to the bathroom. I went along….and I tell my grandchildren I stood there in the bathroom with the man who was to become the 40th president…as he skillfully undid the faucet, inspected the screw that ran the waterflow, carefully applied the small wrench, bit his lip as he tugged and the drip-drip-drip stopped instantly.There, he said, that son-uv-a-gun won’t keep anybody awake any more. We returned to the main room; he sat down we all started in on our steak sandwiches.Not bad, he said as we all nodded in agreement: We all have to thank Quaker Oats for this.I said teasingly: I was thinking of importing some steel cut oatmeal for us but decided this was better. You made a wise decision, he said and the cops agreed.That’s where we had a conversation I’ve never forgotten—from roughly noon to about a quarter after three in the afternoon.
Marking the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, this is a continuation of the story of our having lunch in 1979 at the O’Hare Hilton which led to the discovery of his abode in Chicago (1914-15). ******************************************************.
John Sears said to meet Reagan at Allegheny airlines at Gate K-8 at O’Hare.
“One thing,” he added. “There’ll be two Chicago cops there, in uniform. They’re off-duty and doing this on their own because they love the guy. This is their way of helping out. I don’t think the Police Department knows about it but that’s their problem. Believe me you’ll find them helpful.”I asked why.“You don’t get it, do ya? A lot of people don’t. This guy [Reagan] is one of the most familiar of Americans—because he’s been in the movies since 1937, hosted `Death Valley Days’…gone on to be governor, has had his own radio program on and on. Because the guy’s more familiar than most politicians, you’re going to have to have some help getting through the crowd—believe it!”
I didn’t….because for years I had met dignitaries at O’Hare and escorted them to their limos. The week before I picked up John Connally and we walked through the concourse with only a few heads turning. The month before I did the same with Poppy Bush, two weeks before that with Bob Dole…the winter before with Howard Baker. The last real political celebrity I ushered in was in 1964 when I picked up Everett Dirksen. It took awhile to get him to our limo because he looked like…well….Dirksen—hair askew, jowls sagging, eyes bugged out, wearing a rumpled suit with shoulders sprinkled with snowy dandruff , lips pursed, not unlike Bert Lahr playing The Cowardly Lion in `The Wizard of Oz.’ But even so it was not a strenuous exercise. Some people wanted to chat with him but I kept saying, `Sorry---the Senator has to keep moving; he’s late for an appointment!”
“I’ll give you a tip,” Sears said. “You’re going to want to take him to the Seven Continents [the elite restaurant at O’Hare]. Don’t. You’ll never get a word in. Get a room at the O’Hare Hilton and order lunch. Order him a lean steak sandwich and a coke. The cops must be with you. You don’t have to buy their lunch. They’re happy just to be with the guy.”
I did it—ordered the room in my name; had the key in my pocket and ordered four lean steak sandwiches with cokes….for all of us: Reagan, me and the cops.
******************************************************
I got to Gate 8 and there was only me, the gate attendant and the two cops. The plane’s arrival was called and we….the cops and I…waited for everybody to debark. The last guy off the plane was Reagan, hair meticulously combed, superbly trim in a blue suit, red tie—and carrying his own overnight bag. One cop sprinted to his side to take the baggage check for pickup downstairs.
Thanks, he said. Here it is. Guess we’ll meet you at the car. He gave me a warm glance for reassurance. I introduced myself: Tom Roeser from Quaker Oats.He bobbed his head deferentially and said, so softly I had to put my ear near his lips (and in those days my hearing was perfect), said with eyes twinkling : Well tell me, do you fellas still make the old-fashioned steel-cut?
Steel cut is the coarse oatmeal with part of the edible hulls included that your mama said would put hair on your chest.I said yes.
They served it at Eureka, he said (referring to his college in southern Illinois located between Peoria and Bloomington where he graduated in 1932 when I was age four).He added: You could live on that even if you ate nothing else.I asked to take his overnight bag. He smiled and declined. At 68 he was trim but his face, ruddy, lined and craggy, showed every year. And he did have a small hearing problem. In the concourse when people engaged him, he instinctively put a cupped hand to his left ear.
I noticed we were gradually being surrounded by gawkers.“Ronald Reagan?” one guy asked. His voice wasn’t that loud but in the way things do, it attracted others—those who are quick to note when something’s happening in a crowd.He nodded, modestly. Here I must point out a distinct contrast. Hubert Humphrey’s centennial comes this May. I was assigned to cover him in Minnesota for a wire-service as he sought a second term in what was 1954’s most important Senate targeted contest. Like Reagan, Humphrey was born in a small town, above a drug store…and after years in politics had huge visibility. But Humphrey’s style was 100% different. He’d do the standard political thing, barge up pushily like a small town convention barker, pump hands, toss out pointed, often funny reposts.
Reagan…maybe because of his low-key-appealing unassuming nature had people in the concourse barging up to him. By that time we started walking and by the time we got to K-6 we were picking up quite a few gawkers.“Governor!” a guy shouted: “Do you think you can beat Carter?”Well, he said, somebody better!The famous lean, craggy face opened in a grin, cupped his hands around his lips and asked softly-- Had enough?
There was a loud response: “Hell yes!” said one guy.Now we were at K-4.
“Folks,” shouted the cop to the walkers who numbered about forty , “we have to keep on movin’.” “Ron!” shouted a guy on the other side of the concourse—and Reagan stopped, some of those trailing us bumping into each other. Yes?
“I got a bet with a guy here for $50,” he shouted. “What was your name in “King’s Row”’? They encircled him now, he lowering his head in a kind of new-guy-in-town attitude.Drake McHugh, he said softly.
“See that?” the guy said to his pal. “I was right! Fork over the dough, Henry!” Henry, Reagan said quietly, almost to himself, yet everybody heard: If you had gotten to me first, I’d have told you and you’d still have your fifty! The crowd, now reaching more than sixty, roared. The guy said: “Hey, he called me Henry—Reagan did!”
Now we had a good hundred around him as we got to K-1 and the escalator going downstairs under the street to the O’Hare Hilton. He stopped and turned to the crowd.Here’s where I get off! Good luck everybody—and thanks! “Have you ever seen anything like it?” the cop said to me.
I answered truthfully: No, never. It’s an answer I can give today 58 years after the first political candidate I ever covered. Upstairs in the hotel, our lunch and his baggage were waiting. He took off his jacket and went to the bathroom to wash his hands. He came out a minute later and said:Guess what? What? He said, cupping his ear: Hear that? Leaky faucet.
“Watch this,” said a cop. “We’ve seen this before.” Reagan said: As I told them (nodding to the cops) when I used to travel the mashed potato circuit and even before when I had to make out-of-town appearances, I’d every so often get a hotel room with a faucet that leaks just like that one in there.…so, he said, I’d bring along these.
He opened his overnight case and after fiddling around pulled out a purple cloth kit something like your mother had for her fancy silverware knives and forks. Except lined up were silver wrenches of different sizes. He pulled one out carefully and marched to the bathroom. I went along….and I tell my grandchildren I stood there in the bathroom with the man who was to become the 40th president…as he skillfully undid the faucet, inspected the screw that ran the waterflow, carefully applied the small wrench, bit his lip as he tugged and the drip-drip-drip stopped instantly.There, he said, that son-uv-a-gun won’t keep anybody awake any more. We returned to the main room; he sat down we all started in on our steak sandwiches.Not bad, he said as we all nodded in agreement: We all have to thank Quaker Oats for this.I said teasingly: I was thinking of importing some steel cut oatmeal for us but decided this was better. You made a wise decision, he said and the cops agreed.That’s where we had a conversation I’ve never forgotten—from roughly noon to about a quarter after three in the afternoon.
HOW I DISCOVERED REAGAN’S CHICAGO ABODE…AND MORE.
Tom Roeser
Monday, February 7, 2011
Thirty-two years ago…on a Spring morning in 1979…my phone rang at the Merchandise Mart HQ of Quaker Oats (where I was veep-government relations aka lobbyist). On the line was John Sears, lawyer, former top staffer to John Mitchell in the Nixon Justice Department. I always held John in the highest regard, ever since he and I were canned in 1970 for different reasons by the Nixonians…I returning to Quaker and he to a lucrative law practice.
John had run the Reagan challenge to Jerry Ford at the convention of 1976 and had come within inches of dislodging the 38th president with a spirited challenge from the former governor of California. I had told him I’d like to help in the general election of 1976 but Ford made the cut.
“What are you doing next Tuesday?” Sears asked in his soft, unpretentious voice.
Nothing. Why? You coming to town?
“No. Better than that. Reagan is going to spend a few hours in Chicago, changing planes….flying in from Charlotte, will arrive at 11:35 a.m. and will have to wait for a change of planes before he goes out at 4:30 p.m. for Santa Barbara. That gives you a few hours to get your boss and a few other CEOs together to grab lunch with him….maybe at the O’Hare Hilton….and you seeing him on the plane to California afterward. Can you pull something like that together?”
I said I thought I could. Reagan hadn’t announced yet for 1980 but it was very much in the cards.
Repeat: I said I thought I could. But I found to my dismay I couldn’t. The year before, Big Jim Thompson had been elected governor (with George Ryan for lieutenant governor) and had committed the state GOP to mushy, non-Reagan accommodationist politics—meaning that the party’s leaders were supportive of anyone but…for ideological reasons… Reagan. Big Jimbo saw himself as having potential for president and so he had his emissaries “joining” various campaigns as moles. The biggest chunk signed up for John Connally, the former Texas governor: that included George Ryan and the Illinois Tool Works crowd—headed by Harold Byron Smith, Jr., prodigious fund-raiser and GOP leader extraordinary: former state chairman, national committeeman, fund-raiser for the Republican state senate and House,
Connally was the decided favorite. The next biggest group was for George H.W. Bush. Still other moles went to Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee…Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas with one lonely outcast sent to help Rep. Phil Crane. Later as Reagan grew in popularity one mole was dispatched to his campaign—Sam Skinner. God’s angry progressive was running as well—Congressman John B. Anderson but of course Big Jimbo wasn’t interested in him because they were both liberals but still two moles were sent in hope that if Anderson were to be elected somehow there might be a cabinet office open for Big Jimbo. The only prominent Illinoisan for Reagan was Dan Terra, a billionaire head of a printing ink company.
Normally it should have been an easy trick to line up guys to have lunch with a leading though unannounced presidential candidate but the CEOs were all so timid they felt they didn’t want to jeopardize their standing.
So I reluctantly called Sears after a few days of futility and said I struck out.
I expected I’d be chewed out but instead Sears said: “Not surprising. Just what I thought. “
Then there was a long pause as he thought.
“Well,” he said, “how would you like to have lunch with the old man. Cripes, somebody has to see he gets on the plane for Santa Barbara!”
I said: Well, John, he doesn’t want to have lunch with a punk like me.
“Of course he doesn’t. But he likes to tell stories and you like to tell stories and I can’t let him just sit around in the Admirals Club of American Airlines alone for four hours! I tell you, he’s one of the most recognizable of Americans. People go to him like flies to honey! He’s so damn nice he’ll have some guy bending his ear in the Admirals’ Club about whether or not he ever met Clark Gable. So I’m deputizing you to see that doesn’t happen. See, you’ll be his aide for four hours. I can’t pay you anything but I figure your payment will be in talking with him. He’s a great guy. You’ll be surprised to know that he’ll talk your ear off about old time Hollywood. Is it a deal?”
That was the start of the most fascinating lunch I ever had…with, as it turns out, one of the great presidents of the 20thcentury.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Thirty-two years ago…on a Spring morning in 1979…my phone rang at the Merchandise Mart HQ of Quaker Oats (where I was veep-government relations aka lobbyist). On the line was John Sears, lawyer, former top staffer to John Mitchell in the Nixon Justice Department. I always held John in the highest regard, ever since he and I were canned in 1970 for different reasons by the Nixonians…I returning to Quaker and he to a lucrative law practice.
John had run the Reagan challenge to Jerry Ford at the convention of 1976 and had come within inches of dislodging the 38th president with a spirited challenge from the former governor of California. I had told him I’d like to help in the general election of 1976 but Ford made the cut.
“What are you doing next Tuesday?” Sears asked in his soft, unpretentious voice.
Nothing. Why? You coming to town?
“No. Better than that. Reagan is going to spend a few hours in Chicago, changing planes….flying in from Charlotte, will arrive at 11:35 a.m. and will have to wait for a change of planes before he goes out at 4:30 p.m. for Santa Barbara. That gives you a few hours to get your boss and a few other CEOs together to grab lunch with him….maybe at the O’Hare Hilton….and you seeing him on the plane to California afterward. Can you pull something like that together?”
I said I thought I could. Reagan hadn’t announced yet for 1980 but it was very much in the cards.
Repeat: I said I thought I could. But I found to my dismay I couldn’t. The year before, Big Jim Thompson had been elected governor (with George Ryan for lieutenant governor) and had committed the state GOP to mushy, non-Reagan accommodationist politics—meaning that the party’s leaders were supportive of anyone but…for ideological reasons… Reagan. Big Jimbo saw himself as having potential for president and so he had his emissaries “joining” various campaigns as moles. The biggest chunk signed up for John Connally, the former Texas governor: that included George Ryan and the Illinois Tool Works crowd—headed by Harold Byron Smith, Jr., prodigious fund-raiser and GOP leader extraordinary: former state chairman, national committeeman, fund-raiser for the Republican state senate and House,
Connally was the decided favorite. The next biggest group was for George H.W. Bush. Still other moles went to Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee…Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas with one lonely outcast sent to help Rep. Phil Crane. Later as Reagan grew in popularity one mole was dispatched to his campaign—Sam Skinner. God’s angry progressive was running as well—Congressman John B. Anderson but of course Big Jimbo wasn’t interested in him because they were both liberals but still two moles were sent in hope that if Anderson were to be elected somehow there might be a cabinet office open for Big Jimbo. The only prominent Illinoisan for Reagan was Dan Terra, a billionaire head of a printing ink company.
Normally it should have been an easy trick to line up guys to have lunch with a leading though unannounced presidential candidate but the CEOs were all so timid they felt they didn’t want to jeopardize their standing.
So I reluctantly called Sears after a few days of futility and said I struck out.
I expected I’d be chewed out but instead Sears said: “Not surprising. Just what I thought. “
Then there was a long pause as he thought.
“Well,” he said, “how would you like to have lunch with the old man. Cripes, somebody has to see he gets on the plane for Santa Barbara!”
I said: Well, John, he doesn’t want to have lunch with a punk like me.
“Of course he doesn’t. But he likes to tell stories and you like to tell stories and I can’t let him just sit around in the Admirals Club of American Airlines alone for four hours! I tell you, he’s one of the most recognizable of Americans. People go to him like flies to honey! He’s so damn nice he’ll have some guy bending his ear in the Admirals’ Club about whether or not he ever met Clark Gable. So I’m deputizing you to see that doesn’t happen. See, you’ll be his aide for four hours. I can’t pay you anything but I figure your payment will be in talking with him. He’s a great guy. You’ll be surprised to know that he’ll talk your ear off about old time Hollywood. Is it a deal?”
That was the start of the most fascinating lunch I ever had…with, as it turns out, one of the great presidents of the 20thcentury.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Ronald W. Reagan
Jim Hanson Feb 5th
In his day he was reviled in ways that George W. Bush could commiserate about. He was denigrated as just an actor, a lightweight, an extremist and many other insults. And yet now he is revered by most including many on the left
His crime at the time was an Unapologetically American attitude, and it served him, and us, quite well. He stood up to the most existential threat this planet has ever faced, nuclear Armageddon. It is hard to convey to kids who don’t even know what the Soviet Union was that there was a serious concern that we could actually destroy the planet. Not in the wimpy Al Goreacle-d way they are whingeing about now, but actually snuff out the human race in a nuclear winter. This was not just the left wing buttheads, it was a legitimate worry for anyone paying attention.
He stood for human rights and dignity and the right of all people to choose their own government and live free from oppression. And when he talked about it you knew he meant it. The Soviet Union was in full on expansionist mode and recruiting satellites and proxies to expand their influence. Our answer was Ronald Reagan and gunboat diplomacy. BAM! It didn’t always work, and of course we made compromises and worked with some evil bastards. But in the end it we prevailed and he was prophetic when he said “… freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.”. And the world can thank Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher & Pope John Paul II for that. There are others, Lech Walesa for certain, who deserve high praise, but that troika was the driving force in the fight for liberty and freedom.
His good nature and steadiness were a comforting factor when the price of failure was annihilation. It is a level of dignity and grace under pressure we haven’t seen in any politician since and not many before (if any). The stakes in our international duel with the Soviets was survival. Our systems were mutually incompatible and theirs required a constant expansion to bring more of the proletariat into the fold. So Reagan planted the flag, and said this will not stand. It was a bold stance and much assailed by the Realpolitik crowd as well as the entire left. The fights over the nuclear missiles we had in Europe were epic, both here and there. I saw some first hand in Germany, and will never forget the protester on 15 foot stilts trying to step over the 10 ft fence around a US nuke base, and the Polizei blasting him dead in the chest sending him ass over tea kettle backwards. Heck back then when people asked what I did, I told them I worked for Ronald Reagan, and I was damn proud of it.
The current chaos is creating a kind of Reagan nostalgia. Agree with the man or not, but you knew where he stood and you knew the political winds would not sway him. Some straight talk about freedom from a man who has inspired hundreds of millions around the world right now would be welcome. Lech Walesa knows who he wants to thank.
When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.
Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.
I bet the protesters in Egypt, or the poor bastards who preceded them in Iran, would love to hear the support of the most powerful man on the planet. Or more importantly for their governments to hear it. Belief in freedom and the rule of democracy is the greatest gift America has given the world. We should never fail to stand tall and refuse to countenance tyranny. We do our country, our security and the world as a whole a tremendous good every time we reaffirm those beliefs.
So thanks President Reagan, for the inspiration, the example, the strength and the dignity. America is exceptional, we were founded that way and remain the shining city on the hill the rest of the world wishes they lived in.
In his day he was reviled in ways that George W. Bush could commiserate about. He was denigrated as just an actor, a lightweight, an extremist and many other insults. And yet now he is revered by most including many on the left
His crime at the time was an Unapologetically American attitude, and it served him, and us, quite well. He stood up to the most existential threat this planet has ever faced, nuclear Armageddon. It is hard to convey to kids who don’t even know what the Soviet Union was that there was a serious concern that we could actually destroy the planet. Not in the wimpy Al Goreacle-d way they are whingeing about now, but actually snuff out the human race in a nuclear winter. This was not just the left wing buttheads, it was a legitimate worry for anyone paying attention.
He stood for human rights and dignity and the right of all people to choose their own government and live free from oppression. And when he talked about it you knew he meant it. The Soviet Union was in full on expansionist mode and recruiting satellites and proxies to expand their influence. Our answer was Ronald Reagan and gunboat diplomacy. BAM! It didn’t always work, and of course we made compromises and worked with some evil bastards. But in the end it we prevailed and he was prophetic when he said “… freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.”. And the world can thank Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher & Pope John Paul II for that. There are others, Lech Walesa for certain, who deserve high praise, but that troika was the driving force in the fight for liberty and freedom.
His good nature and steadiness were a comforting factor when the price of failure was annihilation. It is a level of dignity and grace under pressure we haven’t seen in any politician since and not many before (if any). The stakes in our international duel with the Soviets was survival. Our systems were mutually incompatible and theirs required a constant expansion to bring more of the proletariat into the fold. So Reagan planted the flag, and said this will not stand. It was a bold stance and much assailed by the Realpolitik crowd as well as the entire left. The fights over the nuclear missiles we had in Europe were epic, both here and there. I saw some first hand in Germany, and will never forget the protester on 15 foot stilts trying to step over the 10 ft fence around a US nuke base, and the Polizei blasting him dead in the chest sending him ass over tea kettle backwards. Heck back then when people asked what I did, I told them I worked for Ronald Reagan, and I was damn proud of it.
The current chaos is creating a kind of Reagan nostalgia. Agree with the man or not, but you knew where he stood and you knew the political winds would not sway him. Some straight talk about freedom from a man who has inspired hundreds of millions around the world right now would be welcome. Lech Walesa knows who he wants to thank.
When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.
Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.
I bet the protesters in Egypt, or the poor bastards who preceded them in Iran, would love to hear the support of the most powerful man on the planet. Or more importantly for their governments to hear it. Belief in freedom and the rule of democracy is the greatest gift America has given the world. We should never fail to stand tall and refuse to countenance tyranny. We do our country, our security and the world as a whole a tremendous good every time we reaffirm those beliefs.
So thanks President Reagan, for the inspiration, the example, the strength and the dignity. America is exceptional, we were founded that way and remain the shining city on the hill the rest of the world wishes they lived in.
Reagan: A Memoir
William B. Allen Feb 5th 2011
Governor Reagan – that’s how we referred to him for the fourteen years before he became President – made us one with him from the beginning. The highest moment of my personal appreciation arrived on election night in 1966. It was not merely personal, however, for in that moment I imbibed confidence in the renewal of the American commitment to self-government and the defeat of Soviet tyranny – making the world safe for self-government once again. Reagan’s greatness lay in the greatness of the task he set for himself and for America and the gifts given him by God that enabled him to complete the task. His entry onto the political stage crystallized and rendered coherent the purpose of national politics in a local theater. The statesmanship that initiated recovery from welfare-state dependency, revived our economic prosperity, and faced down communism – Reagan tore down the Iron Curtain even more certainly than Gorbachev tore down the Berlin Wall – consisted more in bringing Americans to think better of themselves.
Of very many examples, one remains dearest to me. In 1977, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of ISI (Intercollegiate Studies Institute), he delivered an address widely reported in the press as Reagan’s attempt to gain the center of American politics by moving to embrace affirmative action within the conservative movement. The idea was nothing less than a surrender to the Eastern establishment of the Republican Party. Unbelieving and moved with alarm, I wrote to him seeking an explanation. He responded at length in one of his famous hand-written letters, pointing out where the media had gotten things wrong and re-committing to the idea of a color-blind America. My confidence was restored in the vision of the statesman who, a year earlier, had asked us all to imagine ourselves leaving a time-capsule for a later generation that, upon opening it, would recognize in us a people that loved liberty as much as they did – which could happen only if we left them that liberty to love. There was the Reagan I had known in 1966, and upon whose election I was moved, in company with his daughter, Maureen – contemplating the victory we had gained in the gubernatorial election – to exclaim with joy, “We have saved America!” That is Ronald Reagan’s legacy: he committed us to save America.
Governor Reagan – that’s how we referred to him for the fourteen years before he became President – made us one with him from the beginning. The highest moment of my personal appreciation arrived on election night in 1966. It was not merely personal, however, for in that moment I imbibed confidence in the renewal of the American commitment to self-government and the defeat of Soviet tyranny – making the world safe for self-government once again. Reagan’s greatness lay in the greatness of the task he set for himself and for America and the gifts given him by God that enabled him to complete the task. His entry onto the political stage crystallized and rendered coherent the purpose of national politics in a local theater. The statesmanship that initiated recovery from welfare-state dependency, revived our economic prosperity, and faced down communism – Reagan tore down the Iron Curtain even more certainly than Gorbachev tore down the Berlin Wall – consisted more in bringing Americans to think better of themselves.
Of very many examples, one remains dearest to me. In 1977, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of ISI (Intercollegiate Studies Institute), he delivered an address widely reported in the press as Reagan’s attempt to gain the center of American politics by moving to embrace affirmative action within the conservative movement. The idea was nothing less than a surrender to the Eastern establishment of the Republican Party. Unbelieving and moved with alarm, I wrote to him seeking an explanation. He responded at length in one of his famous hand-written letters, pointing out where the media had gotten things wrong and re-committing to the idea of a color-blind America. My confidence was restored in the vision of the statesman who, a year earlier, had asked us all to imagine ourselves leaving a time-capsule for a later generation that, upon opening it, would recognize in us a people that loved liberty as much as they did – which could happen only if we left them that liberty to love. There was the Reagan I had known in 1966, and upon whose election I was moved, in company with his daughter, Maureen – contemplating the victory we had gained in the gubernatorial election – to exclaim with joy, “We have saved America!” That is Ronald Reagan’s legacy: he committed us to save America.
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