40.) Ronald Reagan 1981-1989

"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," - Ronald Reagan's inaugural address, January 20, 1981.

For the first 50 years after the onset of the Great Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the United States had been led by politicians who believed government held the power to make life better for the American people. Then came Ronald Reagan, one of the most talented political orators in American history. Follow along as Reagan rises from the great depression to realize his dreams in Hollywood, then takes his talents into politics, where he upends a half-century of big-government consensus and pivots the United States toward a small-government future.

Bibliography
1. Ronald Reagan: The life – H.W. Brands
2. Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush – Jon Meacham
3. His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life – Jonathan Alter
4. Gerald Ford – Douglas Brinkley
5.  Richard Nixon, the life – John A. Farrell

Transcript

Ronald Reagan might be the luckiest son-of-a-gun I’ve covered on this podcast.

True, he wasn’t born into the ridiculous wealth and privilege that guys like Kennedy, Roosevelt, and Bush inherited, but once he emerged from his difficult childhood, the guy was rolling sixes the rest of his life.

And that’s not to diminish Reagan’s political talent or work ethic. He worked hard. And his years as an actor taught him how to connect with an audience, perhaps better than since Roosevelt. Reagan was a master of simplifying issues down to an emotional core that resonated with listeners. It didn’t always make sense. And it didn’t always have the intended impact once transformed into policy. But it won people over and changed hearts and minds.

And that may be why the Reagan presidency was one of the largest tectonic shifts in American political history.

48 years of progressive government gave way to a conservative counter swing that is still with us today.

So let’s dive in, see how Reagan went from poverty to movie stardom and the whitehouse, and how he resuscitated a career that seemed over to become a conservative icon still cherished by many to this day.

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Ronald Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico illinois. He was the youngest of two sons of John Reagan and Nelle Wilson, and life was not easy. His father, John, was a nice enough guy, but also lazy enough and drunk enough that he struggled to keep a job, so the family moved often in search of stability. Reagan was perpetually the new kid in school, struggling to find popularity or self confidence. He never really found either until he discovered theater, first at church, then at school, and later in College. He loved the emotional connection between an actor and their audience. And he would learn in time that he could pluck those emotional chords as ably as a politician as he could as an actor, you just had to pay attention to which notes to play.

Reagan dreamed of becoming a movie star after college, but Hollywood was a long way off from Eureka College, his alma mater in small-town illinois. So Reagan decided to start in radio instead. It wasn’t easy, but persistence, persistence, persistence eventually created opportunity. A sympathetic station manager asked Reagan to pretend he was announcing a football game on the spot, so Reagan summoned the memory of a game he’d once played in and performed a dramatic retelling of it that convinced the station boss to give him a chance. Before long, Reagan was one of the region’s up-and-coming sports voices, covering Big 10 football and the Chicago Cubs. The pay was $10 a game + bus fare, but let me tell ya, as someone who has done radio play-by-play, that’s one of the funnest jobs in the world.

It would also prove to be excellent training for political campaigning.

The thing is, back in the 1930s, the play-by-play guy wasn’t always actually at the game. Sometimes they were in the studio, reading telegraphs from a reporter at the stadium and embellishing the details. For example, Reagan might get a piece of paper that says 6-4-3, well, if you are a baseball fanatic, you know that a 6-4-3 is a double play where the shortstop fields the ball, throws it to the second baseman, who forces an out there, then throws it to the first baseman, who forces out the hitter. Reagan would get this paper, 6-4-3, and then he’d fabricate a description of how the play went down, live on the air. So he might say ‘well Allen the Arm is winding up, here comes the pitch, it one-hops off the grass, and, CRACK Jerry the Jackhammer just hit the stitches off that ball in a line drive that - holy smokes - how did Tommy Two-shoes field that at short stop! A leaping catch and throw- OUT NUMBER ONE - forced out by second baseman Timmy ten-fingers and then, WHAP, a throw to First Base Frank to beat the runner just in the nick of time. A DOUBLE PLAY.’

And the hilarious part is that sometimes the telegraph line might go dead for a while. When that happened, Reagan would improv that the hitter had made contact but, oh shucks, it was a foul ball, thinking that surely the telegraph line would come back soon. And if it didn’t, well, wouldn’t you know it, that batter might just hit a second foul ball, and then a third, and then the kids are fighting over the ball in the stands, and then the coach is consulting the batter, and then a fourth foul ball - Reagan would just make up a scene to kill the time til the telegraph was restored and the game could continue, leaving his audience none the wiser.

And when you think of it, this ability to playfully improvise is kind of Reagan’s political trademark. It’s his secret sauce. And he learned it in Illinois, as a sports announcer.

But radio wasn’t Reagan’s dream. Acting was. And he was about to hit a jackpot.

Do you know where the Chicago Cubs held their spring training during the Great Depression? Catalina Island.

And do you know where Catalina island is located?

Off the coast of L.A.

Hollywood was practically in sight..

So Reagan started traveling down to Catalina Island in the spring to cover the Cubs, and then he’d hop across the water to Hollywood when time allowed. And, lucky Reagan, he had an in in hollywood - a friend from Illinois who had become an actress. He met her one day and confessed his dream of becoming an actor to her. She looked at him. Reagan was nearsighted, so he was wearing glasses that day. And, in an inverse scene of every 90’s teen movie, she asked him to remove his glasses, gave him another look, and said he just might do. And also that nobody wears glasses in movies. One day later, Reagan was in a Warner Brothers talent agent’s office, bumping into things as he walked around because he wasn’t wearing glasses, and before you knew it, Reagan had a 7-year studio contract with a one-year option at $200 dollars a week.

Yeah! Just like that. 26-year-old Ronald Reagan, was earning the equivalent of $226,000 a year in today’s money with guaranteed job security for 7 years!

And what did he do next? Marry a hollywood bombshell named Jane Wyman in 1940. Now, I admit, Reagan’s luck here wasn’t perfect. The pair were married for 7 years and had 2 children before Jane asked Reagan to move out. Nothing scandalous here. We all know that most couples realize it’s not going to work out. Unfortunately, some get married first. This was just a bad match.

Reagan all but abandoned the 2 children from his first marriage. He spent so little time with his son, Michael, that when he spoke at Michael’s high school graduation and handed out degrees, he asked his own son “what’s your name?” and said “oh, I didn’t recognize you” when Michael said “Dad… I’m your son.”

When Reagan later ran for Governor - I’m getting a tad ahead of myself - his daughter wanted to support the campaign, but Reagan’s advisors thought it would be bad politics to remind voters of the divorce, so the kids were advised to, I kid you not, bury themselves and pull the dirt over their heads. When they called Reagan to ask, what the hell man, Reagan said he hired these political consultants and was going to follow their advice.

Oof.

But back to the 40’s.

Prior to his hollywood career, Reagan had joined the Illinois national guard because he wanted to learn how to ride horses at the government’s expense. When Pearl Harbor happened in 1943, he was still in the reserves and got called up! But, lucky Reagan, the doctors quickly concluded he could never serve on the front on account of his poor vision. “You’ll shoot a general,” one doctor said, “and you’ll miss!” his colleague added.

So Reagan started making patriotic movies about the war instead. For the military, of course! His face and voice became synonymous with patriotism and strength.

When the war ended, Reagan left the army, annual salary $3,600, and got back on his contract with Warner bros, annual salary $182,000 - and that’s in 1947 dollars. More than $3 million a year today. But an odd thing started happening… Warner Brothers was struggling to find good roles for Ronnie. Which was… concerning, but hey! Reagan’s contract was guaranteed, so it’s not like he was financially at risk. Why, this just gave him more time to indulge in his other growing passion - politics.

Reagan had grown up a huge New Dealer. The guy was a democrat! FDR’s New Deal had given his father work and, as far as Ronald was concerned, saved the nation from the great depression. But now that the depression and World War II were over, another threat was rising - global communism. And Reagan was starting to think the post-Roosevelt democrats weren’t doing enough to confront it.

But Reagan’s path to politics was circuitous. He wasn’t pursuing office, not yet. He was just giving political speeches to groups who wanted to hear what the handsome movie star had to say. And when audience members began telling him how concerned they were about communism after his speeches, he took note.

He also got involved in the screen actors guild - a union! And then he was elected the union’s president! When Congress held hearings on communism in Hollywood, he was invited east to testify. ‘You won’t find any (communists) in the screen actors guild,’ Reagan testified publicly. Privately, Reagan was making sure of that by reporting suspected communists to the FBI.

And then, in 1949, Ronald met Nancy.

Nancy Davis was the daughter of a stage actress who, echoing her mother, wanted to get into theater, but not as much as she wanted to get a husband. After a little stage success in New York, Nancy moved to California and got a studio contract, probably after taking off a pair of glasses. When she arrived in Hollywood, I kid you not, she drew up a list of potential husbands - prospective bachelors under categories like “producer” “director” “agents” and “lawyers.” And at the top of the list labeled “Actors” was Ronald Reagan, wealthy, connected, divorced. Nancy manufactured a first meeting at a dinner party, but Reagan didn’t pursue her. So she manufactured a second meeting to discuss Screen Actor Guild matters, and this time she transformed the evening into a date. But Reagan, burned by his divorce, was stubbornly noncommittal. He kept dating other women while seeing Nancy, but she kept pursuing, and eventually she caught him. On March 4, 1952, Ronald Reagan married Nancy in a ceremony that was basically them, the priest, and a couple friends. 7 and a half months later, Nancy gave birth to their first daughter. That’s right. 7 and a half months. As Nancy wrote in her memoir, “go ahead and count.” And then, Nancy Reagan stopped acting.

We will talk a lot more about Nancy Reagan when Ronald becomes president. They’d remain married the rest of Reagan’s life.

Marrying Nancy was great, but by 1952, there was no denying it, Ronald Reagan’s acting career was fizzling.

There were several reasons. The rise of TV cut the number of moviegoers by 75% between 1945 and 1960 as folks realized they could engage in comfortable escapism at home. There were also structural changes to the industry - movie producers like Warner Bros used to own all the theaters, and they’d make the theaters show b-movie double features - Reagan’s specialty - which could be produced quickly and cheaply and, when there was nothing else to do, people would watch it. But Congress broke that up in 1948, and suddenly producers had to focus on quality movies - your theater down the street wanted the good stuff, not the b-movies, and if Reagan was honest with himself, he was never more than a b-movie actor. That’s what Warner Bros thought at least. The roles dried up. And Reagan left his role as union president in 1952 after serving a record tenure.

But don’t worry. Reagan will still be just fine.

General Electric reached out with an intriguing opportunity 

GE wanted to launch a series of high-quality television productions starring Hollywood celebrities and, no, they didn’t want Reagan to star in it, they wanted him to host it. But not just host it, they wanted him to become GE’s official spokesman, traveling the country and talking to GE employees about American values, like individualism! And not joining a union or asking for benefits. 

Reagan accepted this role, and the nice contract that came with. Over the next 8 years, Reagan visited 139 plants and met 250,000 General Electric employees. As he logged those miles, he read literature provided by his GE handlers - conservative political literature. After meet and greets with employees, he’d grab a nightcap with managers who complained about government regulation and bureaucracy. A pretty deeply read political philosophy was beginning to form.

But his career was continuing to fade.

In 1962, General Electric cut ties. His show was losing its audience and GE was drawing federal scrutiny for equipment price fixing. Reagan’s increasingly anti-government speeches were drawing too much unwanted attention. So they let him go.

And it seemed like that might be it for Ronald Reagan. He was 51 years old, worth millions of dollars, and nobody seemed to want him anymore. He could pass the rest of his days in peace at his California ranch. For 2 years, nothing happened.

And then the phone rang.

The Goldwater campaign was calling.

It was 1964, and conservative GOP Senator Barry Goldwater was running for president against Lyndon Baines Johnson. The campaign wasn’t going well, though. The polls had Goldwater underwater. So he wanted to try something radical.

He wanted to try to reach voters on TV.

Not personally, though. Goldwater knew he didn’t have a movie star’s looks, delivery, or charisma. But Reagan did.

Would Ronald Reagan be willing to record a stump speech on Goldwater’s behalf? There’d be an audience - all republican, all primed to clap on cue - and there’d be cameras. All Reagan had to do was talk Goldwater up and ask for campaign donations. That’s it.

Reagan said he’d do it.

But he decided to put his own little spin on it.

__AUDIO__

Reagan’s speech, “A time for choosing,” failed to mention Goldwater until the final minutes. But it did brandish Ronald Reagan as a handsome, charming, hard-right republican before a national audience. If Goldwater was the political right when it looked angry, Reagan was the same message - small government at home, stronger defense abroad - wrapped in a disarming smile and sense of humor.

And the nation ate it up.

Reagan was swamped with a new kind of fan mail after the speech - political fan mail. You need to run for office! It declared. Reagan for president clubs sprang up as far afield as Michigan. 

And Reagan listened. Over the next 16 years, he ran for president three times, and the third time was the charm. 

Between and before those runs, he served as governor of California and later hosted a conservative news segment on national radio. Millions of Americans heard his soothing voice during their daily commutes, relaying homespun anecdotes about the evils of government. These would become his neighborhood advocates when he ran for higher office.

As governor of California, Reagan proved a craftier politician than anyone expected. He came into an office at a time when California was running a large deficit. He would have loved to cut spending, but the democrats wouldn’t let him, so he said ok, you want higher taxes? I’ll give you higher taxes. But you’re going to be the ones to pay political for it. And then he passed the largest tax increase in California history, so high that everyone would feel the pain and learn to hate taxes, and he turned around and blamed it on the democrats. And when that tax increase generated more revenue than the state needed, he turned around and handed out a tax rebate that he took credit for. It was brilliant.

After that debut performance, Reagan consistently pushed for tax and spending cuts, but would compromise to get wins where he could find them. His most lasting legacy was Prop 13, which capped the annual increase in property taxes at 2% and was copied by dozens of other states. By capping taxes at 2%, Reagan effectively cut future school budgets. Most public school budgets are paid with property tax. What happens if annual inflation is greater than 2%? Schools effectively lose money those years. Some states that adopted prop 13 are now having to close schools, fire teachers, and cut student services. A lot of Reagan’s programs worked like that. Whether prop 13 or deficit spending. They felt good at the time, but they put tremendous costs on future generations, and today we’re paying the bill.

Governor Reagan also clashed with the state’s university students. These were years of campus protest - 67 to 75 - and Reagan embraced the opportunity to show how tough he was, raising tuition and dispatching police and the national guard to standoffs against student protestors. This sometimes resulted in violence, shots fired, and death. Two students died at different protests during Reagan’s first term, which he blamed on radicals.

But none of it dimmed Reagan’s star. His actions were popular with his base. After taking swings at the GOP nomination in 68 and 76, challenging first the deeply entrenched Richard Nixon and later the incumbent President Gerald Ford, 1980 was going to be Reagan’s year. He was the favorite, not the underdog. And the democrats were weak.

But a twice denied candidate refused to take any chances.

Before the second presidential debate on October 28, 1980, the Reagan campaign got a hand on Carter’s debate prep briefing papers. Every time Carter drew up an attack, a grinning Reagan was ready with a dismissive counter.

But that’s small fries compared to the October Surprise.

The 1980 presidential election was waged against the backdrop of the Iran hostage crisis - 52 Americans had been taken hostage when Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran exactly 1 year before the 1980 election. And Reagan’s team wanted to make sure the hostage crisis made it to that 1-year-old milestone, because they didn’t want Carter to get a bump in the polls for freeing the hostages. Reagan’s campaign dispatched emissaries to the middle east to meet anyone who might backchannel a message to the Iranian regime: If Iran holds onto its hostages until after the election, it will be rewarded.

Yeah. That’s a pretty big accusation. An American presidential campaign actively working against the release of Americans held hostage overseas. But evidence is high. As recently as last year, a 98-year-old Texas politician named Ben Barnes went public to confirm he had personally participated in these meetings, saying, quote, “Knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. History needs to know that this happened.” The plot was directly managed by Reagan’s campaign manager, William Casey, who Reagan later appointed CIA chief.

And the thing is, Reagan may not have needed it. On Nov. 4, 1980, Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in a landslide. 44 million votes to 35 million, and a near sweep in the electoral college, 489 electors to 49. 

At the heart of it, Reagan had run on a simple promise.

Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem. Help me lower your taxes, and we’ll kill that problem.

Now president elect, Ronald Reagan was about to have his chance.

And so, on January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan, the former sports announcer, actor and GE Spokesman whose career had been resurrected by a single 1964 speech for Barry Goldwater, was sworn in as the 40th president of the United States. At 69-years old, Reagan was the oldest president the country had ever seen, breaking the record set by 68-year-old William Henry Harrison in 1841 - Remember Harrison? He’s the guy who died a month after being sworn in. And yet Reagan’s record has now been broken by both our recent presidents, Trump and Biden were both older when sworn in. But what did the world, and the country, look like when Reagan became president? Let’s look around.

Internationally, the soviets invaded neighboring Afghanistan in 1979 after Afghanistan’s leaders drifted too far from the soviet orbit. The soviets expected an easy victory, they instead found their version of Vietnam. A decade of war would sap Soviet coffers and morale and contribute to the destabilization of the soviet empire.

On the good news front, Smallpox was eradicated as a disease in 1980. Yay!

Elsewhere in the world.. saddam hussein had just become president of Iraq, and promptly gone to war against Iran. The Iran-Iraq war would last 9 years and, stay tuned, it will come up again in this episode.

Domestically, 1980 saw Mt. St Helens erupt and witnessed the U.S. Hockey team’s shocking upset of the soviet union at the winter olympics - the so-called ‘Miracle on Ice.’

Of more lasting impact, the first 24-7 news network, CNN, launched in 1980. It would quickly transform the way Americans consumed and discussed news, and the old stage hand, Reagan, was the perfect politician to capitalize on the moment.

If he could survive long enough to do so.

That’s right, someone’s about to take a shot at Reagan.

On March 30, 1981 - less than 3 months into his term - Reagan was emerging from a meeting with Union Leaders in Washington D.C. when a man emerged from the crowd and began firing a pistol at Reagan and his entourage. The Secret service subdued the man and tackled Reagan into his car for a quick escape, but not quick enough. Reagan had been hit. The president was rushed to the hospital where doctors discovered a bullet had ricocheted off the interior of the armored car and into Reagan, lodging near his Aorta. Before going under for surgery, Reagan joked to his doctors, “I hope you’re all republicans.” One of them, a democrat, replied, “Today, Mr. President, we are all republicans.” and the president’s life was saved.

The shooter was a mentally disturbed stalker of the actress Jodi Foster who thought killing the president would impress her because that was similar to a plot point in a movie she’d starred in, Taxi Driver. The wanna-be assassin had previously attempted to assassinate president Carter, only for local police to detain him on a firearms charge. Real shame that hadn’t stopped him from getting another gun.

While Reagan quickly bounced back and moved on from the assassination attempt, his wife, Nancy, did not. Reagan had tried to comfort her, joking ‘Honey, I forgot to duck,’ but she was not in a laughing mood. Nancy noted that, dating back to 1840, every president elected in 20-year increments had died in office - Harrison, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Roosevelt, right on up to Kennedy. A friend told Nancy that a Hollywood astrologer named Quigley had foreseen the danger to Reagan in her astrological charts and Nancy called Quigley to ask if it was true, to which Quigley said, “of course it it’s true!” and a deal was quickly struck. For the rest of Reagan’s presidency, at least twice a month, Nancy would call Quigley, ask her to consult her charts, and identify which upcoming days were good or bad for Reagaon to travel or make public appearances, and Reagan’s schedule would be amended accordingly. So for the rest of this episode, through everything that’s going to happen, know that all of Reagan’s travel and many of his public appearances were personally approved or rescheduled by a Hollywood astrologer.

Yeehaw.

Let’s talk about tax cuts, shall we?

Ever since the advent of the federal income tax in 1913, the United States had adopted what’s called a progressive tax system. The first X dollars you make is taxed at a low rate, the next Y dollars you make is taxed at a higher rate, and so on. In the roaring 20’s, these rates had been pretty low, with the highest rate at 25%. But that top bracket went up during the great depression and it went even higher during World War II, reaching a 91% tax rate on every dollar a married couple earned past their first $400,000 - the equivalent of many millions of dollars today. That top bracket had stayed at 91% through the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy years until LBJ cut it to 70%, thinking this would incentivize more spending and growth, but he got mixed results.

And that’s where it sat when Reagan became president.

He wanted it lower.

Much lower.

And he was determined to get it.

Riding the good will that comes with surviving an assassin’s bullet, Reagan hosted a series of television appearances where he’d build up strawman arguments against the tax cut only to tear them down, and then he’d pitch his deal, which had 3 powerful arguments behind it.

One - So many tax loopholes had been written into law by 1981 that, while the top bracket looked high, many rich americans were actually paying less in taxes than middle and low-income americans. The tax code was due for a cleanup.

Two - Reagan introduced the american people to a theory called “supply-side economics.” This theory states that lowering taxes, decreasing regulation, and increasing free trade lead to economic growth, because the money millionaires were paying to the government in taxes could be spent on other goods in the economy. It was a novel idea at the time that many found convincing.

Three - Had anyone looked at the economy lately? It was a mess - double-digit inflation, 7.2% unemployment - the old policies weren’t working. Why not try something new?

Importantly, the third argument carried water in a panicked congress, so on August 13, 1981, Reagan signed his tax cuts into law. 

Days later, his economic team told him that, as a result of his tax cuts, the administration projected to run a $100b budget deficit by 1986. This knocked Reagan’s socks off. 

With the exception of World War II, the United States had rarely run a significant federal deficit. Presidents didn’t cut taxes unless they cut spending first, but Reagan had skipped that step. 

As the tax cuts hit the economy, they failed to spurn the growth Reagan had promised. And with federal interest rates also high - part of the fed’s plan to curtail inflation - loans and mortgages were so expensive that the economy dipped into a recession. As the economy shrank, federal revenues dropped even lower, driving Reagan’s budget deficits even higher, and sending balanced budget hawks - the traditional conservatives - into a tizzy. Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle began beating the drum for Reagan to raise taxes and 4 times between 82 and 87, Reagan obliged. Income brackets weren’t touched, but billions of dollars were raised through things like contract accounting, payroll tax rates, and excise taxes.

That wasn’t the end of it for Reagan, though. After cruising to reelection on a stabilized economy, Reagan took another swipe at taxes in 1986 and, through personal lobbying of Congressmen, won an even bigger tax cut than in 1981. The highest marginal rate paid by the wealthiest Americans, which remember, had been 70% when Reagan entered office and had been cut to 50% in 1981, was further reduced to 28%. A tax code that had held 16 different marginal tax rates in 1970 was simplified to 3 brackets. 

But, oh yeah, the poorest americans? Their taxes went up 15%.

So, that’s Reagan on taxes. Sometimes he cut them. Sometimes he raised them. He never did get the deficit in hand, though. At the same time he was cutting taxes, he was boosting military spending, which boosted the economy in the short-term - military spending is still government stimulus - but by doing that spending on a deficit, Reagan was setting the kindling for an economic recession that would destroy his successor’s presidency.

But if the 80’s were an interesting time for the American economy, they were a horrible time for the Soviet economy.

Let’s talk about the cold war!

Like Russia today, the Soviet Union was a major exporter of oil. 

When middle eastern oil embargos drove the price of oil through the roof in the 1970’s, the soviets rode that price hike all the way to the bank. But this was a mistake. In addition to selling radically more expensive oil to the west, they also sold radically more expensive oil to their satellite states in the soviet block - countries like Poland and Eastern Germany, who could not afford this more expensive oil, they had not been economically redeveloped the way western Europe had been by Harry Truman’s Marshall Plan. They were on shoestring budgets, and those shoestring budgets began to snap. In order to afford oil for heating and the moving of goods, they had to cut social services, which led to public discontent.

When the price of oil dropped back down to earth in 1980, the soviets were caught holding the bag. They had tripled military spending when oil was up, and now they had expensive commitments they could no longer maintain. And that war in Afghanistan wasn’t helping things

As the CIA told Reagan when he was sworn in, the whole soviet economy could collapse that decade.

The first chink in the soviet armor appeared in Poland in 1980, where disgruntled workers formed a labor union opposed to the state’s soviet government - yeah, that’s right, the fall of the soviet union kinda sorta started with a Polish labor union.

The union was called solidarity, and it threatened to shut down the polish economy through a general strike if reforms were not made. Under soviet pressure, the Polish government imposed marshall law and cracked down on the union. Reagan began speaking out in Solidarity’s defense, imposing limited economic sanctions on soviets.

Reagan’s initial approach to the soviets was to talk a big game. “Regimes planted by bayonets will not take root,” was a good quote. “Evil Empire” is the one folks remember. And there was that time a hot mic caught him joking, “My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes”

So you might understand why the Soviets started to freak the hell out. They became so paranoid the americans were about to attack that in just one year, 1983, the Soviets shot down a Korean airliner that drifted into their airspace, nearly launched their nukes when their early warning system mistook sunlight glinting off clouds for inbound missiles, and almost launched a preemptive nuclear strike when they thought a western military drill was cover for an American preemptive strike - some scholars now call this one of the closest calls on nuclear war in world history.

As word of these close calls reached Reagan, he decided that maybe, just maybe, he should cool the rhetoric.

And then, in 1985, the soviets elected a new leader with whom Reagan could deal.

Michael Gorbechav is the man who ended the cold war. The first university-educated soviet leader since Lenin, Gorbechav was whip smart, charismatic, and wide-eyed about the soviet union’s shortcomings and weaknesses. He embraced policies of openness and cultural exchange with the west and sat with Reagan to talk Arms control.

And Reagan, despite his tough talk, really wanted to meet with a soviet leader. Believe it or not, Gorbechev was the fourth man to lead the soviet union since Reagan had been inaugurated. In Reagan’s words, ‘They kept dying on me.’

But Gorbachev was young. A summit was scheduled for the two world leaders to meet face-to-face in Geneva.

This first meeting of men was engaging and promising. Nobody expected them to agree on politics, but they did agree on the need for arms control. There was just one sticking point - SDI.

SDI, the strategic defense initiative, was a sci-fi plan supported by Reagan to put satellites in space that could shoot down incoming nuclear missiles from beyond the atmosphere. Its nickname was “Star Wars.” The U.S. scientists knew this technology couldn’t work - it still doesn’t work today - and the soviet scientists were pretty sure the technology couldn’t work. But if it ever did work, the soviets were terrified of it. If the United States had a system that made it impervious to nuclear attack, what was to stop it from launching all its nukes at the soviets, shooting down all the soviet nukes from space, and ending the Cold War in a day?

Gorbachev wanted any agreement on arms limitation to include an end to the SDI program.

But Reagan LOVED the SDI program. He refused to sign any deal that limited it.

So a second summit was planned for 1986, this time in Iceland.

At this summit, an ambitious proposal was put on the table. What if the United States and the soviets eliminated all their nuclear weapons?

Gorbachev was even ready with an olive branch - SDI work could continue, just limit it to a lab. No atmosphering tests for the next 10 years.

And Reagan still said no.

Sure, Reagan wanted to get rid of all the nukes, but he wanted SDI more. Before coming to the summit, he’d publicly committed to protecting it, and now he felt he couldn’t break that pledge. What if, Reagan countered, he shared the secrets of SDI technology with the soviets once the Americans got it working? Gorbachev scoffed, the US military would never share a secret like that. And why do you need SDI anyway if we agree to give up our nukes? 

Because, Reagan argued, what if some rogue country develops nukes. We need SDI for that!

Round and round the argument went. And because of SDI, the deal that would have abolished all nuclear weapons from the United States and soviet union died a quiet death.

Later that year, Reagan and Gorbachev came together for a smaller compromise. All intermediary range nukes in europe were abolished. 400 U.S. warheads and 1500 soviet warheads were destroyed in the presence of foreign observers. And you might think, wow, what a deal! The soviets destroyed nearly 4 times as many nukes as the Americans did. And that’s true, but both sides still had enough nukes to destroy the world many times over. This was actually a way for the soviets and americans to save money without reducing their capacity to totally destroy each other. It was a hollow victory. 

On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan gave a speech in Berlin where he challenged the soviet leader, “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”

That wall would be torn down soon. But not yet. And not by the soviets. We’ll save that story for the Bush episode.

But there is one more great drama to discuss with Ronald Reagan. And it starts in the jungles of Nicaragua, where an anti-communist band called the contra were in dire need of help.

That’s right, the Iran-Contra scandal is about to get underway.

Back in 1979, a band of socialist revolutionaries known as the Sandanistas overthrew an American-backed dictator in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas then allied themselves with Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Ronald Reagan, a presidential hopeful at the time, made opposition to the Sandinistas part of his campaign. We can’t let communism spread in the western hemisphere! 

When he became president, he attempted to stop them with a little help from the CIA.

In 1981, the CIA began providing funding and training to a counter revolutionary group called the Contras. Backed by the CIA and other anti-communist governments in the region, the Contras waged a bloody civil war against the Sandinistas in the jungles of Nicaragua.

Then, in 1984, Reagan decided to take things a little further. He approved the secret mining of Nicaraguan harbors to interfere with the delivery of soviet military supplies. If he thought this would stay a secret, he was wrong. Mines appeared in Nicaragua’s harbors, folks started asking where they came from, and they were tracked back to the Americans. The public and Congress, even Reagan’s allies, were pissed. He had hid it from them and lied when asked about it. Members of his own party pointed out that mining harbors was an act of war and only Congress can declare war. Reagan was ordered to stop mining the harbors and legally forbidden from giving any more money to the Contras.

Which is what led to a rather fantastically stupid proposal during a cabinet meeting in 1984 - Sure, only congress can raise and spend money. We’ve all read the constitution. But what if the White House just, you know, helped the Contras find money somewhere else? What if the U.S. facilitated a deal with third party countries to fund the contras?

Well that’s blatantly unconstitutional and impeachable, so they tabled it. But not for long.

And that’s about when Iran entered the picture.

Iranian backed militants in Lebanon had kidnapped some Americans who Reagan wanted freed. Remember the iran-Iraq war I’d mentioned a while back? Well, we were publicly providing billions of dollars of aid to the Iraqis. Privately, Israel was supporting Iran in the fight. That might sound strange today, but by the early 1980’s, Israel had fought several wars against Iraq and zero against Iran, so the whole ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ thing was going on. The United States started to think that, even as it publicly supported Iraq, maybe it should privately support Iran, too. 

Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatolla Khomenei, was in his 80’s and likely to die soon. If we provided arms to moderates in Iran’s government, maybe we could become Iran’s friend again after this whole ‘revolution’ thing blew over.

This led Reagan’s national security advisor, Bud Macfarlane, to suggest the U.S. could give weapons to Israel, who would transfer them to moderates in Iran, if Iranian-backed militias in Lebanon freed Americans they had taken hostage there. 

Reagan’s cabinet roundly opposed the plan - Iran was a state sponsor of terror! But in a private visit with Macfarlane, Reagan gave his approval. 500 anti tank missiles were transferred to Iran through Israel and a first American hostage was freed. The deal was soon streamlined to remove the Israelis - weapons went straight from the U.S. to Iran for a trickle of hostages being released in Lebanon.

And then the press found out.

The first reports came from an Arab language magazine in Lebanon, which reported that American arms were being sold to Iran in return for the release of hostages. This got picked up by the American press and Reagan initially refused to comment on it, but the story was taking off. Reagan’s own senate leader, bob dole, accused him of “rewarding terrorists” - and oh yeah, this would be highly illegal if true.

10 days later, Reagan gave a televised address from the White House saying it was all a coincidence. We just happened to send arms to Iran and they just happened to free hostages, but few believed him, because it was bullcrap.

But that was small potatoes compared to what happened next. In November, 1986, Reagan was told the Attorney General had quietly been investigating the arms for hostages thing and he’d found something new. As Reagan wrote in his diary that night, quote “On one of the arms shipments, the Iranians paid israel a higher purchase price than we were getting. The israelis put the difference in a secret bank account. Then our Col. North, NSC, gave the money to the Contras.”

And that’s how hostages in Lebanon, a war in the middle east, and a civil war in Nicaragua all came together and the Iran-Contra scandal was born.

While there’s no doubt Reagan knew about the arms for hostages deal, he insists he did not know money was being diverted to the Contras, and it’s impossible to know what’s true here. Reaganites claim the president went pale when he heard about the Contras connection and say he ordered an immediate investigation so the team could publicize what they learned, then he fired the men overseeing the program the next day. A press conference was called where the attorney general revealed the affair and then said Lt Col. Oliver North was the only person in the world who had known about the operation, and he’d been fired. The press and the nation couldn’t believe it. How could something like this go no higher than a friggin Lt. Colonel?

And yet… nothing ever really came of it. A senate committee blamed Reagan for not controlling his administration, but that was it. An independent counsel was appointed to look into the matter, but that hit a dead end in 1992 when George Bush, formerly Reagan’s vice president, and now president in his own right, pardoned Reagan’s secretary of defense, national security advisor, assistant secretary of state, the CIA’s central american task force chief, the CIA’s chief of Covert Ops, and another CIA official in the final weeks of his presidency to kill the investigation. Not suspicious at all.

Even Oliver North, the one man blamed for the whole thing, had his convictions reversed on a technicality. Oh, and Reagan called North to tell him he was a hero.

There were, effectively, no consequences for the administration breaking the law.

As 1988 neared its close, Reagan watched his vice president, George Bush, win the presidency, a victory Reagan saw as validation as his record as president. On January 20, 1989, he left the presidency and rode off into the sunset.

Ok, so how had the United States, and the world, changed during the 8 years of the Reagan administration?

Well, on the domestic front, it was a tough time for the air traffic controllers. 

In the first year of Reagan’s presidency, the air strike controller union, roughly 13,000 people, went on strike to protest what they considered to be unfair wages and long work hours. Reagan ordered them back on the job - they were federal employees - and when they refused, he fired more than 11,000 of them. Their union was decertified. Replacements were hired and put in place. It was a big blow to the labor movement.

The 80’s were also the era of the AIDs crisis - which, I’ll be honest, many people tell me this is the top thing they think of when they think of Ronald Reagan. When the white house press secretary was asked about the, quote, ‘gay plague,’ he made jokes about it. Reagan did divert some money toward the crisis, but he refused to personally address it for years. That silence, that void of information, gave the epidemic room to spread and Reagan’s lack of a response is largely condemned today.

Have you heard of “The War on Drugs?” Well, it started under Nixon as a focus on getting Americans into treatment and recovery programs, but Reagan redirected its focus to more punitive measures, with far harsher mandatory penalties for drugs favored by minority communities. By the end of his term, one fourth of African Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were entangled in the legal system. That’s crazy.

And social safety nets for minorities and the poor in general were slashed as well. Reagan often campaigned on the fictional story of a welfare queen, an imaginary minority woman who never worked and drove sports cars bought with government handouts. It was entirely bs, but some people believed him and the story helped rally support for cuts to government programs. By the time he left office, A million children had lost reduced-price school lunches, 600,000 people had lost Medicaid, and a million had lost food stamps. Poverty was up 2% and child poverty was up 3%. The poor were getting poorer and the rich were getting richer.

The 1980’s also saw the introduction of Indiana Jones, MTV, and Nintendo North America in 1981 - fun fact, Nintendo’s signature character, Mario, is named after a Seattle property manager who was renting a warehouse to Nintendo for use as its headquarters

On the international front, I should talk more about what was happening in Lebanon.

You may remember from Nixon’s episode that the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, led by Yassar Arafat, had been forced out of Jordan after trying to overthrow the monarchy for not fighting Israel enough. Well, where’d the PLO go? Lebanon! And what did it do when it got there? It fomented another civil War!

The Lebanese civil war is a vastly complex struggle with a multitude of factions at each other’s throats. Prior to the war, Lebanon was one of the wealthiest success stories in the middle east, a former french colony that had become a hub of the region’s bank industry and a tourism hotspot. Today, Lebanon is a failed state, and that dates back to this civil war. 

The civil war started in 1975 and was waged between a variety of christian and muslim factions with guest appearances from neighboring armies and numerous atrocities on all sides. In 1982, Israel invaded after repeated attacks from PLO fighters, who would cross the border, kill israelis, and then flee back to Lebanon where they were safe. As the israeli army advanced, PLO fighters fell back into Beirut, and before you knew it, the israeli army was shelling Beirut. 

That’s when Reagan got involved. He negotiated a ceasefire. Israel’s army would leave Lebanon. The PLO would leave Lebanon. Syria’s army, which had also invaded, would leave Lebanon. American and european troops would move in to make sure it all went smoothly.

It didn’t go smoothly.

One year into the mission, an Iranian national drove his truck through the wire around a U.S. marines barracks in Beirut, crashed it into the lobby, and detonated 12,000 pounds of TNT. 241 american servicemen were killed by the explosion.

Due to the complexities of Lebanon’s civil conflict, Reagan felt he couldn’t escalate, but he didn’t want to look weak, so hours after the attack, he approved the American invasion of Granada, a tiny island of 110,000 people in the Caribbean. What? Yeah. I know. It’s weird. Granada’s president had been assassinated in a coup and its neighbors invited an American invasion to prevent the instability from spreading, but are you really allowed to ask the united states to invade your neighbor? Reagan made something up about american medical students being in danger - they weren’t - and the invasion went off without a hitch.

Three months later, Reagan withdrew American forces from Lebanon. Israel and Syria maintained their occupations of parts of Lebanon until 2000 and 2005, respectively.

In other international news!

Israel attacked and destroyed an iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, preventing Saddam Hussein from obtaining nuclear weapons, which was probably a good thing.

In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland islands, a small British-held archipelago in the South Atlantic, sparking a war that Britain won.

And the chernobyl nuclear plant experienced its catastrophic failure in 1986. If you haven’t seen the HBO series on Chernobyl, I highly recommend it. Hauntingly compelling Tv.

As for Reagan, he started to get… forgetful. Folks close to him insist this started after the presidency. Reagan tried to stay politically involved for a little bit. He endorsed federal gun control in 1991 and testified before a closed-door commission on Iran-Contra in 1992 before Bush issued those pardons. But even by 92, Reagan couldn’t remember basic facts of his presidency, or recall who certain people were. “I’m very embarrassed,” he apologized during deposition. “I’m sorry. It’s like I wasn’t president at all.”

In 1994, Reagan released a moving letter that said he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and then he faded from view. His public appearances drew to a close. He stopped visiting his ranch. He lost the ability to recognize his oldest friends. When one such friend visited him, Reagan didn’t acknowledge him, unaware of who he was and deeply absorbed in a book he was reading. When the friend walked over to see what Reagan was reading, they saw it was a picture book about Robert E Lee’s horse.

On June 5, 2004, Ronald Reagan died at his home in California. He was 93 years old. 

Oof.

Ok. If there are three things to remember from the Reagan administration, I would suggest:

• His combination of tax cuts and increased military spending propelled the federal deficit to historical levels and tripled the national debt, reversing a 40-year trend of debt as a percent of GDP getting smaller.
• He negotiated a nuclear arms reduction with the soviets, but we could have gotten rid of ‘em all if he had just let go of SDI.
• And he presided over the Iran-Contra scandal, where we sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon and then funneled the money to anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua - all highly illegal.

If you’re going to learn one lesson from Reagan, I would recommend this: Compromise. As Ronald Reagan told James Baker, “I’d rather get 80% of what I want than go over the cliff with my flags flying.” Reagan opposed abortion, but compromised on abortion law in California. He opposed taxes, but accepted tax hikes in bargains with Congress. He believed communism was evil, but built a relationship with the leader of the most powerful communist nation on earth. He always talked tough, but he compromised to get what he could.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Abridged Presidential Histories.

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The music in today’s podcast is a public domain recording of the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. 

The primary biography for today’s episode was Ronald Reagan: The Life, H.W. Brands