As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the press could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.
News conferences are the only chance the American public has to see Ronald Reagan use his mind.
His track record of pragmatism, depth and candor all speak to a person who would find the Tea Party simplistic, opportunistic and misguided. Reagan was surrounded by some very smart people who gave him very sound advice. They were not wondering where certain countries are on the map.
In my first book, Under Fire, I wrote that I revered Ronald Reagan. That was a dozen years ago. I still feel that way. I think he changed the world for the better for my children and my children’s children.
The early favorite for the GOP nomination and ‘natural’ heir to Reagan was Vice President George H.W. Bush. But Bush was an imperfect fit for the party’s base.
I was so proud to have the Reagan name and to be Ronald Reagan’s son. What a great honor.
Nixon had this remarkably effective, deeply intense will to power. Reagan and I have a will to ideas.
I think we need a very, very serious effort, primarily through tax policy to provide incentives and encouragement for people to save and invest and expand their businesses and to create more jobs. The kind of thing we did in the early Reagan years, 30 years ago. I think that’s essential.
If ‘Mystery Train’ is my Nixon book and ‘Lipstick Traces’ my Reagan book, ‘Invisible Republic’ is my Bill Clinton book. I really liked Clinton. He made me proud to be part of this country again. For all of his failings, the way he put all that he’d done in jeopardy, I supported him from beginning to end.
I don’t think anybody is – no one could compare to Ronald Reagan, because he was the right man at the right time.
I’ll confess that, from an early age, I was a huge fan of President Reagan because my parents bought me an enormous stuffed monkey that they named President Reagan – yes, I get it now.
To be sure, administrations since Ronald Reagan had gone out of their way to massage and ‘spin’ news to the president’s advantage, while the media did its best to un-spin it.
When Chelsea was 9 months old, I was defeated for reelection in the Reagan landslide. And I became overnight, I think, the youngest former governor in the history of the country. We only had two-year terms back then.
You’ll notice that Nancy Reagan never drinks water when Ronnie speaks.
In fact, there is clear evidence of black intellectual superiority: in 1984, 92 percent of blacks voted to retire Ronald Reagan, compared to only 36 percent of whites.
The first thing that I really understood politically and was old enough to get was the failed assassination attempt on Reagan.
Ronald Reagan wasn’t qualified to be governor, let alone president.
During the Reagan years, government shut down eight different times under a Democrat Congress. The president and Congress worked together and got things straightened out. Under the Carter years, again a Democrat Congress, the government shut down five times.
The problem with some of our noisier exponents of ‘American exceptionalism’ is that they lack Reagan’s moral maturity.
While only about half of the voters feel they know very much about Reagan or what he stands for, the Republicans who do have a very positive perception of him.
I stood respectfully as Ronald Reagan was sworn in to his second term though I disagreed with him on many issues. I stood as well for the inauguration of George W. Bush’s second term though I thought his war in Iraq was a tragic mistake.
With Ed Wood, it was this sort of blending of Ronald Reagan, the Tin Man from ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ and Casey Kasem.
The reason inflation was brought down to manageable levels, by the time of Ronald Reagan’s re-election, was directly attributable to Jimmy Carter’s very courageous act, hiring a Federal Reserve chair, with the charge to induce a recession. That recession was probably the reason he didn’t win a second term.
Jimmy Carter began his planning in the early summer of 1976, Ronald Reagan a year prior. The Clinton Administration, elected in 1992, lingered in naming its team, and as a result, took almost a year to staff its ranks.
There was a time when the Republican Party could discuss possible reforms to our gun laws: Ronald Reagan himself endorsed the Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban that passed in 1994.
I was a graduate student in 1984 when President Ronald Reagan called for the construction of a new space station. I knew then that I wanted to apply for the astronaut program, and this was an exciting development.
When terrorists blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon, Reagan was frustrated and furious, as Bush was after 9/11. But he didn’t stick us in a war in the Middle East with no exit.
As Ronald Reagan demonstrated, it is still possible to progress if not from a log cabin at least from obscurity to the White House. It is also rare.
I believe in Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment, thou shall not speak unfavorably of another Republican.
The stories have been told so often by those of us who supported President Reagan over the years that they seem mundane, almost like a fictional novel or a movie script.
They say imitation is the best form of flattery. That is particularly the case if you’re a U.S. presidential candidate and pundits are likening you to a conservative giant like Ronald Reagan.
I am involved with politics today because of the inspiration I received from Ronald Reagan.
Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can’t compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan’s free market enthusiasms.
I remember the ’80s being about the Cold War and Reagan and the homeless problem and AIDS. To me, it was kind of a dark, depressing time.
Reagan’s dead, and he was a lousy President.
Looking back as an historian, I find myself having great respect for Ronald Reagan’s consistency: his absolute conviction that the Soviet Union – the only competing world empire at the time – was bound to collapse!
Like Reagan, President Trump strives for good relations with all nations, including Russia. But no nation, including Russia, should doubt the president’s commitment to defending the United States and our allies.
Whether one admired or was repulsed by the positions he took on matters foreign and domestic, it is undeniable that Reagan’s ability to project anger was highly attractive to his most passionate supporters on the far right – and crucial to his political success.
Ronald Reagan offered us an international vision divided between the free world and the evil empire. Even if this was a cartoonish view, it helped us make sense of everything from Star Wars to industrial policy.
I was friends with President Ronald Reagan and he once said to me, ‘I don’t know how anybody can serve in public office without being an actor.’
President Reagan preached ‘trickle down economics’ but naively did not reckon on the fact that the wealthy would only care about getting more for themselves instead of caring about helping those with less.
The Hollywood of Frank Capra’s era, when Reagan became a minor star, sold the world an image of American pith and patriotism in many ways as defining as the moon landing or the A-bomb.
During Ronald Reagan’s administration, ’60 Minutes’ ran a segment about the difference between Reagan’s rhetoric and Reagan’s actions. The show thought it had produced a hard-hitting piece; Reagan’s team called up ’60 Minutes’ to thank them for the 15-minute commercial.
After 2003, we lowered taxes across the board. And by 2004, revenue to the federal government grew. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan cut taxes dramatically. And by the end of the decade, revenue coming in the federal government had doubled.
Though it was never a goal in life, it has occurred to me that I’ve met six presidents of the United States. OK, I met four of them before they became president, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, No. 43.
When I read Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, I think it’s a wonderful record of the Reagan era. I think it’s amazing. This is the time I lived in.
Reagan was no neocon.
Trump is not a conservative and has no conservative agenda. If elected president, he would not govern as the second coming of Ronald Reagan.
All Americans and freedom-loving people around the world owe President Reagan our deepest gratitude for his strong, principled leadership that ended the Cold War and brought freedom to millions of people.
Ronald Reagan was so self-contained and impenetrable that his official biographer was practically driven mad trying to figure him out.
I went to theater school at Northwestern, and I was quite conservative. Reagan at the time seemed quite revolutionary, or at least a rock star: He was radical and kind of punk rock.
Everyone seemed to want a piece of Ronald Reagan. It was maddening.
The day before the anniversary of D-Day, we lost a man who was equaled by few and surpassed by none as a leader in the cause of freedom: Ronald Reagan.
I hope in the end that people will remember what Reagan said: that if he could get 80 percent of what he wanted, you call it a win and move on.
In Ronald Reagan’s chaotic childhood, the imagination was armor. There is nothing unusual about that; transcending the doubts, hesitations, and fears swirling around you by casting yourself internally as the hero of your own adventure story is a characteristic psychic defense mechanism of the Boy Who Disappears.
