You know, I received an invitation that said, "Please come to Ellis Island July 4 "for the hundredth birthday celebration of an American institution."
Somebody goofed-- my birthday isn't until February.
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: On July 4, 1986, as he lit a refurbished Statue of Liberty, Ronald Reagan was at the height of his prestige.
Many wondered which American icon was being celebrated.
(orchestra playing intro to "America the Beautiful") REAGAN: Tonight we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom-- a cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.
(crowd applauding) CHORUS: ♪ O beautiful for spacious skies... ♪ NARRATOR: Ronald Reagan saw America as a special place, a shining city on a hill, set by God between two oceans as a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.
Reagan is brilliant at creating a kind of rapport with the country, appealing to its better angels, appealing to the native optimism, which is so much a part of our culture and our tradition.
♪ God shed his grace on thee ♪ ♪ And crown thy good with brotherhood... ♪ MAN: When he was asked, on the eve of his election, "What is it, Governor, that people see in you?"
And Reagan responds, "Would you laugh if I told you that they look at me and they see themselves?"
WOMAN: And I didn't understand why people had this adulation for him.
I thought he could possibly press the button.
Yeah.
I was terrified.
(crowd cheering) MAN: If you seek his monument, look around at what you don't see.
You don't see the Berlin Wall.
You don't see the Iron Curtain from Stettin to Trieste.
NARRATOR: He was America's most ideological president in his rhetoric, yet pragmatic in his actions.
He believed in balanced budgets, but never submitted one.
He hated nuclear weapons, but built them by the thousands.
He would write checks to a poor person as he cut the benefits of many.
He united the country with renewed patriotism, but his vision of America alienated millions.
He preached family values, but presided over a dysfunctional family.
You're not going to figure him out.
That's the first thing you need to know.
I don't think he's figured himself out.
I haven't figured him out.
I don't know anybody who has figured him out.
There is this mystery about Reagan that pervades everything, which is, how much was he aware of what he was doing?
NARRATOR: Inattentive to detail and often disengaged, Reagan led a revolution based on a few simple ideals-- to free Americans from big government and the world from communist oppression.
MAN: Before Reagan, every Western leader had the same strategic objective regarding the Soviet Union, which is to not lose.
Reagan came in and he said, "I don't want to play to not lose; I want to play to win."
MAN: He's tough.
He braces to talk to you.
It's confrontational.
Not unpleasant, but confrontational.
MAN: I often think of him as a nice, soft, silky pillow, and you could touch it and feel it, it was very nice.
But if you decided, well, let's take a hard punch and you hit it hard, you would find in the middle a solid-steel tempered bar.
That was the real Ronald Reagan.
That was the essence of Reagan.
(crowd cheering) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: As president, Ronald Reagan evoked a simpler place and a simpler time.
(crowd cheering) ♪ ♪ Small towns, patriotic values, family, and community.
An idealized America that no longer was, that perhaps never was...
Even for Ronald Reagan.
He was born in 1911 on the main and only street of Tampico, Illinois, in circumstances so poor that years later, while visiting his birthplace, he visibly recoiled.
His father, Jack, was a shoe salesman with a taste for whiskey who spent his life in search of his big break.
From age four, Dutch-- as his parents called him-- lived the life of a gypsy.
Every year a new town... new neighbors... friends left behind.
Dutch had nowhere to go, except within.
MAN: Always in childhood, you will see this distance.
In a group of small-town schoolchildren, little Ronnie will always be sitting with his face on his left hand-- a remote little boy who somehow held himself aloof from everybody else.
He carried this... distance, this remoteness, this aloofness right through.
On the one hand, he's one of the warmest, most amiable, gentlemanly, kindest people you'd ever want to meet.
And yet he has almost no close friends.
I mean, really, in fact, no close friends.
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Reagan would rarely speak of the pain of his childhood.
He would recall it as "one of those rare Huck Finn-Tom Sawyer idylls.
"There were woods and mysteries, "life and death among the small creatures, hunting and fishing; "those were the days when I learned the real riches of rags."
MAN: I think it's that kind of willful optimism in the face of reality as experienced and defined by others that tells you a lot about Ronald Reagan and perhaps even is one clue to understanding his presidency.
NARRATOR: Dutch was nine years old when the family finally settled in Dixon, Illinois.
A town of 8,000, Dixon was the essence of "Main Street" America.
Reagan would remember it as "a small universe "where I learned standards and values that would guide me for the rest of my life."
MAN: It was the era of Calvin Coolidge's presidency.
Values that Coolidge espoused were small-town, churchgoing... rugged individualism, the old 19th-century values of America.
It's a time when Americans are particularly drawn to this small-town world, because it's beginning to pass.
It's beginning to be eclipsed by the rise of American cities.
NARRATOR: The 1920s were a time of change and opportunity, even for the unpredictable Jack.
He opened his own shoe store, the Fashion Boot Shop, which became a popular spot in downtown Dixon.
MORRIS: His father loved to tell stories, stand outside his store and schmooze with whoever walked past.
In fact, Reagan said that his father was the best storyteller he ever knew.
NARRATOR: Jack had a weakness Dutch had long known about but never confronted.
"I was 11 years old the first time I came home "to find my father flat on his back on the front porch.
"He was drunk, dead to the world, "his hair soaked with melting snow.
"I bent over him, smelling the sharp odor of whiskey.
I managed to drag him inside and get him to bed."
DALLEK: One of the threads I see running through Ronald Reagan's career is a great attraction to autonomy, to independence, to freedom.
And I think a lot of this was a reaction against the fact that his father had this dependency on a substance and that he couldn't control himself.
He would never say anything negative about his father, but the moral disdain behind what he would say was quite palpable.
He thought of his father, in other words, as a man with a weakness who should have been strong enough to conquer it.
NARRATOR: Reagan's mother, Nelle, a devout Christian, became his moral compass.
With her guidance, he began to take charge of his life.
♪ ♪ MORRIS: He happened to read a novel which his mother had picked up somewhere called "That Printer of Udell's."
It's the story of a young man born in a rather ugly industrial Midwestern town who discovers-- through a series of bitter experiences with an alcoholic father-- who discovers that he has got the gift of oratory, and through his good looks and his voice and his convictions, he manages to create a whole social movement in this town.
The young man, Dick Falkner, goes off to Washington to take his message to the world.
He went to his mother when he finished that book and he said, "I want to be like that man and I want to be baptized."
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Reagan embraced his mother's faith based on good works, the Bible, and the belief that the hand of God guides daily life.
SMITH: I think it's easy to underestimate the place that fundamentalist Christianity plays in Reagan's life.
It's a cynical age, and when we heard that the president didn't go to church on Sunday, we wrote him off as a phony evangelical.
In fact, from his mother he imbibed deeply of fundamentalist faith.
She gave him this sort of sense of destiny, which was a huge part of it.
You know, if you know you're going to be the great man, you don't have to fret and worry about it because the opportunity will come and seize you.
NARRATOR: Nelle's church, the Disciples of Christ, became the center of Reagan 's life.
He led prayer meetings, taught Sunday school, even dated the minister's daughter, Margaret Cleaver.
Reagan determined to live the storybook life of an American youth.
He played football, excelled in swimming and often had the lead in school dramas.
He would later remember those days as the happiest in his life.
But life was sweetest two miles upstream from Dixon on the Rock River, where Dutch Reagan was the lifeguard.
MORRIS: "The Rock River flows for you tonight, Mr.
President."
It was something a radio announcer said to him after he was elected.
Came over the airwaves.
I've never forgotten that.
"The Rock River flows for you tonight, Mr.
President."
I think the Rock River was the central symbol of his youth.
NARRATOR: Ronald Reagan is remembered as actor, governor, president, but it was on the Rock River that he first discovered the role he came to love best.
WOMAN: I can remember him yet, very bronzed with his lifeguard sign on his swimsuit and a whistle around his neck, where he watched all the younger kids so they wouldn't get into trouble.
We just all remember him as lifeguard.
That's the way so many of us do.
NARRATOR: Every day, Dutch arrived at Lowell Park at dawn, fetched hundred-pound blocks of ice, stocked the snack bar, and, for the next ten hours, watched swimmers negotiate the currents of the Rock River.
During six summers as a lifeguard, he pulled 77 people from the water.
MAN: He always went up and cut a notch in the log after he pulled them out.
And they weren't probably all going to die, you know.
They all weren't going to drown, but they were in serious shape out there.
They needed help to get out of the water because of the river current.
And 77 is his count, and there was 77 notches in the log out there.
MORRIS: The poignant thing about the Rock River is that in his dotage, after he left the White House, when he began to lose his mind, the one thing he would still want to talk about was his days as a lifeguard on the Rock River.
He had a picture in his office of the spot where he used to stand as a boy and he would say... (imitating Reagan): "You see, that's where I used to be a lifeguard.
I saved 77 lives there."
♪ ♪ His subsequent career-- his subsequent political career, at any rate-- was devoted to the general theme of rescue.
NARRATOR: In 1928, at a time when few Americans went to college, Reagan attended Eureka College, run by the Disciples of Christ.
He majored in sociology and economics.
"I got poor marks," Reagan later admitted, "but I copped off the lead in most plays.
And in football, I won three varsity sweaters."
Reagan graduated from Eureka in 1932.
It was the depths of the Great Depression, but it took Reagan only six weeks to find a job at WOC Radio.
Later he moved to Des Moines to work as a sportscaster.
Life was easy for Ronald Reagan.
He had money, independence, and the time to learn to ride.
For the next four summers, using only statistics coming through telegraph, Reagan transported his listeners to the bleachers of Wrigley Field with his vivid recreations of baseball games he never saw.
♪ ♪ CANNON: If you look at where Reagan is really a master communicator, it really is on radio.
If you think about Reagan's career as an actor and as a president and as a speaker, just generally, he was a powerful re-creator.
He re-created our experiences.
I remember Hugh Sidey telling me that when he was a child in Iowa in the '30s, in the Dust Bowl years, he used to hear Ronald Reagan's voice coming over the airwaves.
And he said... just doing baseball commentary, but he said, "There was something about that voice "that gave me, as a child, the feeling that life was going to get better."
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Reagan had long dreamed of becoming an actor, and in 1937, he went to Hollywood.
He recalled the moment he stepped onto the set of his first film, "Love Is on the Air."
"I was surrounded by a wall of light "which gave me a feeling of privacy "that completely dispelled any nervousness I might have expected."
Reagan has always liked to be looked after.
He likes to have a Jack Warner in charge of the finances.
He likes to have a wardrobe mistress and a supporting cast.
He likes to be surrounded by the busyness of a great... commercial enterprise.
And that's where, I think, Ronald Reagan became a corporate person.
NARRATOR: Ronald Reagan would make more than 50 films.
Only in one did he play the villain.
DALLEK: Reagan loved the hero's role because he fantasized himself as a heroic figure.
The first time his mother sees him in the first film he plays in, she looks at the screen, and she says, "That's my Dutch."
And what she's speaking to is the idea that he's himself on the screen, that he's, in a sense, playing out the fantasy that he has that he's very comfortable with.
NARRATOR: Reagan was becoming a box office draw.
Guaranteed work and steady pay, he brought Nelle and Jack to California and bought them the only home they ever owned.
In 1940, he married a promising young actress, Jane Wyman.
Ron and Jane became the darlings of the Warner Brothers publicity machine, a valuable asset for an industry preoccupied with its image.
CANNON: They were always worried, the people who ran the studios, that some whiff of scandal involving their bright stars would cause people to stop turning up en masse at the box office or that the Legion of Decency would turn on them or something like that.
Reagan and Wyman were... were real, you know.
They were in love, they were wholesome.
People liked to look at them.
If you wanted to celebrate the marriage, Reagan was willing, so they did.
NARRATOR: With their daughter Maureen and their adopted son Michael, the Reagans were promoted as the perfect Hollywood family.
MAN: Ronald Reagan came up from middle America.
He came up in the movies in a time where most of the movies were designed to make people feel good when they left rather than to feel sad.
He reflected these kinds of qualities.
NARRATOR: Reagan was cast as football legend George Gipp in "Knute Rockne, All American."
It was his first major film, the one that earned him the nickname "the Gipper."
Try it anyway.
All right, if you insist.
Now, wait a minute.
What's your name?
Gipp.
George Gipp.
What's yours?
(players laugh) Is he kidding me?
Hello, handsome.
Oh, hi, Jeb.
My, you're a dream tonight.
How's the party?
I don't know, she hasn't come out yet.
Who are you waiting for?
Oh, a friend of mine.
Promised me a surprise tonight.
A night to remember the rest of my life.
NARRATOR: In 1940, he played opposite screen giant Errol Flynn in "Santa Fe Trail."
But the height of his acting career was as Drake McHugh in "King's Row."
Randy!
Where's the rest of me?!
Drake.
Randy!
Yes, Drake?
It was that accident.
NARRATOR: By the time "King's Row" opened, America was at war, and so was Ronald Reagan... but only on the screen.
(rapid gunfire) Reagan spent the war making training films at Culver City, less than ten miles from home.
He certainly loved... learned and loved to wear a uniform, to act like a soldier, to salute properly.
There's nothing he enjoyed more as president than saluting.
As commander-in-chief, he would do that little extra flip to the salute, which you hardly ever see in the armed services anyway.
It was a real Hollywood salute, but it meant a great deal to him.
(marching band playing) (crowd applauds) NARRATOR: Hollywood emerged from World War II with a new understanding of the power of movies in shaping American views.
Many who had mobilized in support of the war now turned their attention to other causes.
"I blindly joined every organization," Reagan wrote, "that would guarantee to save the world."
As a liberal Democrat, he spoke on issues ranging from the dangers of atomic weapons to racial equality.
If he knew some of his associates were Communists, he did not seem to care.
CANNON: He's involved in these, you know, leftist organizations where the Communists clearly were struggling for control.
The Communists valued Hollywood.
Reagan is one of these people who would dismiss this, who would dismiss the Communist conspiracy, the Communist threat, and then when he became convinced that it was real, he overdramatized it and overreacted to it.
NARRATOR: There had long been Communists in Hollywood-- writers and directors quietly exercising their influence in relative freedom.
But as the United States and the Soviet Union slid into the Cold War, they were eyed with growing suspicion.
Reagan confronted Communist activism in 1946 when, as a member of the Screen Actors Guild board, he was asked to mediate a dispute between rival unions.
One was led by a rumored Communist, Herb Sorrel.
Sorrel's union went on strike.
"The leadership does not want a settlement," Reagan concluded.
"It stands to gain by continued disorder and disruption."
♪ ♪ MORRIS: Reagan liked order, stability, and security, and the fact that they were involved in physical violence at the studio gates, which he personally experienced-- buses being overturned, windows smashed, stones thrown, bottles brandished, some bloodshed-- the fact that he personally witnessed this, personally experienced it, associated it with "Red," as he would have said, "Red domination of the union," that's what turned him.
NARRATOR: Sorrel and Reagan went head-to-head.
When Reagan crossed the picket line outside Warner Brothers, Sorrel called for a boycott of his movies.
Reagan was called a fascist.
An anonymous phone caller threatened to disfigure his face so he could never act again.
He began carrying a gun.
"Now I knew from firsthand experience "how Communists used lies, deceit, and violence to advance the cause of Soviet expansionism," Reagan later recalled.
DALLEK: He's the heroic figure battling against Communism.
It's not simply that he's fighting against Communism but that he's rescuing the Screen Actors Guild.
He's rescuing Hollywood.
He's helping to rescue the country from the Communist menace.
His effort was to deny them any real foothold in our guild, for example.
I recall, at one membership meeting, as he addressed the audience, he said, "You know, of course, that we have some Communists here," and he pointed.
"They're going to try to make 11 or 12 people sound like hundreds."
And he fought all the way, very hard and very diligently, and, I think, successfully.
NARRATOR: Reagan became an informant for the F.B.I.
And in 1947, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he testified as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities committee.
REAGAN: I will be frank with you that as a citizen, I would hesitate... or I would not like to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology because we've spent 170 years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight for itself against the inroads of any ideology, no matter how much we may disagree with it.
However, if it is proven that this organization is the agent of a foreign power or is in any way not a legitimate political party-- and I think the government is capable of doing that if the proof is there-- then that is another matter.
NARRATOR: Ten writers and directors were sentenced to prison-- not for being Communists but for refusing to cooperate with the committee.
They and many others were included in a blacklist and denied work.
CANNON: Reagan went along with the blacklist.
Now, I don't think this is...
I don't think he descended the moral depths or anything.
He did what most people did, and he did it somewhat more reluctantly and somewhat more slowly than most of them.
But the fact is, is that the blacklist is a blemish.
NARRATOR: Reagan had discovered his first political passion-- anti-Communism.
He paid a high price for his obsession.
CANNON: Reagan came home and was told, "This is over, the marriage is over."
And that he was totally stunned by it.
It was like he was, you know, hit by a ton of bricks, and that was... it was a very, very hard thing for him to accept or get over.
NARRATOR: "Perhaps I should have let someone else save the world," he later wrote, "and saved my own home."
MORRIS: Reagan was in deep depression.
He'd lost his wife.
He breaks his leg in an amateur baseball game and is hospitalized for most of 1949.
And by the time he'd hobbled out of the hospital on crutches, he was a changed man.
And I remember him saying once, over dinner, telling the story of that awful year: "And then along came Nancy Davis and saved my soul."
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: When Ronald Reagan met Nancy Davis, she was a young actress under contract at M.G.M.
Wealthy and socially well-connected, she shared with Ronald the experience of an insecure childhood.
Abandoned by her father, Nancy was left in the care of an aunt while her mother, actress Edith Lucket, toured the country.
Nancy was eight when Edith married a prominent Chicago neurosurgeon, Loyal Davis.
Almost overnight, she entered a world of privilege.
In 1949, when she was mistakenly included on a list of Hollywood Communists, Nancy sought Ronald Reagan's help to clear her name.
They were married in a private ceremony in 1952.
Seven months later, Patti was born.
WOMAN: My parents have about as close a relationship as I've ever seen anyone have.
They... they really, sort of, complete... complete each other.
They're kind of two halves of a circle.
RON REAGAN: He's a guy who's almost impossible to dislike, who always thinks the best of people; can't believe that anybody who's, you know, ever met him would ever want to do anything bad to him; would ever want to go behind his back; would ever want to stab him in the back.
Um... that's just not within his realm of thinking.
He just can't conceive of it.
Nancy, on the other hand, is far more cunning about that sort of stuff.
She has no trouble understanding stabbing in the back.
The best way to describe their relationship politically was that, you know, he was the C.E.O., he was the boss, and she was the personnel director.
As they went through life, there was always... Nancy had to take a look at you.
She would research you, she'd find out about you.
So she spent all her time looking for people that would serve her man well.
NARRATOR: With Nancy as his partner, Reagan resumed his life.
As president of the Screen Actors Guild, he earned a reputation as a tough and skillful negotiator, battling studios and producers.
But as an actor, he was failing.
In the early '50s, he was cast in unmemorable roles; in unmemorable films, like "Cattle Queen of Montana..." Do you know where McCord's turning him over to Natchacoa?
Once Natchacoa gets his hands on him, this whole territory will be on fire before night.
(chimp whimpering) NARRATOR: ...opposite a chimpanzee in "Bedtime for Bonzo."
"Hellcats of the Navy," with Nancy, was a flop.
WOMAN: It was a very bad time, and he was, um...
I mean, he was about as low as he could get at that point.
He couldn't understand why a career that he loved so much and felt that he had been good to and at was slipping through his fingers.
NARRATOR: Reagan took a job at the Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, singing and dancing in a third-rate vaudeville show.
WOMAN: He rolled with it, but it... but it hurt, of course, when the career dried up.
Of course it hurt.
It would anybody.
But he... again we get back to the deep belief that everything happens for a reason, um... and that whatever happened to him, there was a reason for it.
NARRATOR: Reagan was rescued from obscurity when General Electric signed him to host a weekly television series, "G.E.
Theater," at an annual salary of $125,000.
ANNOUNCER: ...In engineering, in manufacturing skill, at General Electric... NARRATOR: Every Sunday evening, Ronald Reagan visited Americans in their living rooms.
Our play tonight is about a home away from home-- a problem facing one of our military families on occupation duty overseas.
Now, to Colonel Wheeler, a doctor in the regular army, home is wherever he is quartered at the convenience of the government.
NARRATOR: His role as celebrity spokesman took him to G.E.
plants across the country.
After 17 years in Hollywood, Reagan was reacquainting himself with America.
CANNON: G.E.
was perfect for him, and the reason it was was, he was able to get out on the road and talk to people, at a long distance from anybody else, speeches that were rarely covered, and if covered at all, were covered in a hometown newspaper, and there were... no national coverage and he was able... he was free to make mistakes.
It was a kind of apprenticeship that isn't there for most people and he made the most of it.
NARRATOR: Initially, Reagan regaled his listeners with anecdotes about Hollywood and his fight against Communists.
But soon his speeches broadened to include other concerns.
CANNON: This was a company that was basically a middle-class company.
Most of the workers identified with the middle class, and a lot of them identified with the concerns of management that there were too many restrictions on them.
NARRATOR: Reagan picked up on the grumblings of G.E.
executives and employees angry about government intrusion and rising taxes.
"I realized the enemy was big government," he later wrote.
Reagan had found his political mission.
He would fight Communism and big government.
He delivered his message with evangelical zeal across the nation.
After eight years on the G.E.
circuit, Reagan emerged as a recognized conservative spokesman.
♪ ♪ Now a wealthy man, he was able to provide for his family "the California dream."
RON REAGAN: He's always wanted a ranch and almost always had one.
That would probably be the place where all of us probably spent the most time with him.
You know, he made sure we all had horses at a relatively early age.
DAVIS: I have a lot of happy memories with my father when I was younger.
And I was...
I tried to keep up with him athletically because that was, um... well, I mean, it was something I loved, but it was also a way to spend time with him.
Both my brother and I learned to swim probably before we could walk.
My father, having been a lifeguard, believed that you just learned to swim and then you are not ever going to get into trouble.
RON REAGAN: So he made sure that we had swimming lessons and he also used to test us every once in a while-- you know, throw us just to see that we could react quickly and, you know, not panic and, you know, be able to find the side.
And he would play with us in the pool and we'd ride on his back, and all that kind of stuff.
♪ ♪ DAVIS: He used to give birthday parties for either me or Ron, out at the ranch and hire a man who had this trick horse or who could count with his hooves or something, I don't know.
RON REAGAN: The fact that there was this horse... there was always the same guy with the same horse and the same dog; the same Dalmatian and the same pinto pony birthday party after birthday party at the Malibu ranch.
Whether it was Patti or me, there he'd be.
DAVIS: It was sort of that Ozzie and Harriet kind of home.
No family is entirely harmonious.
I mean, Ozzie and Harriet weren't harmonious in real life, either, so, of course, it's not... of course not.
But that's what we wanted to think families were in the '50s.
We were conscious, I think, growing up, all of us-- and I know I was-- that there were really two sets of people, two definite and distinct sets of people involved in the family.
There was my mother and father, and there was everybody else, and that, while we were all part of the family, when push came to shove, there was a distinction to be made; that, you know, well, it really wasn't anything like... it wasn't like, you know, seen and... be seen and not heard, but it was... you know, we were expected to, uh... we were expected to put ourselves in second place to whatever they were doing.
MAN: Ladies and gentlemen, we take pride in presenting a thoughtful address by Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Reagan.
(applause) REAGAN: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
NARRATOR: Reagan burst onto the national political scene in 1964 with a televised address on behalf of conservative Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.
REAGAN: I have spent most of my life as a Democrat.
I recently have seen fit to follow another course.
NARRATOR: President Lyndon Johnson had just declared his war on poverty, expanding the role of government.
MORRIS: "The Speech," as it's known amongst Reaganauts, that was the culmination of, the quintessence of, all his speeches honed on the G.E.
circuit.
All the catchphrases that he'd found worked well, all the ideology that he'd polished during his years as a G.E.
corporate spokesman and emerging political orator, they all came together at this moment.
This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
NARRATOR: "Time" magazine called the speech "the one bright spot in a dismal campaign."
Although it could not rescue Goldwater from defeat, it placed Reagan on the cutting edge of conservative politics.
There was still a big-government ground swell among the liberal elements, and certainly the idea of conservatism as we know it today was not something that politicians embraced very eagerly, nor did the voting public.
So, in that sense, Ronald Reagan was ahead of his time.
NARRATOR: Reagan's maverick attack on big government brought him to the attention of California entrepreneurs who were searching for a candidate to run for governor in 1966.
"That speech," Reagan remembered, "led me onto a path I never expected to take."
REAGAN: I've come to a decision that even a short time ago I would have thought impossible for me to make.
And yet I make it with no lingering doubts or hesitation.
As of now, I am a candidate seeking the Republican nomination for governor.
California in the 1960s is a society that is going through tumultuous change.
He runs in 1966 as a staunch Goldwater conservative who will restore to the people their autonomy and freedom from government, and it strikes resonant chords with millions of people in California who were bothered by the welfare system, bothered by the high taxes, bothered by the radicalism of the students, bothered by the crime in the streets, bothered by the inner-city explosions.
And on all those counts he was very effective in appealing to the mass of suburban voters in California.
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Democratic governor Pat Brown underestimated Reagan and the revolt brewing in his state.
(cheering) What have my opponent's contributions been to this growing, thriving state of ours?
He's divided his time between propaganda pictures against everything from Medicare to the Tennessee Valley Authority, and starring in such unforgettable screen epics as "Bedtime for Bonzo."
They looked at Ronald Reagan, that dumb actor, and they said, "Oh man, this is the guy we want to run against.
"He has no political experience, he's not going to be able to handle himself well."
So we devised a technique where he would give his 20-minute speech.
And, incidentally, Ronald Reagan wrote all his own speeches when he ran for governor in 1966.
He'd give the 20-minute speech, and we'd open it to 20 minutes of Q&A to the people there at the meeting or the press, and if he could handle those questions, we felt we could get over the hump of "Here's an empty person "who doesn't know anything about government or doesn't have any real ideas."
MAN: Ronnie, here do you stand on the death penalty?
You've just expressed a question which is also as much on the minds of the people in the state as Berkeley.
This, too, is a question asked all over the state.
And as I've answered to those other people, I would tell you I think all of us have wavered back and forth on this issue because of our Judeo-Christian background, our questioning as to our right to take human life.
But I believe that we have the right to take human life in defense of our own.
MAN: Do you discount the fact that many women may be influenced by the fact that you are a movie star-- you're handsome and young and that sort of thing?
Well, now, you can't have it both ways.
Some of the people on the other side have been suggesting that before I became a candidate, that I wasn't very acceptable as a movie star, that, uh... so, no, I do believe that the people are aware of the issues... CANNON: Here Reagan is, he's answering questions.
And I came back and I called my editor and he said, "What did you think of him?"
And I said, "I don't know."
I said, "I don't know why these... "why anybody would want to run against this guy.
"Why would you want to run against somebody "who everybody knows and likes and who is... who is friendly and popular?"
NARRATOR: As Reagan gained exposure, his aides began to shape his image.
NOFZIGER: A political reporter for KPIX in San Francisco said, "I want to do an interview with Reagan on horseback."
And I said, "That's a great idea.
That really humanizes him."
And so... and he had a ranch out in Malibu Canyon, oh, about 25 miles from downtown Los Angeles.
So we went out there and he came out wearing jodhpurs.
And I said, "What in the hell are you doing in those jodhpurs?"
"Well," he said, "that's how I always ride around here," very huffily.
And I said, "Ron, we're trying to win an election here, you know.
"People in California, as they see you in those jodhpurs are going to think you're an Eastern sissy."
He says, "Well, this is what you wear when you're jumping horses."
I said, "We're not jumping horses; we're going for a ride.
"She wants you to be a cowboy.
"I want you to be a cowboy because that's what the people here will identify with."
So he said, "Well, all right."
So he went back in and changed into jeans and boots.
NARRATOR: Reagan would come to embody the great myth of the American West: the independent cowboy standing tall.
DALLEK: It fits into this whole image of him as a kind of tough-minded heroic figure, someone who is coming to their rescue.
And they see him as an honest man.
They see him as an honest politician, as someone who speaks his mind.
(cheering) Thank you very much!
(applause) This small minority of beatniks and malcontents and filthy-speech advocates have interfered with the primary purpose of that university and they've brought shame on a great university, a university of which you and I have a right to be very proud and which for many years we have been very proud.
The people of this state are entitled to an open hearing to reveal what has been taking place and to fix responsibility.
SMITH: There was a sense that traditional values, traditional institutions were being challenged, and so people took a chance and they voted on a Hollywood movie actor against an established and relatively popular incumbent governor.
CHOIR: ♪ O beautiful for spacious skies ♪ ♪ For amber waves of grain ♪ ♪ For purple mountains... ♪ NARRATOR: On January 2, 1967, Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as governor of the State of California.
He had not only beaten Brown, he had beaten him by one million votes.
I do.
MAN: That you take this obligation freely, without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that you will well and faithfully discharge... DAVIS: I was hysterical when I found out that my father had been elected governor.
The Vietnam War was going on.
Um... Berkeley was going on.
The, you know, the one place I wanted to be, if I hadn't been 14 years old and at a boarding school in Arizona, was on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, braiding flowers into my hair.
I mean, this was my goal in life.
And now my father was governor of California.
So this was... this was...
I just didn't think it was a good image for me, you know?
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Patti was not the only Reagan facing an image problem.
Her mother drew the attention of the press when she refused to live in the governor's Victorian mansion, an historic landmark.
NANCY REAGAN: I have to translate everything into being the mother of an eight-year-old.
You are right on a busy corner.
I love old houses.
I'll start with that.
And I love old things and I love tradition.
I don't think there has been a governor with an eight-year-old child before.
NARRATOR: Nancy moved her family to an exclusive Sacramento suburb, becoming the target of criticism.
She was devastated when writer Joan Didion called her actress smile, "a study in frozen insincerity."
The governor, too, raised a few eyebrows with his talk about Biblical prophecy.
The Reverend Billy Graham had stirred Reagan's interest when he told him that Judgment Day was near.
Reagan would repeat Graham's warning, adding, "For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon."
One sign was what he called "the Communist takeover of Libya."
With no experience, Reagan faced the task of governing the State of California.
When a reporter asked what kind of a governor he would make, he quipped, "I don't know.
I never played governor."
CANNON: He faced an enormous challenge because Reagan really didn't know anything about... about politics or governance, and he had a lot of people around him who arguably knew even less.
I mean, I remember Lyn Nofziger once said, "You know, we weren't just amateurs, we were novice amateurs."
NARRATOR: Reagan's first decision, designed to reduce the size of government, proved a disaster.
He decides that, in his naïveté about running state government, that you could just do a ten percent across-the-board cut and that would be easy to accomplish.
Well, he found out that it was not easy to accomplish and that it probably wasn't equitable.
NARRATOR: Announced at a time of growing campus unrest, the cuts pitted the governor against students at the University of California.
They would be required to pay tuition for the first time.
Let 'em throw, let 'em throw, but I'm going to get out.
I don't care, just so it's outside.
Okay, now.
POLICEMAN: Little more... more.
NARRATOR: After years of playing the hero, Reagan found himself cast as the villain.
We were down at the University of California campus in Santa Barbara, and all of the students were all mad at him.
We'd come back from lunch to go back to where they were having the meeting and the students just kind of lined up along the pathway and they all gave him the silent treatment, you know, and nobody said hello, nobody waved, nobody did anything.
They just stood and stared at him.
So he walked through this gauntlet of people very nonchalantly, got up to the doorway where we were going, turned around and he said, "Shh."
Everybody broke out laughing and he walked on in.
NARRATOR: Reagan struck a chord with Americans nationwide who were becoming fed up with the radical '60s.
I saw him make a speech in 1964 for Goldwater.
I said there's the man that should be running for president and there's the man we need for president.
I like the way he takes a firm stand on things and the way he goes about them.
I think his views agree with mine.
He has the same type of feeling with the people that John Kennedy had, I think.
He's the hope of America.
♪ Ronald Reagan, he's the one ♪ ♪ He's the one to beat ♪ ♪ Because he's the leader of the G.O.P.
♪ ♪ To pick up the victory ♪ ♪ Ronald Reagan, he's just begun ♪ ♪ He's still our favorite son ♪ ♪ And the name will hit ya ♪ ♪ I bet ya, I bet ya ♪ ♪ It's Ronald Reagan!
♪ (cheering, applause) NARRATOR: A Reagan draft initiative caught fire.
When the Republicans gathered in Miami in 1968, Reagan, after only 18 months in elected office, was the choice for president among conservatives.
By then, former vice president Richard Nixon had a lock on the nomination.
I hereby proudly move on behalf of my fellow Californians that this convention declare itself as unanimously and united behind the candidate Richard Nixon as the next president of the United States, and I so move.
(applause, horns blaring) NOFZIGER: Reagan was not upset.
He told me, "Lyn, I just didn't think I was ready for it."
So, you know, he knew himself very well and he... obviously, he'd have taken it if there been this great demand for him, but... but he knew that he would be better off waiting.
CROWD (chanting): On strike!
On strike!
On strike!
On strike!
NARRATOR: Reagan returned to California to face the first true crisis of his governorship.
The student revolt, which had begun in 1964, reached its climax at Berkeley in the spring of 1969.
The university was paralyzed by a student strike, which was joined by members of the Black Panther Party and even some professors.
MORRIS: There was a spellbinding moment when he was governor, confronting a bunch of Berkeley university profs.
He suddenly recognizes in their midst a radical from his Hollywood days.
His name was, I think, Popski.
And he said, "You, Popski, I know you and I know what you stand for."
Lost his cool.
There was a direct connection there-- the anarchy that prevailed on the Berkeley campus in 1969 with the anarchy that he saw immediately after World War II outside the gates of Warner Brothers.
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: When the police failed to break the strike, Reagan sent in the California Highway Patrol.
That only heightened tensions.
REAGAN: I believe that where any group's rights are being imposed upon or any individual's rights, by any others, it is the obligation of government to protect those constitutional rights at the point of bayonet if necessary.
NARRATOR: The National Guard descended on Berkeley replete with bayonets.
It occupied the city for 17 days.
Most Californians regarded Reagan as a hero for restoring the peace at Berkeley.
Others felt he had acted as a trigger-happy extremist.
(chattering indistinctly) The following year, Reagan ran for re-election with little to show for his first term.
He had promised to lower taxes, but they had increased, and he had failed to curb the growth of government.
The other way around.
The other way around.
Some of the things they've said about me and education, this may get you expelled.
NARRATOR: Reagan won in November and launched a new initiative to cut back government spending.
Welfare is the biggest single outlay of public funds at three different levels of government: federal, state, and county.
And welfare is adrift, without rudder or compass.
NARRATOR: In his first term, Reagan had governed through confrontation.
Now he needed to collaborate with the Democratic-controlled assembly if he wanted his welfare bill to pass.
Reagan was beginning to think about his own legacy.
He was beginning to think about the accomplishments that he would be looked back on when he left the governorship, and I'm sure that people would argue that Reagan was also beginning to build or try to build a record to run for president on for a second time.
NARRATOR: The bill passed.
Reagan saved taxpayers $2 billion and learned an important lesson.
MAN: He proved to himself that he could make some changes, that he could not only talk about and move people to get things done, but he could actually move the mechanics of government to get things done.
And I think that confidence that it gave Reagan was more important than most people realize.
MEESE: And so when he left, he left with a kind of a ground swell of approval in the state and a great deal of interest throughout the country among many people, that he go on and perhaps run for the presidency in the future.
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You're all asking the same question and you're all going to get the same answer, so we might as well do it once, instead of... No, I've made no change whatsoever.
I have said repeatedly, and I repeat again, I have a decision to make.
I don't know what that decision will be.
When the time comes, I will announce it, yes or no, and I assume that that will be sometime before the end of this year.
That summer, I had had everybody over to my house for dinner and we were playing charades, and, um...
I've forgotten exactly how it happened, but I guess it was a book title, and my father was the one doing it, and he... and finally he just stood there and just went... like this, you know, like, "It's me" and we all screamed, "'Making of a President!'"
NARRATOR: In his bid for the 1976 Republican nomination, Reagan faced enormous odds.
He was taking on President Gerald Ford and his own Republican Party.
He lost to Ford in New Hampshire and kept on losing.
MAN: I think that... that is a point in time, at least in my mind, when you really saw the essence of Reagan's character in its full flower.
At that time, if I recall correctly, the campaign was basically considered dead in the water.
He had just lost five straight presidential primaries to President Ford, and maybe most importantly, we were about $2 million in debt.
REPORTER: Does it change significantly any of the political plans of yours?
No, not a bit.
I'm going to run as hard as I can, and figure I'm behind.
And the question was, "Should we quit?"
And I think the general attitude was, it's not "Should we?"
It's "Do we have any choice?"
We had this discussion, and the consensus was, "Certainly, you have to quit."
Reagan was just sitting there, listening to this.
And "I'm telling you right now"-- and he was looking at everybody in the room-- "that I am going to run in every single primary from here to the convention even if I lose every single one."
NARRATOR: Reagan searched for an issue to ignite his campaign.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm deeply concerned about our defense posture.
Despite the assurances of Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Ford, the United States is no longer the first military power on Earth.
The Soviet army is now twice the size of ours.
Russia's annual investment in weapons, strategic and conventional, now runs some 50% ahead of ours.
Under Kissinger and Ford, this nation has become number two in military power in a world where it's dangerous, if not fatal, to be second-best.
NARRATOR: Televised repeatedly on the eve of the North Carolina primary, Reagan's warning of a new Communist menace brought him his first victory.
As the primaries moved to the more conservative South and West, the campaign gained momentum.
REAGAN: We are ahead of our projections at this time-- where we thought we would be, and many people say, "Well, you know, is that just whistling past the graveyard or something?"
No, we're ahead to the extent that recently for the first time I said I believed that there was a very great possibility, if not probability, that I could go to the convention with enough delegates in advance to win on the first ballot.
(cheering, horns blaring) DEAVER: After winning some of those primaries, none of us ever thought that it was out of our reach.
Something would happen that would turn that convention.
And I think Reagan believed that.
Madame Chairman, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, home of the Phillies and the Pirates... (individuals cheering) casts ten... casts ten votes for Governor Reagan and 93 votes for Gerald Ford.
(cheering) ANNOUNCER: 20 votes for Gerald R. Ford.
(cheering, horns blaring) RON REAGAN: Ford had given his acceptance speech and he then turned to the sky box, where we were, where my father was, and... and sort of beckoned my father to come down.
I think he was conscious of the fact that nearly 50% of the people in the hall, maybe even more, really would have preferred Ronald Reagan to be the candidate.
(cheering continues) NANCY REAGAN: The response of those delegates was something unbelievable, just unbelievable.
And there we were in this box way back in the back, and we stood, and he kept doing this to them, to tell them to sit down, and they never would sit down.
They wouldn't stop yelling... and yelling for him, and "Speech, speech."
I just hoped that... that... that Ronnie had something that he wanted to say, because he said to me, as we were running-- we didn't expect to... to be up on the stage-- and as we were running to get there, he said, "I haven't the foggiest idea of what I'm going to say."
If I could just take a moment...
I had an assignment the other day.
Someone asked me to write a letter for a time capsule that is going to be opened in Los Angeles 100 years from now.
We live in a world in which the great powers have poised and aimed at each other horrible missiles of destruction, nuclear weapons that can in a matter of minutes arrive in each other's country and destroy virtually the civilized world we live in.
And suddenly it dawned on me, those who would read this letter 100 years from now will know whether those missiles were fired.
They will know whether we met our challenge.
Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here... Mr. President... (wild cheering) REAGAN: Thank you, thank you.
(wild cheering and applause) MORRIS: And the power of that speech was extraordinary, and you can just feel, throughout the auditorium, the palpable sense among the delegates that "We've nominated the wrong guy."
(wild cheering, horns blaring) NARRATOR: The next day, Reagan bid farewell to his campaign staff.
Sure, there's a disappointment in what happened, but the cause... the cause goes on, and... (audience cheering) Don't get cynical.
Uh... don't get cynical, because look at yourselves and what you were willing to do, and recognize that there are millions and millions of Americans out there that want what you want, that want it to be that way, that... want it to be a shining city on a hill.
(applause) ANDERSON: On the plane going back, I went over, I had a convention ticket, and I asked him if he could sign it as a souvenir.
And what he wrote was, "We fought, we dreamed, and the dream is still with us."
And looking back on it now...
He never gave up, he just kept right on going.
It was... it was, you know, this incredible, crushing defeat and it didn't crush him.
He just came back up, shook his head and said, "Okay, what's next?"
And that began the campaign for the year 1980.
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Reagan retreated to his new ranch in the mountains high above Santa Barbara: Rancho del Cielo, "The Ranch in the Sky."
RON REAGAN: It was a place where he could renew himself and rejuvenate himself.
And he would go out, you know, for hours at a time.
He'd just sort of disappear up into the hills and into the brush, sometimes with a chainsaw.
You know, he was just happy as a clam out there, doing his ranch thing.
MAN: His form of relaxation was very hard physical labor.
He was not a type of man to relax.
We started building fences.
It's been over the course of quite a few years, because he actually built the fences or designed the fences out of telephone poles.
He designed it so when you looked at the fence, everything was uniform.
We started to just do it around the house, but then when we finished with that and we sat back and looked at it, "Well, wouldn't it look nice if we went around the pond?"
Well, we went around the pond, then we created a pasture-- "Well, the pasture needs fencing," you know, so we went around the pasture, then we built an orchard and, "Well, you know, we should probably continue the fence around the orchard."
So... these fences are not going anywhere.
NARRATOR: Reagan was killing time, waiting while America ripened toward his conservative message.
"People were rebelling," he observed, "a prairie fire was spreading across the land."
SMITH: Just stop and think what this country had been through by 1980-- we had been through the Vietnam War, we'd been through Watergate, we'd seen one president after another tarnished by scandal, by failure, by an assassin's bullet.
By 1980, we were pretty cynical.
By 1980, we had just been through a couple of years of double-digit inflation.
We'd seen the Soviet Union seemingly on the march around the world, most notably in Afghanistan.
NARRATOR: Reagan ran for president on a conservative platform of less government and stronger defense, promising to restore America's greatness.
My fellow citizens of this great nation, with a deep awareness of the responsibility conferred by your trust, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.
(people cheering, horns blaring) They say that the United States has had its day in the sun, that our nation has passed its zenith.
They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems, that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.
My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view.
MAUREEN REAGAN: He was so unhappy about what was happening to the country-- the fact that people didn't believe in themselves, they didn't believe that they could make things better, that America was a nation in decline, all of those things.
And he knew in his heart those things were not true.
And he believed that, as president, he could make the American people look inside themselves and recreate what they needed to have their own American dream.
I think he felt sincerely in his heart that he was rescuing the United States from a period of poisonous self-doubt, loss of direction... loss of belief in itself.
I think he felt, in the late 1970s, that he could rescue Jimmy Carter's America and carry her back to the shore and make her alive again.
(people cheering and applauding) NARRATOR: Reagan kicked off his fall campaign in Jersey City with a great American symbol as a backdrop.
He addressed a blue-collar, ethnic audience, appealing to their patriotism and to their growing sense of insecurity.
REAGAN: Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary.
Well... if it's a definition, if it's a definition he wants, I'll give him one: A recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours... (applause) ...and recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
Most people don't remember now, but that was probably the worst economic situation the United States had been in since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Inflation was roaring, interest rates were going up, people couldn't afford to buy homes.
A lot of people remember very clearly, if they were old enough to drive a car then-- you couldn't buy gasoline, no matter how much money you had.
(crowd chanting) ANDERSON: We had a hostage crisis in Iran.
People were getting worried.
NARRATOR: 52 American diplomats had been held hostage in Iran for a year.
They were a daily reminder of America's impotence and a political liability for Jimmy Carter.
I believe that this administration's foreign policy helped create the entire situation that made their kidnap possible, and I think the fact that they've been there that long is a humiliation and a disgrace to this country.
NARRATOR: Every day the American hostages remained in captivity, Carter's prospects for re-election dimmed.
Earlier this evening, I spoke on the phone with President Carter.
He called, John Anderson called, but the president pledged the utmost in cooperation in the transition that will take place.
(crowd cheering) All I can say to all of you is thank you... and thank you for more than just George Bush and myself-- thank you because if the trend continues, we may very well control one house of the Congress for the first time in a quarter of a century.
(wild cheering and applause) NARRATOR: The Republicans did gain control of the Senate.
Reagan beat Carter in a landslide, carrying 44 states.
It was a great victory for Reagan and the conservative movement.
REAGAN: I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.
(cannons firing) NARRATOR: When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, expectations were low.
At a time when America faced an economic crisis and an escalating Cold War, many wondered if anyone could manage the country, least of all a former Hollywood B-actor.
MAN: ♪ You went away and my heart went with you... ♪ NARRATOR: "Things could go very badly in the first year"-- Reagan's staff had warned-- "resulting in an erosion of Republican momentum and public confidence."
MAN: ♪ ...my every prayer ♪ ♪ If there is some other way to show that we love you ♪ ♪ I swear we don't know how.
♪ NARRATOR: But Reagan projected great assurance.
He believed-- like Franklin Delano Roosevelt 50 years before him-- that his mission was to restore America's trust in itself.
It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams.
We're not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline.
I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do; I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
SMITH: He and Franklin Roosevelt have so much in common-- they're both great communicators, they're both buoyant optimists and they both came to Washington in periods of great economic distress, but there's a major, major difference apart from one being a liberal, one being a conservative.
F.D.R.
was a great improviser-- he made up the New Deal almost day by day.
Reagan came to office with a very fixed set of beliefs and an agenda to try and implement those beliefs.
Ronald Reagan had a few very simple precepts-- government was too big, taxed too much, and the Soviet Union was getting away with murder internationally.
"You guys work out the details."
NARRATOR: The key guys in the Reagan White House were Chief of Staff James Baker, who knew how Washington worked, and Edwin Meese and Michael Deaver, who knew, from Sacramento, how Reagan worked.
Deaver had another assignment: the first lady.
To this troika Reagan delegated unprecedented authority.
ANDERSON: In some ways he governed like a Turkish pasha.
He assembled people around him, brought people in, talked to them, made it clear to them what he wanted to do, and then the attitude seemed to be, "Okay, now you know what I want to do, let's do it."
And he just assumed that these things would be done.
NARRATOR: The future would expose the weakness of Reagan's propensity to delegate, but for most of his first term, the troika served him well.
MAN: The Carter administration had made a terrible mistake by sending up so much legislation in their first hundred days that the focus became very diffused.
We didn't make that mistake.
I said, "Look, our 100-day plan says we are to have "three priorities, and those three priorities "are economic recovery, economic recovery and economic recovery, "and that's what we ought to focus on for the first 100 days and carry out our plan."
NARRATOR: It would come to be known as "the Reagan Revolution."
On its surface it was simple: a tax cut, reductions in domestic spending, and a balanced budget.
But Reagan also wanted a military buildup to confront the Soviet Union.
I have to say that I am not one to shrink from a tough task, but I must also say, and I think every cabinet member here will agree with me, that the goals that you gave us are extraordinarily difficult to reconcile, but I'm... NARRATOR: Budget Director David Stockman warned Reagan that without deep cuts, budget deficits could rise as high as $100 billion, but Reagan was convinced that his tax cut would stimulate productivity and ignite an economic boom.
The government would then collect enough taxes to balance the budget.
It was called supply-side economics, and even prominent Republicans were skeptical.
MAN: I came out of a meeting with the president when he had described his economic program, which entailed pretty good-sized tax cuts, and... and I was asked by the gaggle of reporters outside the northwest entrance to the west wing of the Capitol what I thought of it, and I uttered the words that probably should go at the very top of the list of things I never should have said.
I said, "Well, altogether, it's a riverboat gamble."
And it was.
It's time to recognize that we've come to a turning point.
We're threatened with an economic calamity of tremendous proportions, and the old business-as-usual treatment can't save us.
Together we must chart a different course.
On February 18, I will present in detail an economic program to Congress.
It will propose budget cuts in virtually every department of government.
NARRATOR: The cuts fell most dramatically on programs designed to help the poor.
"I'm trying to undo L.B.J.
's Great Society," Reagan wrote in his diary.
"It was his war on poverty that led us to this mess."
Reagan also called for a 30% tax cut across the board.
All taxpayers would benefit, but the wealthy would benefit the most.
Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill vowed to fight.
Reagan's program, he said, "soaked the poor to subsidize the rich."
O'NEILL: He and I don't agree on his plan whatsoever.
I believe in the plan of fairness.
Very easy to put the question, the question is this: Do you make over $50,000 or less than $50,000?
If you make over $50,000, then you're for the Republican plan, because that's who it's geared for.
Just meet with the leadership and talk about our problems.
NARRATOR: Reagan faced a formidable task.
For his economic package to become law, he would need to convince 26 of O'Neill's Democrats to break rank.
In the first 100 days of his presidency, Reagan met with 467 legislators and phoned many more.
Once, he called 29 members of Congress in a single night.
BAKER: He never once moaned about having to make a congressional call, because President Reagan understood that we judge our presidents on the basis primarily of their success in getting their programs through the legislative branch.
We would give him a script for each of these congressional calls, and he never, he never missed it.
He was an extraordinarily hard worker.
MAN: Most of America thought that he was someone who watched television and went to bed.
He didn't.
Every single night he would do a stack of work.
And he would almost obsessively go through every single bit of paper he would get.
Indeed, the first lady early on complained that I was keeping him up too late at night, but the "too late" was 2:30 in the morning.
NARRATOR: In his effort to sell his program, Reagan's best weapon was his power of persuasion.
MAUREEN REAGAN: He had the ability to project out of himself-- that's what actors do.
They make you feel happy or sad.
They make you laugh and cry.
They make you feel all of the emotions.
And so when you're in politics and you want to get a message across to people, you have to be able to... to go in front of yourself and to project out to those people.
All you wanted to do was fix the camera on his head and let him talk.
You didn't need him to walk around the desk and sit on the corner and do all of those things that people have to do to make politicians interesting.
He was able to speak in ways that the American people believed and in a language that they understood.
He vocalized their frustrations and hopes and fears and gave them a vision.
During recent months, many of you have asked, what can you do to help make America strong again.
I urge you again to contact your senators and congressmen.
Tell them of your support for this bipartisan proposal.
Tell them you believe this is an unequaled opportunity to help return America to prosperity and make government again the servant of the people.
He would make a speech-- televised national address-- and say, "Call your congressman, call your senator, help me out.
Here's what I want to do."
And, boy, the calls would flood the wh... would flood the congressional switchboards.
It was very, very effective.
NARRATOR: With every appeal, Reagan's conservative agenda gained momentum.
By March, two-thirds of Americans favored the president's program, especially the tax cut.
"Sometimes I have to pinch myself to see if this is real," said Deaver.
"So do I," Reagan replied with a smile.
On March 30, 70 days into his presidency, Reagan delivered yet another pitch, to a union convention at the Washington Hilton hotel.
(Reagan speaking inaudibly) At 2:25, he left the meeting and approached his limousine.
(gunshots) DEAVER: I ran to the car behind the limousine.
I thought we were going to the White House.
We started going over dividers on Connecticut Avenue and realized when we came into the porte-cochère at George Washington Hospital, that we were going there.
I jumped out of the car, and Reagan's getting out of the car, and he always had this thing where he would pull his pants up to be sure they were just right, button his coat again, which he did when he got out of the limousine.
And I thought, "He's fine," walked into the hospital.
The minute he hit the door, he went down.
NANCY REAGAN: When I got there, everybody's still telling me, "He hasn't been shot, he hasn't been hit."
Um... and I think it was Mike Deaver who was standing waiting for me, and I think he was the one who told me that he'd been hit.
NARRATOR: A deranged lone gunman, John Hinckley, Jr., had fired six bullets at the president.
One ricocheted off Reagan's limousine and tore into his left lung, missing his heart by an inch.
DAVIS: I was afraid that he would die and that he would die without me really knowing who my father was.
I knew how close to death he was once I got to Washington.
The country didn't know until years later.
He was so white.
I had never seen anybody so white, and he had that thing over his face to help him breathe, and there was blood.
And, uh... he opened his eyes and saw me... and, um... that's when he said, "Honey, I forgot to duck."
NARRATOR: Reports of Reagan's courage reassured an anxious nation.
DEAVER: That was that moment when we really saw inside the man.
We really saw what he was made of, to be able to have that grace and that humor at that particular time in his life.
The quips to the doctors about... "I hope you're all Republicans" and that kind of stuff, and "Honey, I forgot to duck," that wasn't some invention of somebody.
He was actually doing that.
And probably going through his mind is, "Gee, I hope I'm not putting these people out."
REPORTER 1: How are you feeling, Mr. President?
Great... great.
REPORTER 2: What are you going to do when you get home, Mr. President?
What?
What are you going to do when you get home?
Sit down.
(laughter) NARRATOR: Reagan returned to the White House 12 days after being shot.
Only those closest to him knew how transforming his near-death experience had been.
SMITH: I think it confirmed everything he'd ever been taught, beginning by his mother, about God's plan for him as an individual.
Mother Teresa came to the White House with no fanfare not long after the assassination attempt and met privately with the president, and at the end of the meeting, she told the president that God had a plan for him and that God had intended for him to suffer.
MORRIS: That was when he decided that the life which he'd been spared was now going to have to be put to the service of the God who had saved him.
He became much more devout and evangelical from that moment on.
His thoughts became slower.
His speech became slower.
He deliberated more.
He hesitated more when he spoke.
He lost his quickness.
And for the rest of the presidency, it was a very, very slow and steady mental and physical decline.
MAN: Mrs. Reagan never recovered.
Mrs. Reagan was horrified.
And she gave immediate instructions to Michael Deaver, who was her contact in the chief of staff's office, words to the effect, "This will never happen again-- you see to it."
And they saw to it.
He never walked across an airport tarmac.
He never worked a fence line.
He never got out of his limousine on a public sidewalk.
But it began to close down the presidency even more from the standpoint of access to the average citizen-- the average voter in this country.
CANNON: It took Reagan out of most of the routine of being president.
In a sense, it aborted the inner life of the presidency-- put the Reagan presidency on this track where Reagan was more distanced than he should have been from decision-making.
(cheering and applause) NARRATOR: An April 28, four weeks after the attempt on his life, a barely recovered Reagan received a hero's welcome from Congress.
(inaudible over applause) REAGAN: Thank you.
Thank you.
You wouldn't want to talk me into an encore, would you?
(laughter) Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, distinguished members of the Congress, honored guests, and fellow citizens, I have no words to express my appreciation for that greeting.
(applause) I have come to speak to you tonight about our economic recovery program and why I believe it's essential that the Congress approve this package.
MAN: There he was, almost Lazarus-like, standing before the Congress.
Here's a guy who had survived a very deadly shot of an assassin, and to come back with such élan and to ask for support was big stuff.
You're talking about Hollywood drama here.
He played it for all it was worth, and he should have.
I think that that's when he probably ran his vote up over the top.
On this vote, the ayes are 238, the nays are 195, and under the rules... NARRATOR: The Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of his economic package.
In the House, Reagan had convinced enough Democrats to break rank.
He rejoiced in what he called "the greatest political win in half a century."
O'NEILL: Mr. President, congratulations.
You're a tough adversary.
No hard feelings, old pal.
It's a great two-party system we have.
We gave our best, and you outdid us.
As a matter of fact, you stunned us.
I never figured you could beat us that badly.
You're a little stunned yourself.
Well, listen, I want to wish you all the success in the world.
The fiscal policy of the nation now belongs to you.
You've got two clear-cut victories up here.
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: On August 13, 1981, Reagan headed for his Ranch in the Sky to sign the bill which would turn his conservative agenda into law.
DARMAN: It was perfect for the imagery of the Western, romantic, American tradition.
It's symbolically an ideal place to start the ratification of step one of the Reagan Revolution.
And so, it was a well-chosen set, at least in concept.
In reality, the particular day turned out to be one where you couldn't see much of anything.
There was this tremendous fog that poured in.
You could hardly see the president when he came out to sign the bill.
Yes, the thought did cross my mind that maybe we were all doing something in a fog-- that is, without as clear a vision as we should have had of what we were up to.
NARRATOR: The bill Reagan signed that day did not include a balanced budget.
Without further cuts, the United States would face the largest deficit in its history.
REPORTER: How much more in budget cuts are you going to have to make over the next couple of years, and will you still be able to balance the budget in '84?
Well, this has always been our goal and will continue to be our goal, but remember that we always said that there were further budget cuts for the coming years, for '83 and '84.
NARRATOR: That fall, budget director David Stockman told Reagan he would have to cut deep into defense spending-- the keystone of his anti-Soviet policy-- and Social Security if he wanted a balanced budget.
DARMAN: When he was presented with the question of whether he would reduce the rate of growth of defense, he decided not to and concluded that though he didn't want the deficit, he... the country would tolerate it if the economy were strong.
He always phrased it this way: If it were a question of balancing the budget or regaining strong military capabilities, he'd always opt for the latter.
And he never, never wavered in that.
He had a chance to tackle entitlements, he had a chance to break Social Security costs, and he wasn't willing to do it because he would have forfeited his most precious asset-- his popularity-- to do it.
And he wasn't willing to do that.
NARRATOR: Those were fateful decisions.
Reagan would never again have as good an opportunity to adjust his budget and avoid the ballooning deficits of the decade ahead.
That year, the economy took a downward turn.
By November, blue-collar workers who had voted for Ronald Reagan were losing their jobs.
Inflation had prompted the Federal Reserve Board to increase interest rates.
Reagan was forced to admit that the nation was headed into a recession.
REPORTER: Mr. President, your secretary of the treasury, Donald Regan, yesterday gave a rather pessimistic view of the nation's economy.
I think he called it a "real downer" that we were facing.
Do you share his pessimistic view of the economy?
Are we in for a "real downer," in your opinion?
Well, now, I don't know what his definition is of a "real downer."
I think that we're going to have some hard times for the next few months.
I think we're going to see a pickup in the economy, and I think that Don Regan believes this also, in spring or, latest, early summer.
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: That spring, when the president vacationed at the home of actress Claudette Colbert, there were no signs of improvement.
Reagan, who had seen himself as coming to America's rescue, began to be cast as callous and insensitive-- "splashing in the lap of luxury while Americans go hungry," one reporter wrote.
But the press reserved its harshest criticism for the first lady, calling attention to her designer dresses, her lavish entertainment, her millionaire friends, her new White House china-- failing to note that it had been donated.
The extravagance of the Reagan White House added to the perception of insensitivity, a perception Reagan bitterly resented.
MORRIS: His invariable line when the subject of poverty and homelessness was raised was: "I know about, all about the Depression, "because I was out hitchhiking across the landscape "looking for work in the depths of the Depression.
I know about poverty."
Actually, it was just a matter of a couple of weeks.
He got a job very quickly, and from January 1933 onward, never had to look anywhere for a salary check.
If you wanted something done with my father, if you wanted him to move a certain way on a certain policy, what you had to do was humanize it-- bring him a person that's afflicted by some problem or another, and all of a sudden, then it becomes very real to him.
He would have three or four checks, personal checks, in the top drawer of his desk in the Oval Office, and he was always running out of those checks because he was writing checks to people.
I went in there one time and he had written a check to some woman who was on welfare and the next month he got his bank statement.
Well, you know, the bank statement had these checks and her check wasn't in it.
So he called her on the phone and said, "You know, you haven't cashed that check."
She said, "Oh, no, I framed it."
He said, "Well, my God, I sent you that money "so you'd have some money to eat.
"I'll send you another check.
You keep that one framed and cash this one."
Simply because he becomes aware of one person's plight and responds to it as a human being doesn't really solve the problem.
I mean, he's basically responsible for the economic management of the United States and he has to deal with that responsibility, not simply as an individual citizen.
NARRATOR: As the recession deepened through 1982, its effects were felt across America.
Farmers were driven off their land by high interest rates.
In the cities, homelessness became a scandal.
Thousands of businesses failed.
Unemployment reached its highest level since the Great Depression.
"I prayed a lot during this period," Reagan wrote, "not only for the country and people who were out of work, but for help and guidance in doing the right thing."
Pressure on Reagan to change course mounted.
His program-- now derided as "Reaganomics"-- had not only failed to produce growth, but was leading the nation into fiscal disaster.
"We are really in trouble," Reagan confided to his diary.
"Our projections are out the window.
"We look at $200 billion deficits if we can't pull off some miracles."
Even true believers were disillusioned.
David Stockman, tired of arguing for cuts, now urged the president to raise taxes.
"Reagan," wrote columnists Evans and Novak, "was having to fight two-thirds of his administration to save his economic program."
SMITH: There are very few conventional politicians who would have stuck it out as he did.
But he came to office imbued with a conviction that less government and lower taxes would resolve the pervasive sickness of the American economy.
And what he saw 1982 as was the fever that was about to break.
NARRATOR: Reagan stayed the course.
"I believed the economic recovery would work," he wrote, "because I had faith in those tax cuts and faith in the American people."
But the American people were losing faith in Ronald Reagan.
MAN: He'd better read the papers a little better.
Go down to the employment office and see all the people standing there getting unemployment benefits-- those that can get them and those that have ran out of them and so forth.
The president himself hasn't got the message yet.
I don't like to turn to welfare, but if that's what it's going to take to get by until this current economic situation is through, that's what we'll have to do.
I think the American dream is in the past.
It's long gone.
CROWD: What do we want?
Jobs!
When do you want them?
Now!
What do we want?
Jobs!
NARRATOR: On November 2, in critical mid-term elections, voters would pass judgment on Ronald Reagan and his conservative program.
Reagan watched as the American people gave a vote of no confidence by throwing 26 Republicans out of the House.
The political disaster his staff had feared was upon him.
With 11.6 million people out of work, would you be willing to have some cutbacks in defense spending to help these people who are out of work?
CANNON: Have you ruled out the possibility that you would modify in any way your call for an increased defense budget maybe just for this one year?
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Ronald Reagan had vowed to fight communism.
Now his defense buildup-- the chief weapon in his anti-Soviet crusade-- was coming under attack.
In what might have been the largest peacetime gathering in American history, nearly one million people rallied in Central Park to call for a freeze in nuclear weapons production.
All of us want to live and we want life for our children and our grandchildren.
NARRATOR: Two years into his presidency, the talk in Washington was of chaos and disarray.
"The question no longer is whether Reagan has failed," wrote a conservative analyst, "but the magnitude and ramifications of his failure."
By January 1983, Reagan's approval rating had plummeted to 35%.
Her husband, Nancy confided to a reporter, might not seek a second term.
MAN: I brought him the bad news that his job rating was low, and... he was very serious for a moment, and then he smiled and he then reached over and patted me on the arm, and said, "I know just what I can do about it.
I'll go out and get shot again."
NARRATOR: If Reagan's presidency failed, his crusade to protect America from big government, begun in 1964, would fail with it.
His crusade to save the world from communism, begun in 1946, would fail, too.
Ronald Reagan had come to office to rescue America.
Now he was the one in need of rescue.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: "American Experience: Reagan" is available on DVD.
To order, visit ShopPBS, or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
"American Experience" is also available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪