>> Beatriz Haspo:
Good afternoon and welcome
to the 24th Annual Library of
Congress National Book Festival,
a place where books build us up.
I am Beatriz Haspo, Head of Logistics
of the Library of Congress,
National Library services
for the Blind and Print Disabled.
It is a pleasure, and I'm
very happy to introduce
Max Boot, a historian, bestselling
author and foreign policy analyst.
He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior
Fellow for National Security Studies
at the Council on Foreign Relations
and a weekly columnist
at the Washington Post.
His new biography is titled
"Reagan: His Life and Legend".
He will be in conversation with
David M. Rubenstein, who is the
Co-chair of the National Book
Festival and an original signer
of the Giving Pledge.
He is also a recipient of the
Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy
and the Museum of Modern Art's
David Rockefeller Award.
His latest book,
"The Highest Calling"
Conversations on the
American Presidency,
is featured at this
year's festival.
I hope you enjoy the festival and
let's welcome them to our stage.
[Applause]
>> David M. Rubenstein:
So I enjoyed reading your book.
How long did it take
you to write the book?
>> Max Boot: Ten years.
>> David M. Rubenstein: The Reagan
administration was eight years.
so it took you two years
longer to write the book
than the Reagan administration
lasted. Is that right?
>> Max Boot: It was not
a fly by night project.
I think you can say that for sure.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So was the
family cooperating with you in any way?
>> Max Boot: Yeah. I mean, primarily
Patti and Ron, two of the kids were
very cooperative and very helpful
and actually read the book
already and gave it a thumbs up
that I was very happy to see.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Really. Okay,
so Ronald Reagan is somebody that
was very worried about his
own legacy in some respects
or maybe his family was.
And so he had a biographer,
Edmund Morris, who for the last
year and a half or so was embedded
into the Reagan White House
administration, proposed
to write a biography of Reagan.
What ever happened to that?
Why did that not work?
>> Max Boot: Well, Edmund Morris
had unprecedented access to the
Reagan administration, and I
think you can say he basically
blew it and produced a volume
that was had some interesting
research in it and was well-written
in parts, but it was
basically to use
the word of the hour.
It was kind of deeply weird
because he inserted himself into
Reagan's life as a fictional
character, and that kind of
compromised the historical
integrity of the entire project.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So
what is the biggest surprise
to you about Ronald Reagan that
you learned as a result of
doing all the research?
>> Max Boot: I think
the biggest surprise
was that Reagan was actually more
pragmatic than people realize.
And because his reputation is
being that of a conservative
firebrand and ideologue, and he
was very ideological, and I show
in the book that in some ways
he was actually probably more
ideological than a lot of
people realized, repeating some
conspiracy theories and some
outlandish rhetoric, especially
in the early 60s.
But the surprise about Reagan
was that he didn't act on that
sometimes extreme campaign
rhetoric when he became governor
of California in 1967, or when
he became president of the
United States in 1981.
He actually veered to the
center, as you know, signing
more tax increases than tax cuts.
As governor of California, he
signed the most liberal abortion
law in the country and one of
the toughest gun control bills
in the country and as he was
able to work with Democrats,
whether it was Jesse Unruh,
the powerful speaker of the
California Assembly, or Tip O'Neill,
the powerful speaker of
the US House and then at the
end of his presidency, he was
also able to work with Mikhail
Gorbachev, which in some ways
was the biggest surprise of all,
because here was Ronald Reagan,
who had spent his
entire political life as a
staunch anti-communist, as a critic
of detente, calling out "evil empire."
And yet he decided that
Gorbachev was somebody he could
do business with and actually
became very friendly with.
And together they worked
together to end the Cold War.
That is not something I think
anybody would have expected of a
hard line conservative
like Ronald Reagan.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
Now, many people
who come to power in Washington
are obsessed with it
as young men or women.
He didn't seem to be
particularly obsessed with
Washington or political life.
How did he go from being a
radio announcer in Iowa to an
actor, and why was he
considered a B actor?
Why wasn't he an A actor?
>> Max Boot: Well, in some ways,
the key event of Ronald Reagan's life
occurred in 1932, when a new
Montgomery Ward was opening up
in Dixon, Illinois, his
hometown, and they were
advertising for somebody to run
their sporting goods department
for $1250 a week.
And, you know, $1250 a week,
at the height of the depression,
Ronald Reagan had
just graduated from Eureka
College, didn't have any job
prospects. So he actually
applied for that job.
And as a former high school
athlete, he might have gotten it.
And if he had gotten that
job in 1932, that's probably the
last anybody would have ever
heard of Ronald Reagan.
He probably would have spent
his whole life in Dixon.
But, you know, unluckily for
him, or luckily for us,
he didn't get that job.
Some other guy got it.
And so Ronald Reagan had to
look elsewhere for a job in the
midst of the Great Depression.
And he got into radio and
probably enough in Davenport,
Iowa, and then in, in Des Moines.
And he became a very successful
sportscaster, well known
throughout the Midwest for
calling Chicago Cubs games,
among others and then in 1937--
But, you know, he always had
that desire at the back of his
mind to get into acting because
he had been an actor in high school
and in college. It was
something he enjoyed.
He was imbued with that
love of acting by his mother,
who was kind of a failed
and frustrated thespian.
And so in 1937, he convinced
his bosses at the radio station
in Des Moines to send him with
the Cubs on spring training to
Catalina Island, off the coast
of Southern California.
And while he was at, you know,
he did one of his stints with
the Cubs doing spring training.
He went out to Hollywood and
got a screen test with
Warner Brothers and then he thought
nothing was going to come of it.
And, you know, they didn't say
that we were going to hire you.
And so he went back to Des
Moines assuming that nothing
would ever happen and then he got
a telegram saying, you're hired.
And so in 1937, he picks up and moves
from the Midwest to Hollywood.
And he becomes, you know,
fairly starts off as a B-movie
actor, but one of many minor,
you know, role players in the
Warner stable. But by the eve of
World War one, World War two, rather,
he was becoming, you know,
a pretty, pretty good star
for them. You know, only you know,
a notch or two below Errol Flynn.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
And in those days,
he became the Head of
the Screen Actors Guild.
And he was known as a
FDR liberal Democrat.
What converted him from being
an FDR liberal Democrat to being
a conservative Republican?
>> Max Boot: Well,
that's a great question.
And that's another one of these
myths that I think the book
punctures, because the myth
which he created himself,
he often said this a million times.
I didn't desert my party.
My party deserted me to suggest
that the Democratic Party had
gone far off to the left.
And so he had to become a
Republican. But the reality is,
he went to the right in the
1950s and early 60s when
the Democratic Party
was pretty centrist.
There was the party of Sam Rayburn
and Lyndon Johnson,
John F. Kennedy. These guys
were not some crazy left wingers.
They were, you know, standing
up to the Soviets and the Cuban
Missile Crisis, sending
troops to Vietnam.
They were actually pretty
hawkish, pretty centrist.
So it wasn't the
Democratic Party changing.
It was really Ronald Reagan
changing and moving to the
right and there were a variety
of reasons for that, including,
you know, his battles with what
he thought was a resisting,
what he thought was a communist
takeover of Hollywood in the
late 40s, which I think
was vastly exaggerated.
But that's what his FBI contacts
and others were telling him.
He was also aggrieved because
he had to pay such high
taxes during World War II when,
you know, top rates were up to
90% or something and he was
making a lot of money.
He didn't like that.
He didn't like that
the federal government filed an
antitrust decree, which broke up
the studio system so studios
could no longer own movie
theaters and as a result of
that, he became an unemployed
actor. He was pushed
out of Warner Brothers.
And then finally, I think the
final piece of the puzzle was
that he went to work for
General Electric, and that was
really how he revived his
career as a pitchman for
General Electric in the 1950s.
And GE was actually a very
right wing corporation.
Its executives compared its
ideology to that of the
John Birch Society, and they
actively proselytize their
employees and so as an
employee of GE, he got all this
conservative literature to read,
and he had a lot of time
to read it because he hated to fly.
And so he would take the
cross-country train from LA to
New York, and he would be
reading all these right wing
books and periodicals, and he
basically converted himself
through that process.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
All right. So his career
kind of came to a dormant phase.
He wasn't really getting
that many acting roles.
And I think his agent got him
a job as an MC, more or less,
in Las Vegas to introduce
some acts and so forth.
But what led him to run for
governor of California?
Where did he get that idea?
>> Max Boot: Well, he was developing
political ambitions as he became
more political and as his
acting career waned, and then he
assumed a pretty high profile
role in 1964 as a leading
spokesman for Barry Goldwater.
And in fact, towards the end of
the campaign, he gave this
famous speech that was
televised nationally, called
A Time for Choosing Speech
which was this electrifying debut on
the national stage and a lot
of Republicans, when they were
listening to Ronald Reagan and
Barry Goldwater speak on the
same platform, they said, gosh,
I wish Goldwater spoke as well
as Reagan, because, you know,
Goldwater was, as I'm sure
you remember, was very hard edged.
He was not a warm and cuddly guy.
He knew what he believed, and
he was going to shove it down
your throat. Whereas Reagan,
as a journalist, said in the mid
1960s, his personality
was like warm bathwater.
It was soothing.
He could repeat the same
message as Goldwater,
but he could deliver it with a smile.
He could make people like him
and not feel threatened by him.
And so after, you know, the
Goldwater campaign, he started,
you know, looking
at running himself.
And he thought that in 1966,
Pat Brown, father of Jerry Brown,
who was the two term
governor of California,
he thought Pat Brown's popularity
was waning and that Pat Brown
would be vulnerable to a
challenge and in fact,
that turned out to be very accurate
because he beat Pat Brown
by a million votes.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
So he won in 1966, and in 1968,
he makes a short
campaign for president
trying to beat the presumed
nominee, Richard Nixon.
Was he really-- Was that
a halfhearted effort?
Did he really think he could be
president after just two years
as governor?
>> Max Boot: It was somewhat
halfhearted, for sure,
but he did declare
himself. He did try to run.
He did go around the country
trying to stump up votes.
But then when he lost and it
didn't even come close,
he basically pretended
it had never happened.
He kind of went down the memory
hole, and he denied ever having
really run for president in 1968
and said it was just like
a few over fervent supporters.
And I talked to one of his
aides and he said, I was
shocked. I mean, Reagan and
I were on the campaign plane
together with going around the
country trying to get votes.
How could he forget that this
happened? But he tended to
rewrite history the way he
wanted it to be, not the way
it actually happened.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So he
serves two terms as governor,
and then he decides to run
for president again in 1976
against the incumbent
Republican Gerald Ford,
and he came very close
to beating him.
Did he expect he would actually
have a chance to beat Ford, and
how come he didn't actually
get the nomination
though he came close?
>> Max Boot: He did expect to beat
Ford. I mean, what was really in
Reagan's mind was he thought
that in 1976, Richard Nixon
would be completing his second
term of office and leaving office,
and he thought that he,
Ronald Reagan, would be the
natural successor to Dick Nixon.
And so he didn't--
He was a staunch Nixon supporter.
Never imagined that Nixon would
be forced to resign because of
Watergate and so he was
shocked when Ford became
president, and he did not have
a lot of respect for Jerry Ford.
He viewed Ford as kind of
an accidental president.
He thought the job
should really be his.
And of course, Jerry Ford
didn't have a lot of respect for
Ronald Reagan either and so
that set up this bruising
primary battle, which went
almost all the way to the
convention and Reagan
actually came pretty close.
But, you know, he also
came close to a very humiliating
defeat and if he had lost
the South Carolina primary,
he probably would have been out
of the race early on and may not
have been able to run again
in 1980, but he was saved.
And in the South Carolina primary
by Jesse Helms and his political--
>> David M. Rubenstein: North Carolina.
>> Max Boot: North Carolina, sorry, by
Jesse Helms and his political machine.
And so as a result of that, he
then did very well in the South
and came very close to Ford.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So he said
the Ford at the convention in 1976,
"I support you. I'm going
to campaign for you."
Did Ford get a lot of support
from Reagan in that campaign?
>> Max Boot: He got some.
I wouldn't say a lot.
Ford was kind of aggrieved
afterwards that he thought that
Reagan didn't do
enough for him.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Right.
So Carter is president and Reagan,
is he deciding he's going to run for
president again, regardless of
how Carter performs or he didn't
like how Carter was doing,
and he energized his campaign in,
let's say, 78, 80 and 79.
>> Max Boot: I think he
was looking to run.
I probably had not made a
decision right away, but
that was kind of surprising because,
you know, he was getting into
his 70s at that point and not a
lot of, you know, not a lot of
people thought that he would be
running, you know, at an
advanced age. But he was
convinced he could do it.
And then, of course, once Carter,
you know, ran into all
of his problems with the
Iran hostage crisis, with
the economic woes that
created a massive opening.
And so a lot of Republicans were
lining up to run against Carter.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Reagan
was 69 when he was running.
An age that was then considered old.
Now be young to be president. Right.
>> Max Boot: He'd be way too
young to be president these days.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
Too young to be president.
So when he was running
in 1980 against
Carter, it was widely thought
that Reagan was a nice guy,
but not that substantive.
And it was thought that maybe
if he had Ford as vice president,
Ford could give him
some experience.
And whose idea was that?
And was that Ford pushing that
idea, or was it Reagan's idea,
and why did it not actually happen?
>> Max Boot: I think there was a
lot of Republicans pushing that idea
who were kind of nervous about
Reagan and didn't think that he
was really up to the job.
And so it was really people
like Henry Kissinger and
Alan Greenspan who were close
to Ford, who I think were the
primary movers and shakers
behind that.
And it actually came pretty
close to happening.
But then it kind of fell apart
at the last minute when, on the
floor of the convention, Walter
Cronkite was interviewing
Gerald Ford, and Cronkite said,
well, so if you're the running mate,
this would be kind of
a co-presidency, right?
And Ford sort of agreed with that.
And Reagan was watching this
in his hotel suite, and
he was shocked because he wasn't
signing up for a co-presidency.
And so that was pretty
much the end of that.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So then why did
he call George Herbert Walker Bush,
who had called his economic
program voodoo economics?
Why did he offer him
the vice presidency?
>> Max Boot: Well, because Reagan
was the ultimate pragmatist, and he
wanted to do what was
necessary to be successful.
And his aides were telling him
that after Ford, Bush was by far
the best choice to unify the
party and reassure people about
Reagan because Bush had, you know,
Washington experience that
Reagan lacked. So he was he was
not, you know, he was willing to
put ideology and litmus test aside
and do what he thought was
made, gave him the best chance
of winning, and that was it.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So he runs
against, he gets the nomination.
He brings Bush in as
his vice president.
He has one debate with
Carter the week before the
election, and he is seen as
having won that debate.
>> Max Boot:
"There you go again."
>> David M. Rubenstein: Now the
famous line, 'There you go again.'
What he was saying, as I
recall, was something that
Carter had said. But what
Carter had said, it turns out,
was actually factually
accurate, was it not?
>> Max Boot: It was. I mean,
I write about this in the book.
It's kind of amazing because
'There you go again' was
one of these killer lines,
because it fed into this popular
conception at the time that the
media was feeding that Carter
was kind of mean because Carter
had this reputation for being
kind of a goody goody, but the
media was trying to get across
that. No, he was actually
had this mean streak.
And so Reagan was kind of
playing off of that because
on the debate stage, Carter said,
you know, Governor Reagan
opposed Medicare, which was true.
He did oppose Medicare. Not
only did he oppose Medicare and
Medicaid, he said that they
were socialized medicine, and in
passing Medicare and Medicaid
would lead to the total loss of
all freedom in the United States.
I mean, that is a documented
fact that he said all of that.
But what, you know, Reagan's
killer reply was, there you go
again and then he denied that
he had opposed Medicaid, saying
that he had supported an
alternative bill that was just
as good, which was not true,
because the alternative bill
would have covered about 1% or
2% of seniors in this country,
not all of them. So it
was completely false.
And yet he got away with it.
And it was a great line.
It was a killer line that
that is remembered today.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So Reagan won
overwhelmingly, overwhelming election.
And why did he pick Jim Baker,
who had not been part of his uh,
club, uh, close supporters in
California was not really that
well known to Reagan.
Why did he pick Reagan?
Why did he pick Jim Baker
to be his chief of staff?
>> Max Boot: Well, in some ways,
picking Jim Baker, I would argue,
was the most important decision
of his entire presidency.
And it was a sign, again, like
picking Baker's best friend
George Bush as vice president.
Again, it was a sign of how pragmatic
Reagan was because, as you said,
Baker had no
relationship with Reagan.
And far from having a
relationship with him, he had
worked against Reagan twice, in
76 and 80 to try to deny him the
nomination and normally,
presidents do not appoint their
opponent's campaign manager
as their White House Chief of Staff.
And so the assumption was he
was going to appoint Ed Meese,
who was his chief of
staff in Sacramento.
But Mike Deaver and Stu
Spencer, two Reagan aides,
realized that Meese was not
organized enough, didn't
understand Washington enough
was not effective enough to be
an effective White
House Chief of Staff.
And so they went to Nancy Reagan
and they went to Ronald Reagan
and said, no, you know,
I think you really should pick,
see how you like
this Jim Baker guy.
And Reagan got along with Baker
and shocked the world by
creating this troika of
officials with Baker as
White House Chief of Staff, and
very quickly he became by far the
most powerful official and in
some ways the Prime Minister of
the United States and he was
really responsible for a lot of
the success of the first term
I would argue.
>> David M. Rubenstein: What was
the nature of the Ronald Reagan
Nancy Reagan relationship? Intensely
close marriage, and did he rely on her
for personnel advice
and things like that?
>> Max Boot: It was a
wonderful love story.
And, you know, sitting at the
Reagan Library, I could go
through box after box of
letters and of holiday cards
that that Ronald Reagan sent to
Nancy Reagan, you know,
every Valentine's Day, every
birthday, every Thanksgiving,
every Christmas, every New Year's.
How much he loved her.
Very, very sweet to read.
And, you know, when he was away for,
she was away for even a few days,
he would be writing in his
diary about how desperately
he missed her and so they had
a very close bond, but
it wasn't and of course, their
marriage was primarily about
love, and in a way that almost
made even their kids feel like
they were left out because she
was really his top priority, but
she was also a very effective
political partner for him,
although she did not.
And I want to again, this is
another myth.
Some people suggest that she
pushed him to the right or she
pushed him into politics.
Neither of that is true
as far as I can tell.
Nancy didn't really have
any political beliefs.
She didn't really have much
political ambition, but what she
wanted was whatever
was the best for her Ronnie.
And she understood that
her husband wanted to be in
politics and so she was going
to be make that as successful as
possible and she was, you know,
she was kind of, one of his
aides described her to me as
kind of the chief personnel
officer of Reagan Inc, because
she would hire and fire.
She was very suspicious.
She would look out for his
interests where he was so
optimistic, sunny, almost
pollyannaish that he never
imagined anybody could be doing
anything wrong, whereas
she always assumed that somebody
was doing something wrong and
would ferret it out.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So what would
you say is the biggest accomplishment
he had in his first
four years as president?
>> Max Boot: Well, I think the biggest
accomplishment in his first
four years was probably reviving the
economy, and the armed forces,
although on the economy
side, I think you have to say
that Paul Volcker probably
deserved more credit than
Reagan, because it was Volcker
who, you know, took the
inflation out of the economy,
and that allowed the economic
rebound in 1984.
But, you know, I think that
Reagan did play an important
role in kind of reviving
people's spirits and reviving
their faith in America after all the
turmoil and troubles of the 1970s.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So Reagan
was going to run for re-election.
He's running for re-election at
the age of, I guess he was 73 or 74
when he was running for
reelection. So he's running
against Mondale.
He thought he was going
to run against Mondale.
Mondale got the nomination
after beating off Gary Hart.
Why did that election turn
out to be such a landslide?
>> Max Boot: Well, because Reagan
could plausibly proclaim it was
morning in America, because
he got very lucky that the very
severe recession that hit the
country from 81 to 83 was over.
And we were entering a very
strong period of economic
recovery. I think the economic
growth rate in 1984 was
something like 7%.
And of course, it declined in
the next few years, but it hit
this post recession high and
he was basically able to take
advantage of that and,
you know, he pulled U.S. troops
out of Lebanon after the
disastrous bombing of the marine
barracks in Beirut in, in 1983.
So we weren't involved
in any wars anywhere.
And he could plausibly argue
that he had brought back peace
and prosperity.
>> David M. Rubenstein: And he has a
debate with Mondale in that campaign
where he has another famous line
which also, you could say is a little
disingenuous in some respects.
And what was that famous line?
>> Max Boot: Well, there were two, you
know, he had these two debates with
Mondale, and the first one,
he really screwed up.
Not as badly as, you know, Biden
screwed up, but he screwed up.
And there was a lot of talk
that he was too old and he was
out of it and he couldn't be
president and all that kind of
stuff and so that was,
in the second debate,
he got a question about age,
where the Baltimore Sun
correspondent tried to ask the,
tried to approach the age issue
delicately by saying, you know,
during the Cuban Missile Crisis,
President Kennedy had to go
without sleep for 20 hours at a time.
Could you do that at
your age, Mr. President?
And, you know, Reagan
got a little smile on his
face and said, you know, I will
not use for political purposes
my opponent's age and
experience against him.
And that was brought
down the House.
And even Walter
Mondale had to laugh.
And he was later admitted that
even as he was laughing, he was
understanding that the election
was over in that very instant.
[Laughter]
>> David M. Rubenstein: So
many second terms have problems.
And the principal problem in
the second term of Reagan was
Iran-Contra. What was that?
And how did Reagan manage
to escape that problem?
>> Max Boot: Well, I think the real
problem in the second term began
when Jim Baker, the White House
Chief of Staff, and Don Regan,
the Treasury secretary, decided it
would be a good idea for them to
switch jobs and they presented
this as almost a fait accompli
to Reagan and a half an hour
Oval Office meeting.
He said, okay, sure, whatever.
And so they did.
And this turned out to be a
disaster because Don Regan was a
horrible White House Chief of Staff.
As Jim Baker said to me, you know.
Don like the chief part of the
title, but he didn't understand
that he was staff. He wanted to
be the CEO of the United States
because he'd been CEO of
Merrill Lynch before.
And he didn't have good
political instincts.
And as a result of that, things
kind of went haywire in the
Iran-Contra affair, which was
an initiative started by
Reagan's national security
adviser, Bud McFarlane, to try
to get hostages held
by the Iranians free.
And this was something the
hostages, their fate of the
hostages was something that
really anguished Reagan.
He really was desperately worried.
He wanted them home and so
Bud McFarlane got this bright idea
of selling weapons to Iran to
get the hostages released.
And it worked for a little bit.
But then the Iranians kept
taking more hostages.
So at the end of the day,
it wasn't actually working.
But then McFarlane's successor
as national security advisor,
John Poindexter, and his aide,
Oliver North, got another bright idea,
which was to divert the profits
from the sale of arms to
Iran to support the Nicaraguan
Contras, the guerrilla fighters.
Even though Congress
had forbidden the government
from supporting the Contras,
and so this was in
violation of what was known as
the Boland Amendment.
And that is something that
could have potentially gotten
Reagan impeached, except that
Poindexter said he never told
Reagan and so that was
basically, what saved Reagan's
presidency, because he could
plead ignorance of the diversion
of funds to the Contras.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Well, Reagan
was generally thought not to be
paying much attention to details
so he could credibly say, I didn't
really understand.
>> Max Boot: No. Exactly. No. You
could argue that he got into the
Iran-Contra. I mean, I think
big picture Ronald Reagan,
great leader, but a poor manager,
very hands off manager, often
didn't know what his aides were
doing and so you could argue
that the reason he got into the
Iran-Contra affair in the first place
was because he was a very
poor, hands off manager.
But the reason he survived
the Iran-Contra affair was also
because he was a very poor
hands off manager, because,
you know, if Dick Nixon had said, I
had no idea about the diversion,
nobody would have believed him.
But when Ronald Reagan
said it, it was plausible.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So toward
the end of the administration,
there's a decision about who's going
to be the next president and his
vice president, George Herbert
Walker Bush, is running for the
nomination, but it
wasn't given to him.
And why did Reagan not
endorse him right away?
He's been serving
loyally for eight years.
Why did he not endorse him?
>> Max Boot:
He had some reservations.
Well, first off, I would say
that they were not
particularly close.
Uh, you know, the Bushes were
never invited to the family
quarters in eight years
of the Reagan presidency.
Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan
really loathed one another.
You know, George and Ron got
along better, but they were not
certainly close personal friends.
And I think, you know,
Reagan harbored some doubts as
to whether Bush was a skillful
enough politician, whether he
was tough enough to actually win
the presidency and so he was
not going to short circuit the
primary process. He did not
endorse Bush until it was
apparent he was going
to be the nominee.
>> David M. Rubenstein: It is said
that when they first got together
and were going to run
in the 1980 convention,
that Mrs. Reagan said
to Mrs. Bush, you know,
you should lose some
weight and dye your hair.
Any truth to that?
>> Max Boot: It's plausible.
I don't know, but
it's it's plausible.
They certainly did
not get along.
It was kind of interesting because,
again, Nancy Reagan was
was a very different
personality type from her
husband and her husband got
along well with pretty much
everybody, including
George Bush, including
Mikhail Gorbachev. But Nancy had
these famous feuds with Barbara Bush
as well as with Raisa Gorbachev.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So is
there any evidence that Reagan had
Alzheimer's towards the end of
his administration, or did that
come subsequent?
>> Max Boot: Well, the diagnosis
certainly came subsequently.
The hard question to answer is,
did he have Alzheimer's when he
was already in office?
And I actually asked one of his
Alzheimer's doctors that very
question and the answer I got
was that he certainly had the
precursors of Alzheimer's,
the plaques and the worlds that
cause Alzheimer's. Those were
certainly present in his brain
when he was president, but
that doesn't mean that he had
dementia and I would say
the evidence suggests he did not.
I mean, if you look at the
handwriting, for example, in his diary,
it was pretty clear and legible
from the beginning to
the end of his presidency.
But there was, you know, you
could tell there was a natural
slowing down in his second term
as he was getting up well into
his 70s, and his aides noticed
that he was not as involved
in his second term and doing
things like rewriting speeches
and other things that he had
done much more of in his first term.
He was slowing down.
But it's almost impossible
to distinguish the
impact at a very early stage,
the impact of Alzheimer's
from just the normal aging
process of somebody who's
in their late 70s, who almost died
in 1981, was shot, lost a lot of
blood. So he'd been through a lot.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Let's
talk. I forgot to go through that.
In March of his first year in office,
he's shot by John Hinckley.
And at the time, people
said, well, he wasn't
coming close to death. It was
okay, not a big problem.
But now we know that he came
very close to death.
Is that right?
>> Max Boot:
He did, but it was really--
I titled the chapter on the shooting
Finest Hour because
it was really his finest hour, and
that was when he really cemented
his bond with the American
people, because he showed
unbelievable grace in the most
adverse circumstances, as he was
literally at death's door,
he was joking around.
He was telling Nancy Reagan,
honey, I forgot to duck.
He was telling his doctors as
they were about to operate on him.
I hope you're all Republicans.
You know, when people
heard that, I think it
established kind of a personal
bond between the president and
the public that had
not been there before.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Now, when
he left office, he was criticized for
making too much money in
some speeches and so forth.
>> Max Boot: $2 million in speeches
in Japan, which seem like a lot of
money at the time.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
It was a lot then. Today,
what would you say is
the main thing he did
post president was to get his
library off the ground and now
the most popular
presidential library.
What would you say he accomplished
if anything post-president?
>> Max Boot: Well, he didn't have a
lot of time post-presidency because
he left the presidency in 1989.
He was diagnosed
with Alzheimer's in 1994.
And I think his real
accomplishment post-presidency
wasn't anything he did.
It was what happened in the
world. Because, you know, the
Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet
Union collapsed, and a lot of
people gave him a lot
of credit for that.
so his historical record, you know,
went up dramatically
after he left office.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So he was
considered very conservative
when he came on
the political scene.
But today in the
Republican Party, would he
be considered a moderate or a
centrist or not conservative enough?
>> Max Boot: Well, I think today he
would probably be considered a
Rino Republican in name only.
I mean, remember, this was a
guy who, you know, in 1986
signed the Simpson-Mazzoli act,
which legalized millions of
undocumented immigrants.
It was what would today be
called an amnesty bill, and that
was something he signed. He
also advocated eliminating the
border between the US and Mexico
and creating what became
known as the North American
Free Trade Agreement.
These are all things that are
anathema, I think, to most
Republicans today.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
Reagan had four children.
With his first wife, Jane
Wyman, he had a daughter.
Then he had an adopted
son with Jane Wyman.
And then he had two children
with Nancy Reagan.
What was his relationship
with those four children?
>> Max Boot: It was pretty distant
because he really had a distant
relationship with almost
everybody except for Nancy.
I mean, I talked to his kids
about that, and their view is
they liked him and
they still like him.
He was a very genial, likable
guy, just like he was on the
campaign trail. But they didn't
see a lot of him because,
you know, a lot of the time in
the 50s and early 60s, he was out
touring the country on behalf of
GE, and so then he would come
home for a weekend and they
would go out to his ranch, which
in those days was located in
Malibu, and they would really
enjoy hanging out with their
dad. But then he would leave
again. It would really be Nancy
who was raising them.
And he was also, by the way,
very conflict averse.
He didn't really want to dig
deep into personality
conflicts. You wanted to avoid
them as much as possible, and so
he often didn't know what
was really going on with--
He kind of wanted to avoid the
hard conversations, I guess
I would say. So he often didn't
really know what was going on
with his kids, even when, you
know, Maureen had an abusive
first husband, or Patty was
struggling with some addiction
issues. Or, you know, Michael,
as he later revealed, had been
molested as a boy.
These were all things that
Ronald Reagan didn't learn until
many decades after the fact.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So Reagan
had a better situation than you
or I with respect to hair.
He had a lot of dark hair.
Was that dark hair-- Was that
dyed or was that just natural?
>> Max Boot: Well, he always denied
a dye job, but I think there was some
suspicion that he wasn't being
entirely forthcoming there.
That Kitty Kelly certainly argued
that Nancy Reagan stylist
had been secretly
touching up his hair,
but I think he did have pretty
naturally, you know, dark hair.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
So what would you like
most people to remember
about Ronald Reagan?
>> Max Boot: Well, I think I'd
like them to remember that he was a
complicated personality that,
you know, he was often accused
of having simplistic views, but
he certainly was not a simple man.
And there was a lot more
to him than it appeared to
be on the surface, including
things like I just pointed out.
The fact that he was so
conflict averse in person, which
you would not expect from
somebody who said,
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
so he could be very
confrontational politically, but
not very confrontational
in his personal life.
And that's, you know, he was
actually, in many ways kind of a
shy, introverted person who his
idea of a good time was sitting
in front of the TV
watching Bonanza.
He didn't want to
hobnob with people.
He wanted to read.
He wanted to be by himself.
As Stu Spencer, his longtime
political consultant said, he
would have made a pretty good
hermit, which he would not
expect from somebody who was
seemingly so gregarious
and outgoing.
So the bottom line is, I think
there is a lot more to Ronald Reagan
than meets the eye.
>> David M. Rubenstein: So we've just
covered your entire book in 30 minutes.
>> Max Boot:
An amazing achievement.
You are a great interviewer, David.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
Why should somebody
want to buy and read this book?
Now, having heard everything
is, I assume there's
a good reason why
somebody should buy it.
Why don't you give us that
reason before we have questions
from our audience?
>> Max Boot: Well, I think although
you have done an amazing job of
covering a lot of ground in
30 minutes, I can attest that
there's a lot more
in this 800-page book.
And I think it's a pretty good
and pretty interesting story.
>> David M. Rubenstein: I actually
read the book, of course, and
I read, I think, every major
Reagan biography, I enjoyed it.
You had a lot of things in
there I didn't know,
and I highly recommend it for anybody
that wants to know more about
that president. So
who has questions?
Stand up here and
just ask a question.
Hopefully not a statement.
>> No, he pointed at Sandra
Day O'Connor as the first female
on the Supreme Court. Was that to
cement a legacy or set a history?
Or what was the thinking
behind that whole process?
>> Max Boot: The thinking was
that in 1980, he had a gender gap.
He was doing much better
with men than with women.
And, you know, Stu Spencer
suggested to him that one way to
rectify that would be to
promise to appoint a woman
to the Supreme Court, which he did.
And then there was, you know,
some right wing opposition to
Sandra Day O'Connor.
There were, you know, some
hardcore anti-abortion activists
that were opposed to her
nomination because they thought,
and rightly, as it turned out,
that she would not overturn
Roe V. Wade. But Reagan
didn't really care.
That wasn't really his obsession.
And so he mainly just cared
about having a justice who
would be tough on crime and
would not release criminals.
And so he was, you know, he met,
you know, Sandra Day O'Connor,
loved talking with her about
her time on growing up
on a ranch and riding horses.
Those were his passions.
And so, you know, it was a done deal
once he met Sandra Day O'Connor.
>> Thank you.
>> So Reagan, as a communicator,
he had those radio
speeches before he got into
office. Time for choosing
the challenger speech.
Part of his success was
probably his voice and his
presence, but also maybe the idea.
How much of that was him
and how much of that
was his speech writers?
>> Max Boot: Well, he certainly had
very skillful speechwriters, but
I would point out to you that
Ronald Reagan was a very expert
speech giver long before he had
any speechwriters back in the
50s and 60s when he was
writing his own speeches.
And he would, you know, he had
these index cards, and he was
always writing these index cards.
And basically his school of politics
was working for General Electric
because he went from plant
to plant all across the country,
and he had to basically
give a stump speech.
And he would often speak about
not just the company issues, but
also about political issues.
And he was always reading,
always writing down facts or
things that he thought were
facts or quotes, and he would
shuffle his cards around
and give his speeches.
And, you know, again, Stu
Spencer, who I keep citing
because he was one of my best
interviews and somebody who knew
Reagan better than just about
anybody going back to the 1960s.
And Stu was one of the great
political consultants in
history. Even though you
know he's not on TV, he hasn't
written a lot. He
hasn't written a book.
But Stu said to me, you know,
Reagan was one of the best
speechwriter he ever met.
Not just the best speech giver,
but also the best speechwriter.
Because having grown up
working in radio in his 20s,
he understood how to write for
the way that people hear, not for
the way that they read, but
for the way that they hear.
And so he was brilliant at
communicating orally, whether,
you know, speeches,
radio, television.
He was damn good at all of that.
>> Thanks.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Okay.
>> So what lessons from Reagan's
presidency should America pay
attention to today?
>> Max Boot: Gosh. Well, there's a
lot of them. I mean, I think,
one big lesson is the need for
inspirational and optimistic
leadership, because that was
essentially who Ronald Reagan
was and that was a large part
of his success, was the way
that, you know, he saw
America as a shining city on a
hill and kind of inspired Americans
after some of the disasters
and defeats of the 1970s.
And so I think he shows
why it's so important for the
president to be an effective
and inspirational communicator.
But also, as we were discussing,
I think the Reagan presidency
also offers a cautionary
tale about what happens
if the president is too hands
off in his management style
and doesn't actually know
what's going on throughout the
government, because there were
a lot of scandals, including,
for example, at HUD and other
departments that he was
completely unaware of.
And there were, you know,
I mean, he got the big things,
right, especially relations
with the Soviet Union.
But there were also a lot of
other disasters, like
we mentioned in Lebanon, things
that did not work out so well
because he was not really
attuned to those issues.
He was not really involved
in the nitty gritty.
And there was also an awful lot
of personality conflicts in his
administration, and often especially
between Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger and
Secretary of State, George Shultz.
Those guys couldn't stand
one another, and they were
constantly going at it, and
he would not sort out their
disagreements and so the
result was often kind of a
policy model that
didn't satisfy anybody.
so I think, you know, the
positive lesson from the Reagan
presidency is, is how important
it is to have this president who
communicates so clearly,
effectively and inspirationally.
But again, the cautionary tale
is that the president also needs
to be able to
manage the government.
>> Thank you.
>> Great. Thank you.
At the risk of just
going over stuff that
you've already gone over a lot,
I would like to dig back into
the kind of the rightward
drift of Ronald Reagan through
the 50s and 60s from a person who,
you know, was not only a Democrat,
but a union person, and he must
have had some fairly strong
Democratic leaning beliefs
in those years.
And so he had to get
rid of him somehow.
And you mentioned the, of
course, the huge influence of
the GE time, but he was also
somewhat beholden.
I guess the GE has
given him work, so.
>> Max Boot:
Oh, yeah. I mean.
>> Are there any other sort
of sources of information
or influence that
would help explain that?
And, did he get mostly any
sort of economic view of
conservatism from GE versus a
social, political view or both?
>> Max Boot: Uh, probably some of
both, but more on the economic side.
I would say he became a staunch
anti-communist in the years
after World War II, when he
was at the Screen Actors Guild,
and  again, he battled what he
thought was this communist
takeover of Hollywood, but
in fact, was really just a
standard labor dispute between
one union that was mobbed up and
in bed with the studios, and
another one that was more
radical and, and, you know, was
smeared as a "red union."
And he believed that
was something that the FBI
was telling him and
others were telling him.
So he became an ardent
anti-communist in the late 40s,
early 50s in Hollywood.
But I think he became more of
an economic conservative in the
1950s as a result of his work
for GE, where he was reading
Human Events, he was reading
National Review, he was reading
all these, you know, Hayek and
all these other authors that
were recommended by GE.
And so by the early 1960s,
he was pretty far to the right
for somebody who had described
himself in the 1930s as an
ardent New Dealer whose hero
was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
>> Right. Thanks.
>> On the Nixon tapes, Reagan
was caught in conversation with
President Nixon using some very
derogatory slurs, bigoted language.
He also, correct me if I'm wrong,
opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
What insights do you have about
Ronald Reagan's views on
race and race relations?
>> Max Boot: Well, Reagan always
said, I am just plain incapable of
prejudice and he always cited
the fact that his parents taught
him not to be bigoted and I think
there is a lot of truth to that.
But I think the-- and it's
certainly true that, you know,
when you talk to his kids,
they will tell you that he raised
them to avoid bigotry.
But I think it's also true that
he had a long political record
of utilizing white backlash
politics for his own political
advantage. I mean, he became
governor in 1966, in part by
running on this backlash
against the Watts riots, which
terrified people, and it also opposing
the Rumford Fair Housing Act,
which was this law
in California prohibiting
discrimination in the sale
or rental of housing.
And, as you rightly said, he
opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
He opposed the 1965
Voting Rights Act.
He regularly played to white
backlash politics with coded
appeals, talking about law and order,
talking about welfare queens.
In 1980, he infamously
went to a state fair in
Mississippi and talked about
states rights at near a site
where in 1964, three civil
rights workers had been slain.
So he did have-- the slur that you
refer to on the Nixon Library tape,
I think was probably
an aberration.
I certainly asked people who
knew him very well and I think
who are pretty honest. Did
he use this kind of terrible
language in private? And they
said, no, they never heard him
talk like that. It's possible
he was just playing up to
Richard Nixon, but it was
certainly very disturbing to
hear that and I think it's an
indication that he was not as
colorblind as he claimed to be.
And but certainly, you know,
whatever he said in, in private,
he certainly had a political
record of catering to white
fears of civil rights, which I
think is certainly one of the
things that has to be weighed in the
balance in assessing his presidency.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Okay. Time
for one more question, I think,
or maybe two more. Here and there.
And then we're we're done. Okay?
You're next and then you're next. Okay.
>> Max, you spent a
decade writing this book.
It's been published two months
before we go to the polls.
How do you want this book to speak
into the current moment that we're in?
>> Max Boot: Well, I mean, it
wasn't, you know, it wasn't
written to be to be released
in a political season.
I mean, again, I started it
more than ten years ago when,
you know, the only thing anybody
knew about Donald Trump
was that he hosted this show
called The Apprentice.
So it wasn't designed to have
any kind of political impact,
and it's still not. I mean,
it was really just designed to
provide a balanced and objective
overview of Ronald Reagan's life.
But I think it's certainly
something that can
inform the current moment,
because obviously, Ronald Reagan
was a very different Republican
president from Donald Trump.
And I think the differences are
pretty evident and apparent.
And I think it's a reminder of
how the Republican Party has
changed in our lifetimes.
And it's maybe, perhaps an idea
of how it could change again in
the future. I mean, the
fascinating thing is that,
you know, when Ronald Reagan
came along, people said that Reagan
was moving the Republican
Party to the right.
But today, if the Republican
Party adopted Reaganism,
they would be moving to the left.
That's how things have changed over
the course of the last 40 years.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
Final question.
>> Okay, yeah, I'm
British, so I'm still
catching up with American history.
But is it right that
Reagan played a role in
persuading evangelical
Christians to vote Republican?
>> Max Boot: He certainly--
Yes, he certainly appealed to
evangelical Christians.
He worked with the Moral
Majority and other groups that
were just becoming a political
force in the US in the late 70s,
early 80s. I mean, Reagan
himself was although he was
certainly, religious personally,
he was not ostentatiously religious.
He didn't wear his
religion on his sleeve.
He didn't go to church
very often as president.
But he certainly made a very active
outreach to white evangelicals.
And those formed
a big part of his base.
And so he, you know, he was--
He came out after having signed
a very liberal abortion law in
California. He had regrets
about that and came out as an
opponent of abortion.
But, you know, it was always kind of--
His support for social issues
was always kind of
carefully balanced.
When I talked to one of his
aides who said, you know,
to Reagan when they were
walking out to the marine one day,
he said, you know,
Mr. President, how come--
You know, I know you feel
very strongly about abortion.
You know, how come you
don't do more about that?
How come you don't highlight
that more as an issue?
And Reagan's reply was, well,
you know, a president has to
pick and choose his battles.
And that's, you know, there
are other issues that I'm more
focused on and that was so he
never prioritized social issues,
but that was certainly
part of his coalition.
>> David M. Rubenstein: Well, let me
give you one Reagan story to conclude.
so Ronald Reagan, as you know, was
an actor, but not a leading actor,
maybe a B actor,
they would call him.
And and toward the end of his
acting career, they were trying
to get other things for them to
do. A Las Vegas act I mentioned
earlier. So anyway, he kind of
got into politics and so forth.
When he became president of the
United States, there was an
issue that all the Hollywood
studios were against.
There was something
called the FINCEN rule.
And so, the studios were
upset with what the Reagan
Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Mark Fowler was trying
to do, and was to reverse a rule
that was very favorable
to the studios.
so one day, Reagan is out doing
some meetings, and the studio heads
had organized a meeting,
and they came in at the Oval Office
and they were waiting
for Reagan to come back.
And so we had, I think, eight
studio heads, all of the most
important people in
Hollywood are there.
And then Reagan comes into the
Oval Office, coming back from
his meeting, and he sees them
all, and he says, wow,
if I could have gotten a meeting
with any of you, I'd still be
in the motion picture business.
[Laughter]
Okay.
>> Max Boot: He was one of the
wittiest presidents, that is for sure,
and spontaneously witty.
>> David M. Rubenstein:
Thank you very much for this book
and thank you for being here.
And thank you all.
>> Max Boot: Thank you
for this great conversation.
[Applause]
[Music]