An hour with H.W. Brands

for mccain auditorium a kansas state university kbr presents an hour with historian h w brands and k macintyre author brands of the best selling author who writes about american history and politics two of his books have been finalist for the pulitzer prize and biography his latest book is called reagan the wife that their brand spoke on april seventh two thousand sixteen as part of the kansas they lead the lecture series at president chose for their kind introduction i'm delighted to be back at kansas state and have an opportunity to speak in the landon lecture series i was looking down the list of previous speakers and i'm quite glad to be part of this crew i do teach american history and i do try to teach well using stories in a minute miller talk to you about what i have learned about the american presidency in about american history but we start this story and this is a story that is a story that ronald reagan used to

tell about himself as a story that is set in a small town somewhere in the midwest and identified small thing a lot of reagan stories took place in these small towns and i think reagan that is partly because he was a product of a small town in illinois dixon illinois where you grew up but also because he understood that if you want to speak to the largest body of americans you should probably said it not in a big city somewhere even though most americans live in cities and you should not set out on one of the cozy the most americans live oman because he put in the midwest because that seems to be the heartland of america so this story is set in some small town in the us and it's a story that takes place at a moment of reagan's life and career when things were not going very well it's set in the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties

and ronald reagan had been a film actor but his own career head and he discovered late nineteen forties that you couldn't get any good roles he had gone into the politics of the film industry becoming president of the screen actors guild but even that dna and he basically got fired from his job as a film actor in the city apart know we wanted to make movies with them anymore so he got demoted from the big screen are there to the small screen that tiny screen in those days of television never again like to spin things and most positive way possible but he understood that things were not going well and in fact i say get demoted to the small screen his tv appearances last it all but to re minutes once a week he was host of the general electric the ad and this was

basically these were placed made for television and writing the name gephardt in the place he just introduce the players then you need all the rest of the time the rest of his work when he traveled the country speaking on behalf of the general electric company it more precisely speaking on behalf of key management he was he'd gone from films to public relations he was a flack forty minute this was not what we had envisioned when he was a kid growing up in dixon illinois and watching the movies on the screen up aaron imagining that could be him he had had a shot he had gotten some parts but he just didn't have it in him to be an a list actor so now he is trying to figure out what to make of being a spokesman for ge people around

the country if they ever knew who he was and pretty much forgot as exemplified by this story so the story goes that reagan is about to give a talk in this small town at a lunchtime talk and he's gonna be speaking to it could then the chamber of commerce or the rotary club or some group like and the guy who was going to introduce him is shown progress here's the program and the speaker is this guy named ronald r e a g a n and the guy does not know how to pronounce the last name is it reagan or is it really it could quite possibly be either one and the sky simply does not know now he's a plateful of a sensitive guy and he doesn't want to embarrass the guest by mispronouncing his name and so he doesn't

know so what i didn't do it now i tell a story my students and in this day of ubiquitous information in the internet you to enter the us be no crop but i point out to them there was a time when those did not exist and so this guy is quandary the state and the small thing he goes out for a walk of just a couple hours before the lunch and he's walking around they can really hard one i didn't possess a dozen wonders and sell does wonders the guest while he's walking walking along the bumps into a friend of a neighbor watch the bombs into the neighbor's dog disease at all stripes over the dog and the neighbors says gee you look like you're deep inside look like your promise everything ok and a guy starts to explain this dilemma legacy stars autonomy of just reaches in his pocket and pulls out the program and he

hears it again this fellow walking down any says sound do you know how to pronounce this guy's name you know new year's and the guy looks at us all here it used to be a movie actor and ortiz you know about that that it's it's raining as ronald reagan and the guys that it isn't is really a unity sure i answer it is a reading of the fall and so the guy starts walken also read reagan reagan and he again drips over the dark and he says oh by the way it's an acute doug you got there and autism a bagel i want you to just try to hold in your memory that a ripple of laughter the winner and i told this particular reason and i'll come back and explain what the reason is

and it's not just that just our religion but actually that is for the reason that there's a reason that reason so i wrote this book about all right ann as a biographer as a historian i'm trying to figure this person out the reason i wrote about reagan is that he was a very important figure in an air and public life in world fairs in the second half the twentieth century that's the reason i wrote about ray but having made a decision to write about it and i want to find out as much as i could about it this is a biography it's not simply just a study of his presidency and i used to i sometimes would write books or simply studies out present things but the more i did it the more i realized but that's simply scratch the service and didn't explain what needed to be explained and when he didn't explain was why these presents why these leaders why

individuals do what they do actually this disaster didn't start out years ago i was gonna write a study of the presidency of action for policy of theodore roosevelt and i started studying the foreign policy of theodore roosevelt when i realized you can't simply write about the foreign policy the president without writing about the domestic policy because presidents are present is not simply of foreigners they're presidents of the whole country and very often what is happening in domestic affairs influences what's happening in foreign affairs or vice versa you have to say the whole presidency but having gone that far realize well you can't use act as though this person was dropped down in the white house on january twentieth is it is an oration year as though nothing had happened before the people who make these decisions are not simply presidencies are flesh and blood individuals and if you want to understand why they act the way they do need to try to understand them as individuals so this is what really led me

to the genre of biography and eventually i wrote i'm pleased to say the reagan is the final volume a series of six my art music covers american history from the eighteenth century to the present i didn't focus on reading and the question is well it i faced what has been called the end in law of ronald reagan now everybody's opinion and nobody is easy to understand but i had a suspicion that reagan wasn't going to be that much harder to understand than other people despite this despite a reputation that had grown up around him and much of that originated with reagan's official biographer and historian arthur name edmund morris who was given unprecedented access to reagan already was in the white house

and finally or claim to be so defeated by understanding read that he sort of threw up its hands and instead of writing a biography of reagan which is what he had been commissioned to do he wrote a very odd fictionalized memoir of re re creates this fictional character who follows reagan ran various life and is able to a report from the sun now a lot of people who it's more what you're expecting an authoritative account of rings like were disappointed people in a great family the people the only race after the interviews with the author were outraged by this because it seemed socially an insult you know we gave you all this time and you don't even make this you don't tell the straight account of his interview and morris there is a wonderful writer at protests to be defeated the reagan is listening might just can't understand

well again under nasser of jump forward a little bit to tell you that there is an enigma about ronald reagan but it's not that it's not the enigma of what made reagan tick it's the enigma of what maybe reagan successful and his attitude rather different things now i mean i tell you that i think i know what made great and you can decide for yourself so you think i'm right because one of the things that i have learned in forty years forty five years and for teaching history writing history is that one's interpretation of history depends as much on one's view of human nature as it does on any particular set of facts especially when you get to these questions why do people do what they do i tend to point out the circumstances that the alternative is the decision points all this but when you get down to question so why did that person do that then i can give you my interpretation but you're afraid at your interpretation

which might reflect your own particular view of human nature so i was we're actually i certainly got into a while my previous book was in the production process so usually takes about a year from the time you finish the manuscript of a book to the times actually published so during that year in a good use your tiny starring next project so his previous book was on ulysses grant i was doing a book tour for her to support the book i was giving a radio interview this radio host based in chicago and so we thought it was a great big an interview at the end of the inner toward the end of the year you did what people often do on these interviews the us and so we can extract and i said i'm writing about ronald reagan and a glitzy and over the microphone and he said when we get off the year there's something i need to tell you ok i'm all ears and i thought ok this is illinois and he's of the age where i don't maybe has

a hit david ronald reagan and love letters and only scene so that it wins we got here i waited and he says if you understand ronald reagan you need to keep one thing for most people and that is that ronald reagan was the son of an alcoholic father when he said that i didn't know how he expected me to respond to because i didn't know if he thought that he was giving me information that i didn't have as i knew that reagan was the son of an alcoholic father reagan wrote two memoirs and in both of them explains that his father was an alcoholic so not knowing quite clear he was gone with as i just kept quiet and he went on to say i speak as the son of an alcoholic father

and he said when you grow up in a situation like this you develop a characteristic emotional approach to the world you grow up realizing that the person on whom you most want to rely the one who's supposed to be your emotional pillar of support the one everyone a model yourself after is the most unreliable person in the world and one day you're tossing the ball around in the backyard and he's telling a funny stories he takes yeah price pre news think he's the greatest guy there is and the next day he's beating the living daylights area and when you wake up in the morning you know which of these two to be dealing with and as a result you build this wall around yourself and you can be friendly you can appear extroverted there's always this reserve there's

always a party keep to yourself because you've learned you can't let yourself out there without suffering this campaign this is what he told me so i listened i thought ok this is this individual experience maybe it will shed some light on the runway i'm not going to take his words but i'm gonna be open to possibility so i continue my research on ronald reagan i re read some sources and their two personal accounts to sources that seemed to corroborate what he said to a particular one was the memoir nancy reagan nancy reagan reagan's second wife is dearest harder than one who was sort of the sound of reagan's emotional

work ready emma was closer to me and see that he was to anyone else who has like anyone else on her and she reciprocates they were this wonderful couple their marriages are terrific when the greatest love stories america enter public life in the last in the twentieth century even a continuing in the early part of twenty first century and the etsy who always called her husband ronnie said that she knew ronnie better than anyone else on earth and that is quite true that you went on to say but there were things that i didn't know there were times when that wall would come up and i would know what he was thinking i would know what was in his heart and i would simply have to wait until he would let the wall than let me back in i thought of me as the ratings well that's there's a lot to that nancy was insightful this was her husband she

was closer to him than anyone else there was one bit of evidence that seem to indicate that what the radio host said might apply the second bit of evidence came from reagan's own they say is now but it was actually him his memoir he tells the story of a moment when he is eleven years old living in dixon illinois it's a winter day late afternoon he's gone to the local ymca for an after school that he comes home there's snow on the ground the temperatures below freezing it's getting dark he comes off the sidewalk he turns the walkway to his house and there is his father passed out face down drunk in the snow and reagan remembers this from a seventy years later he's writing his memoir at the age of eighteen stores he's eleven years old and he remembers he says it's in the

memoir that i stood there for a moment and i ask myself should i just walk on by i go on inside and he entertained the thought he didn't tease out in the memoir what the consequences of that would be was pretty obvious this father would freeze to death in the snow mountain accent ray says air i decided that they've upgraded any doubts and drivel in his ok that the fact that seven decades later he remembers the stopping and thinking at the age of eleven that his life might be better if his father were dead that's quite an experience for a young boy to have to carry for the rest of his life ok stop on all sorts of

evidence reagan was this person who was friendly but random wax reagan had essentially no brands close into the other the nancy in whom he confided his hopes and fears i exaggerate slightly but only slightly when i say that he hadn't been president of the united states and he hadn't been this famous public figure nobody would come to his funeral except nancy and probably the kids but the fact that he invests himself entirely indian see very often left the kids peeling on the outside now as he grew old and he spent the last ten years of his life suffering from alzheimer's acer soften toward her father and so they did show up but he was this person who seem friendly from a distance but the closer you got the more you realize there was this basic reserve there you could never get very close and that's the way he won't

okay so that's kind of the personal side of reagan and you can deciphering so you think that explains the reagan personality radiant temperament maybe maybe not but i mean and that's played it enough for my purposes the next question the other car the reagan and make money so as i say i think i i think i know what made him tick because of what made him successful that's hard because here's this guy with older that in addressing this group and some small midwestern town at a time when his career was going nowhere where people didn't remember who he was even in those people who knew him from hollywood song nothing in writing particular in fact when reagan did enter politics and as you could run for governor of california saying your goal metro goldwyn

mayer said nana jimmy stewart for governor ronald reagan for best friends so that's how he was huge got a lightweight and not somebody sort of up to the political demands being governed them being present being the leader of the free world but reagan became i would argue one of the two most consequential presidents of the twentieth century i would say that what franklin roosevelt was the first half of the twentieth century for the united states and for the world reagan was to the second half of the twentieth century reagan changed the world reagan changed american domestic politics by turning the conversation in the united states in a conservative direction from the beginning of the twentieth century and certainly from the new deal era of franklin roosevelt the trend line in american politics was in a liberal direction in a direction of greater

government involvement in the lives of ordinary americans and the new deal gives rise to the great society the nineteen sixties and so it becomes a larger government becomes more ambitious this because that's what american voters want to win american voters re elected franklin roosevelt overwhelmingly in nineteen thirty six over you know the defeated in nineteen thirty six atlanta american voters were saying we want bigger government we want more ambitious than we want more energy but in time americans changed their minds and when ronald reagan was re elected was elected first in it at the real like the nineteen eighty four by a comparable margin to that which re elected franklin roosevelt in nineteen thirty six but this time on behalf of a conservative president he demonstrated that

americans the change memo also demonstrated alf landon lived half century to say anyway so for me the buyer for history of the presidency i have to explain how great it accomplished what he accomplished first what did he accomplish he shifted american politics in a conservative direction i can say that from franklin roosevelt until the end of the nineteen seventies this country lived in all told the age of roosevelt again the liberal ideas flowing americans expected more more out of government writing comes in and says but now it's time for change in fact if you want to distinguish liberals from conservatives in this country on the basic political issues leave aside socialist that complicates things but you are a liberal in the united states in the modern era if you believe that government is the solution too important social problems you are conservative if you agree with ronald reagan in his first inaugural address resettlement

is not the solution government is the problem and i would argue that suggest that reagan accomplished that part of his mission so well or we still largely lived in the age of reagan in the age of roosevelt americans believe the government could affect positive change in their life people have confidence in government these regular people have nothing but disdain for government it's hard to find people also either party really made li side bernie sanders who think that government really get stopped on the governors addition the government can be a force for positive change now reagan actually green thinking government at home that was a step too far americans weren't really give up social security reagan had been opposed to social security they were thinking about medicare reagan had been opposed to medicare if it'll

even the private route on those issues but he was also a realist and he recognized that ok americans have become used his oscar they like socially day become used medicare they like medicare but from reagan until now the growth work our government slowed dramatically reduce if you look at the number of programs new federal programs came thick and fast during franklin roosevelt's presently repair ambassador during the presidency of lyndon johnson new federal programs came slowly and painfully from reagan forward and the best example of slow and painful as the affordable care act which is still struggling for its existence six years after it passed anyway so reagan changes the conversation in america on a message in forty years ray and changes the face of the international system is ready

to bowl as present one was a shrink government how the other one was to defeat communism abroad and that second that second was much more radical than is commonly appreciate from harry truman the president the onset of the cold war through jimmy carter president just before ronald reagan the basic position off american presidents of the american after establishment was that the soviet union communism is here to stay and we need simply to deal with that and this wasn't exemplified most clearly by the policy of detente and areva richard nixon nineteen seventies already in a sinatra when i cannot live with kind of radical just encountered if economists that an outsider going to how all this happened i would be the last person to say that reagan defeated communism by himself one of the secrets of success in a president is living at the right time and having things

happen things all your way ronald reagan's policy toward the soviet work on isn't required mikhail gorbachev or somebody like him for it to take effect reagan had been trying to invade soviet leaders in discussions lean toward arms control but as he said they kept diamond and then along comes with yogurt i was willing to sell and they achieve a breakthrough in arms control but more important to rein in state the moral position of the united states enter a famous speech that he gave him for the brandenburg gate in berlin and nineteen eighty seven where he stood for the berlin wall and he challenged four percent said mr gorbachev if you are serious about reform and really mr gorbachev tear down this wall this is nineteen eighties reagan leaves office in nineteen eighty nine the wall is still standing in fact when

reagan uttered those words almost nobody took him seriously because almost nobody in the audience positions of authority took them seriously gorbachev and the soviet pr people that is that it is more this or can you expect out of a hollywood actor and people in the united states said how he's is trying to explain this he's trying to distract people from the iran contra scandal which had broken just a few months before and he's flailing his in the last two years of his administration but there were people who are listening and those people were the ones on the other side of the berlin wall in east berlin itself in east germany and poland and when they have their opportunity in nineteen eighty nine to themselves take a physical rates to tear down the wall they remembered that the president of the united states had staked out this moral position basically saying we're on your side and any number of them who asked about this

so what did you know about this what we're thinking they said we remember what president reagan said and the wall did fall and a short while later the city disintegrated reagan was once and so what in what is your policy toward communism for the service is that a simple we win they lose and we won they lost and so reagan had two goals as president he wanted to shrink government at home you want to defeat communism abroad he got all of the second he slow down the growth of government at home part of it was that the cost of well partly because this is gonna sound paradoxical a very large federal deficit rankin took the republican party and with the republican party fiscal conservatives across the rubicon from which they have never come back

before ray the litmus test ah a conservative of a political concern in the united states on what is a fiscal issues was a balanced budget if you cover it has to live within its means the way families live within their means that's the position it right and staked out what is campaigning in nineteen eighty as the session he stated an it in eighty one but that is the position he gave up in nineteen eighty one in the course of negotiations political fighting over taxes and spending reagan believe that taxes should come down he believed that spending should come down and he proposed a budget doing both but when he discovered that he didn't have the political momentum the political clout to get the budget cuts this year he accepted a deal in which taxes were cut to day exchange for a

promise of spending cuts tomorrow and one of the things that radio and learn maybe new maybe simply overestimated his political persuasiveness he discovered that tax cuts are written in stone and spending cuts are written on paper which is very flimsy paper he never got those that he never got the spending cuts the one the result was and this is quite ironic for someone who claimed to be a fiscal conservative reagan's administration rolled up as much federal debt as every administration before him from george washington to jimmy carter federal debt doubled in real terms than tripled in nominal terms of doubled in real terms during the reagan years the result of the new one a consequence of this is that the republican party is no longer the party of a balanced budget reasons reagan's party they still talk about a balanced budget but is the party of tax cuts tax cuts in good weather task as in bad weather taxes under any

circumstances now this is not a nice it's a reagan was responsible for creating this but one of the questions that the past is so well when reagan think his party today what we think of politics today and i would say oh actually one point the question takes it is however ronald reagan fear as a candidate they got ronald reagan get the nomination of his old party and the answer i give sounds like an historian started is not really i said if reagan had never been president of the united states i think he would compete very well for the nomination republican party today and partly because reagan was it was an engaging personality even though he didn't have close friends he was friendly and oh you know i told that story the beginning because reagan

had a sense of humor and read and understood how to use that sense of humor reagan began nearly every speech with a joke and the job was kind of a shaggy dog story like that work where you heard that serve ripple laughter not his belly laugh ha ha ha no reason why that's the cleverest thing i've ever heard or just afghanistan the funny reagan in those years when he was on the g e circle and getting all those lunchtime speeches he learned that laughter is a great way to dissolve skepticism he understood that if you can get audiences to laugh with you you're half way to getting them to agree with you reading it was in addition somebody something was almost unique in modern american political history and

optimistically conservative battle many conservatives are by their nature pessimists these are easy or conservative that as you think it changes generally for the worse and he's wow hold on tightly to what we have this incident there were sick you know or reagan was a conservative but he was also an optimist reagan preach a message of hope the message is being preached by candidates today especially on the republican side is anything but hope it's fear and anger and reagan i think would be i think the cleanup and that carter precisely because he's this appealing personality and americans want a vote their hope they voted for reagan in nineteen eighty because he said america remains the shining city on the hill

and remote ahmed the american dream still lives and america's brightest days are ahead he was reelected in nineteen eighty four on a slogan of this morning in america you are not hearing that morning in america these days in politics so if reagan were candidate today not having been president i think he could probably get the nomination the problem is that reagan was in fact president and i say that's a problem because reagan was one hundred percent a rhetorical conservative and reagan's speeches writing gave essentially the same speech during his entire political career he burst onto the scene with a speech on behalf of barry goldwater in nineteen sixty four his last speech with his farewell address in nineteen eighty nine so a quarter century or is

given the same speech again and again it's always smaller government home defeat communism abroad he really stuck to his message the details of the anecdotes change but the message is always the same and he was as i say this consistent conservative and so conservatives today republicans can cite ronald reagan speeches he's their guy but the trouble arises if they have to look at ronald reagan's record as president it's a problem for the real hardcore conservatives because reagan was the last thing from hardcore reagan was a pragmatist reagan believe that the point in getting elected was to govern and to govern in a pluralist democracy means taking account of the fact that other people have their own views on things and they have a right to their own views reagan of fact i was writing a book i interviewed surviving members of the reagan

administration and i talk to james baker was raised to the staff and then his sector the treasury and baker told me he quoted rate and he said if reagan told me once he told me fifteen thousand times i'd rather get eighty percent of what i want then go over the cliff with my flags flying this was right reagan understood that in politics in the real world when you are in office and intend to govern you make progress incrementally you dont insist that the perfect become the enemy of the good if you get eighty percent today that's a really good day taken a bank that comeback to monsignor more the rest so if reagan had to defend his record as president and republican primary season's oh i can just imagine what will be said of reagan reagan is known as the present to slash

taxes and indeed he did and one right at the beginning but he proceeded to raise taxes several times at that much smaller amounts but because those tax increases were necessary for example to shore up social security reagan recognize that social security was a reality and since it was a rally he was gonna make a fiscally sound and this required substantial increases in social security taxes reagan was the last president to seriously revise reform streamline the tax cut this was in nineteen eighty six which is a remarkable accomplishment given that he was in his last term as president second term presents almost rarely get much done that but reagan reform the tax code and he did it on the basis of its overall revenue neutral so on the whole it level about the point was to raise taxes on the whole reduced jackson hole but it meant that some

people's taxes went up now these days he would be branded as a tax raiser and when i don't have that and reagan was the last president to preside over import immigration reform it wasn't everything that reagan wanted but even recognize the reality of lots of people who would come into this country illegally and they are here we have to do something about it so reagan would be a sitting duck for the kind of rhetoric that is used by conservatives these days against their opponents but again that's because he was president now in a society many other candidate for president has been president so that had to do with that sort of thing i said that it and there was a certain about how did reagan do it why was he successful it wasn't because he was the

smartest person ever to occupy the white house i can name five or six presidents who's wrong it was probably higher than rags areas start with jimmy carter but reagan understood that being gay when you're president there such a thing you have to be smart enough but being a lot smarter smart enough is probably no advantage and might even be a disadvantage so you like jimmy carter for example was tempted to try to master all aspects of government reagan didn't even try and we did understand that a president can't change the waterfront of politics and world affairs but he focuses on a couple things iggy says shrink government how the economy is in a row and you work on those things then you can it's emotion reagan understood that it's absolutely essential to have the american people on your side reagan took as his

model of how to be president not a policy holder had the president franklin roosevelt reagan started his career or be on the air as radio announcer at a time when franklin roosevelt was giving his fireside chats and read and listen to those fires such as an enlisted that's the way a president has power it's not the number of votes you have in congress it's the connection you made with the american people the ability to convey of vision what roosevelt did in the deaths of oppression reagan did during the end of the nineteen seventies which were a troubling time for americans and during his time as president reagan understood the value of humor ryan could tell a joke you could get people laugh and when they laughed at them they found that they couldn't dislike him and many of them came around to agree that one lasted reagan benefited from coming along

at a time in american politics when it was still possible to have bi partisan measures have important measures received a bipartisan support until it has a very quick summary of american political parties until the nineteen sixties every of the two major american political parties were always ideological i'd ideological coalitions there were liberal republicans as well as conservative republicans there are conservative democrats as well as liberal democrats this change when lyndon johnson hail the mast of the national democratic party to annandale the flag to mass civil rights or for getting all those southern conservatives an excuse to leave the democratic party of their fathers and grandfathers rigid been in since the civil war and go to the party which they were more closely affiliated philosophical republican

party so there's this great migration of conservatives out of the democratic party to the republican party reading becomes president in the nineteen eighties when the migration is half accomplished but there were still conservative democrats and every one of reagan's important pieces of legislation he got a substantial number of democratic votes so he could present these positions as bipartisan he could portray himself as a president of all the people the migration of conservatives out of the republic out of the democratic party ended about year two thousand since then there have been especially know liberals in the republican party no concert is in the democratic party if reagan became president in twenty seventeen you know whole lot harder time accomplishing what he accomplished but we historians have the advantage of leaving people in their place a moment in history and appreciating what they accomplished that they're

hearing you're listening to the presidential historian hw brands giving a landon lecture on public affairs a kansas state university on april seventh two thousand and sixteen dr brands now takes questions from the audience but first a question from taste a president kirk schulz i'll just ask as you were did your research in and talk to all these different people who was the most intriguing individual that probably helped shape a lot of which you were discussed today and imagine two people one was james baker co gave me a great interview in his office in houston baker was gracious enough to talk to me i'm sure that he is in or been interviewed a thousand times on his long and distinguished career i wasn't in his office but five minutes when i saw what any number of people who said that it

didn't work for me saw him here i imagine that i was let's say a candidate for president an analysis to erode two thousand and their race was really close and it seemed to hang on a recount in florida who what i want to argue my case somebody who understood the law somebody who understood politics somebody who could be very strong on your side in the most genteel way so i understand why jim bakker had the career he had cell and he was he told me some stories the ground rules were that these are in the background so he basically he would tell me the stories in let me record but i couldn't use them in the book and last i checked and i use this year and he told me

some stories that i wish i could repeat to their great stories about it and it is a wonderful raconteur the other one was john poindexter john poindexter was the national security advisor when you're on counter story brick and poindexter i had sort of observed from this as everybody else observe i'm in the nineteen eighties and he was an atm were all who go on to work for the white house and he seemed sort of like this but not grade i know it's just would be very nice to get well in fact i taught him he looks like santa claus and he was he had most jovial laugh and he just wanted to talk about was great but one of the things he told me was something that i decided not to use the book exactly and what he said was always i asked was did

you feel as though you'd been tossed under the bus when the story of iran contra scandal broken just remind you the administration was caught sending weapons to iran i guess it a widget it declared in stride would force in anbar an arms embargo in exchange for the release of american hostages which and i didn't get really easily as it gets suckered on that and then taking the proceeds from those sales and using to fund the contras illegally after congress had declare that you know your son should be used to fund conference and so the story broke and reagan fired point i said so did you feel better at this that you have been sacrifices not all he said that was working with the job and he told me convincingly that he had kept information from the president precisely because as he said that was my job a national security adviser is expendable president united states is now now reagan clearly knew that the arms were

going to iraq and he knew that there was a connection to the hostages that's in his diary but then when a story breaks rating gets up in front of the cameras on television and says this was not on store gas stations and so i asked poindexter said so how at it do this i can read the diary and it's really clear arms for hostages again and again and the reagan stands up and says are the perfectly straight face this was not arms for hostages and i said no i don't think reagan was that good actor and pointedly said they thought that this was evidence the incipient dementia that reagan would be dying is diagnosed with alzheimer's after he left the white house and poindexter thought that this was an early symptom of that

it was and i didn't use it explicitly in the book because i want sort of more corroborating evidence before making a claim that the president was losing his memory while still present one of the ways i dealt with that though was two and it i felt sort of badly doing this but after reagan left the white house he was asked to give testimony in a number of the investigations and prosecutions of members of his administration won a four i'm a surgeon in iran contra scandal and he gets a one deposition and this is a little over two years after that the white house and in the space about two a half hours he's asked one question after another there's a factual questions and he has to say i don't remember i don't recall i can't say and at first these are questions that anybody might not recall so well what did you do on this particular day residents are busy you

remember but then they became sort of very basic questions like do you remember those your chairman to join chief of staff was no doubt and then it became even more specific than that do you remember who michael deaver was michael deaver was for the oldest of the reagan loyalist from california days but one all the california to came to washington and was closest to the president and mrs reagan and he confessed now he's just two years out alive as he can remember michael beavers and at the end of this session very painful sanctions painful even to read he said something that is just almost chilling he said again just twenty five months of celebrities wise it was like i was never president at all his memory of the presidential years was going to end you know to figure out so what does

one make of this and various people poindexter saw evidence earlier on reagan's son raju some of you may remember in nineteen eighty four ronald reagan had two debates against walter mondale and the first day went really badly for writing and uncharacteristically read and fumbled his opening statement he a circle around and repeated verbatim sections of his closing statement this was a guy who was trained as an actor's director he knew is lively you know at what the messages on the really performed badly and ron reagan his son said that's when he saw the first signs of his father's mental decline the next day the wall street journal the republican reagan friendly wall street journal ran a banner headline is reagan too old to be president to remember how reagan was all that question in the second debate he prepared a one line which is are dropped in a spontaneous your is not spontaneous and all as if it's not respond when they came up but given the

slightest opportunity he said that on his age issue he has made a determination that he will mike used his opponent's youth and inexperience against him and if you watch the video of it there is this recall are relieved laughter that runs through the studio audience even mondale himself last and it's as i say it's not it's not laughter of where that was a good one no it's laughter of we don't have to worry about our president losing his mind but i think that from that it didn't prove anything at all to prove that he had a sense of humor he didn't prove that he had a memory but nonetheless people like reagan and they kept him or a long history much and i was wondering where you attribute your vocabulary to have to have a dictionary app open winner of the book oh i'm sorry i didn't intend for that i'll tell you also argues it's an excuse for explaining

how i got into this business until it started when my father now deceased took me and my three siblings on sunday afternoon drives around portland oregon where we grew up it was his contribution to child rearing might father my mother had a very traditional approach so my dad he was always people who worked six days a week amazon business on sundays he would take the kids at my mom's here she was dating my dad always had this interest in history he also was trained as an engineer so we used to go around to big public works projects the bonneville dam portland waterworks we follow the trail of lewis and clark so i had this interesting history and so i started reading historical stuff i also had a grandmother who used to what shall i say incentivize it used to bribe us to she thought that it was useful to him prove one's memory by memorizing poetry so we would get paid a nickel for memorizing a short

film ten central the law her own twenty five cents for the raven and the hiring and so maybe that was some of it but from the earliest time i love to read stories are a lot i still read write to and so this appreciation for the language and what you can do it while i guess it became fairly early on i guess that's an easy question i'll be joined me in writing back rent her great great stacey you just heard dr h w brands presidential historian and best selling author of a number of books about history and politics his latest book is reagan the life dr brann spoke a kansas state university on april seventh two thousand sixteen as part of the landon lecture series on public affairs a special thanks to the division of communications and marketing at kansas state

university for providing audio of this event and came out entire k pr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas next time and katie are present what's the matter with kansas william allen white gained national attention back in at ninety six when he wrote an editorial asking that question now one hundred twenty years later two former kansas governor's are posing the question again what's the matter with kansas republican mike hayden and democrat jon kyl and join forces last weekend for a critical look at the state of kansas today we are dancers in the financial debt we have been and why decisions that have been made well i served with mike hayden

and mike hayden is a conservative that we have changed so much ch for him now to be a moderate bill i am a socialist ruin as next week as former kansas governor's mike hayden and john carlin asked what's the matter with kansas on the next kbr presents on kansas public radio