Russillo Summer Book Club! ‘Reagan: His Life and Legend’ With Max Boot, Plus Life Advice

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“This is the book portion of the podcast.”

Our first one is Reagan by Max Boot.

I didn't even know that I would want to read this, and I really enjoyed it because it was reading about events in my childhood that I certainly did not understand as well. So we'll do that in some life advice for you. This summer, whatever you're watching, baseball, golf, soccer, racing,

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Month or so ago was going through some stuff to like maybe I'll take that book with me and some travels and I saw the max boot Ronald Reagan book and I went, I don't know if I want to read 700 plus pages on Reagan and I love reading about presidents and it's like, you know what, just give it a shot. And max, I ripped through it, I absolutely loved it.

Being my age, it kind of was like, oh, this is what all this stuff was during my childhood and now I understand it a lot better than I did when I was five or nine or ten years old. So fantastic work and I appreciate you joining us today. Thanks for having me and really really glad you liked the book. Yeah, it was it was terrific. So like a lot of these great man in history,

“how do you think his childhood framed what later became of of Reagan the man?”

So it had a huge impact. I mean, like all of us are personality. I mean, as a some extent it's it's DNA, but to some extent it's also our upbringing, our childhood. And in Reagan's case, he had what we would today call a very difficult traumatic childhood, although he always looked at it with rose-colored glasses and always tried to look on the bright side. In fact, that was one of the big takeaways from his childhood because, you know, he was his father was this

I tender and shoe salesman had a major drinking bomb kept losing one job after another. And so the Reagan family kept moving from one tiny little town and small town in Illinois to another in the early years of the 20th century. And often his father would go off on these multi-day vendors and come back and, uh, Dutch Reagan as he was then called in his brother Moon could hear these loud arguments through the thin walls of their rented houses between their mother

and their father. So it was not an easy upbringing by any stretch of the imagination. But he was very influenced by his mother who was a very devout member of the disciples of Christ church. And, you know, you might say she had a polyanish outlook except it was kind of polyanish on steroids.

She always told him to look on the bright side of life and, and to basically refract every

thing through this, uh, very optimistic criticism. And that's exactly what he did. And so he tended

it was really from his childhood that he learned how to take very unpleasant reality and to reshape it more to his liking, which would be one of his superpowers as a politician.

“I mean, the other thing I think that he took away from his childhood was he became, uh, a fairly”

introverted, distant person with almost no friends, which, you know, probably surprises a lot of people when I say that, because if they're only familiar with Ronald Reagan, the guy on TV, the president, the actor, he seemed like a very nice, warm person that everybody liked.

And to some extent that was true. But in fact, you know, moving from town to town, he never had

a lot of close friends when he was, he was a kid. He never stayed in one school long enough. And he always had this terrible secret of his father's drinking to protect. And so he kind of erected this mental enclosure around himself and kind of walled himself off from other people. Later on, even his wife Nancy was probably the person closest to him in the world so that there are parts of him even, she didn't have access to. And so he became kind of this outwardly friendly,

but in fact, very distant, remote person. And one of his long time political consultants who Spencer, you know, told me, Reagan wouldn't be a pretty good hermit. He didn't really need anybody. And he was very self-sufficient. Again, that was really a product of his very difficult childhood. Yeah, there's so many connections to whether it's becoming an actor, which I'm going to spend some time on here. And the way he would deal with conflict, once he was actually, you know,

Governor, and then more importantly, president. But, you know, there's a version of his adolescence where it's like he's this tall, good looking, charming, popular. He's a good athlete. He's this lifeguard who's taking such pride in the attention that he's getting from saving lives during his summer job. And then to think that he's, he's worthy of, hey, I'm going to be on the air immediately. And then I'm going to go pursue this acting career once in California that

it was almost like he was undeniable that he was not ever going to allow what happened once he

“walks through the door and come home. He was just going to change. And honestly, I think that's an”

incredible gift to be able to just convince yourself that everything is great. And I'm going to

maximize all these things that are away from what was obviously very challenging upbringing. Absolutely. And remember, he graduated from tiny little Eureka College in 1932, which was in the midst of the worst economic downturn in American history, is something like 20% of the country was unemployed. So it was about as direct condition as you could possibly imagine. His own father was basically unemployed at that point. So they were feeling the distress too.

He barely had enough money to pay for college. So, you know, difficult childhood. And yet, he was convinced that he was destined for greater things. And he, you know, he told his fraternity brothers a tiny Eureka College that within a few years he would be making something like $5,000 a year, which at that time, that was a lot of money. That's like saying,

“I'm going to make $250,000 a year today. And he had no job prospects, no real qualifications to”

do on anything. And yet he set out on this path where, you know, he had dreamed of becoming a movie actor. He was very active in the drama society in both high school and college. But, you know, he looked around them at West, didn't see a lot of movie studios, but what he saw were a lot of radio stations and radio, you know, was was the hot new technology in the 1930s kind, you know, kind of like podcasts or something today. And so, he decided, okay, well, I don't know how to get

to Hollywood, but I know how to find a radio station. So, he just went around with his very micro resume, looking for a job and eventually wound up at a very small radio station in Iowa and started doing sports casting and all sorts of other broadcasting duties and gradually made an name for himself in the Midwest. And God, you know, moved over to a larger radio station into mine. And it came known as Dutch Reagan, the voice of the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox. And so, he started

even by the mid 1930s when the country was still in the midst of this incredible depression,

he was already having tremendous success far more than anybody could have imagined for this, for this kid from this very hard luck background. Yeah, I obviously starting my career as an awful play by play baseball guy out of nowhere with zero qualifications. I love that part of the book because he basically impresses somebody who owns one of these smaller stations just with his personality. And can you tell us the story about his

trial? Yeah, I mean, his trial was basically, you know, he had to recreate in his mind a game, which he had seen or he imagined and he was able to do this so vividly that he convinced the radio station owner that he was seeing it in person. And then, you know, the way that they did play

actually go to the games. He would be sitting in a studio hundreds of miles from the baseball

“stadium and he would be reading a telegraphic account of what was going on, you know, really tourist”

basically saying, you know, so and so struck out, so and so reached first base, whatever. And then

he would be creating this, this word picture for his listeners as if he were actually there pretending that he was, you know, sitting on the ballpark watching the action. So again, it required, I mean, two things that are required, which he had in spades. One was tremendous communication ability. And the other was tremendous imagination. And those are basically the two qualifications that carried him so far in life. I love the part where the teletype goes out.

And so he's on the air and he just starts saying foul ball over and over and over again. And then that was one of his favorite stories. He told that with many, many times. Yes, there were a few few stories that were repeated from time to time. But if anybody has, an older relative or whatever, like a simple sense. So all of this is happening so fast. He's making all this money. He's doing playback play, but that's still not enough. He is going to make the

“great migration west, which is very important at this time. I think you point at at one point.”

There's more theaters in the United States and actual banks, the highest paid executive in the United States is a studio executive and everybody wants in on this and Reagan finds a way. What was the beginning? Like, what was the connection to actually getting them out there for screen tests than ultimately being offered a contract? Well, the thing you have to understand was

Ronald Reagan was he always had this kind of aweshocks manner and made it sound like everything that

happened to him kind of just fell into his lap and he got lucky. But in fact, he was ferociously ambitious and he basically conned the owner of the radio station and deletting him travel with the Chicago Cubs out to their spring training, which in those days was cattling island off the coast of Los Angeles and told him, you know, this will be great. I'll get to know the players, so make me a much better announcer when the season comes around. But in fact, he had an ulterior motive

because this was a way for him to get out to California. He'd never been anywhere outside the Midwest.

“I think you want with the team to settle in California and then snuck away to Warner Brothers.”

And did a screen test and lo and behold, Jack Warner liked what he saw and all of a sudden Ronald Reagan already had a pretty good career going as this well-known Midwestern sports announcer. All of a sudden gets hired into this legendary stable of stars at Warner Brothers in the late 1930s. I know, it's just when you're in this part of the book, you're like, it's happening so fast. And I love that you reference that or will quote where or well. And it, you know, in a way that maybe

some people don't want to hear it, but says after the age of 30, the great mass of human beings have been an individual ambition. And Reagan clearly is the opposite of this. How does his career go in the beginning as an actor? Well, he starts off the way. Most folks started on Hollywood those days. There's a B movie actor and making a lot of low ramp pictures that were meant to be shown at the cinema alongside the A-pictures, the prestige, you know, very expensive pictures. And he even did

this very cheesy action series where he was playing brass, bankrupt, treasury agent and, you know, man, I've watched some of those movies and they are unwatchable, the special effects, so bad. This is just such a low-rank movie making, but you know, this was, he was kind of, you know, the Tom Cruise of the, of the, of the B movies in those days. And, and then he gradually, you know, worked his way up. He showed that he was, you know, nobody ever thought that he was, you know,

the second coming of Lawrence Olivier or any of these other great actors, but he was a guy who was

sober, diligent, hardworking, showed up. He was lines, hit his marks, did what the director asked. And so, you know, he started getting bigger and bigger pictures, including, you know, one of his favorites, a new rock in the All-American, where he played this very idealized version of George Gip, the Notre Dame football star, who seemed like in the movie like an All-American guy. Of course, in real life, he was this degenerate gambler, draft dodge, he also had some other things,

but they presented a very idealized version. And he became, you know, the future known as the Gipher, because he played George Gip, and then, you know, he made quality pictures like the melodrama Kings Row, and, and some others. And so, by the time, you know, World War II rolled around in 1941, Reagan was receiving equal billing with Earl Flynn. He was actually, you know, one of the bigger stars that one of our brothers had. So, in the future, I would add,

you know, you could insult Ronald Reagan ten ways this Sunday, and he wouldn't care, but he did not like to have his movie acting chops question. He did not like to be described

to the A-pictures. He was a, he was a pretty reasonably sized star, and, you know, pre-war Hollywood. Going back and watching, were you able to come up with like a reasonable critique of his, his acting ability? Did you feel like, hey, this is, this is actually better than he gets credit for, or there's no way this guy would be an actor today. Well, I was actually kind of one of the fun parts of researching this book, watching, you know, almost all of, of Reagan's movies,

“and he made a lot of them over 55 or something like that. I mean, I think the reality with Reagan”

has, he was a decent actor, but he wasn't the great actor that he thought he was. And one of his big disappointments on life was he didn't get to star in more cowboy pictures. People often associate them with westerns. In fact, I think he only did like five westerns in his whole movie career, and he was actually Sora, Jack Warner, for not casting him in more of those, but the problem with Reagan was that the people who were, the actor, the leading man who were good in action pictures.

That was like, John Wayne, Kerry, you know, Kerry, Kerry Grant, Kerry Cooper, I'm a, Kerry, you know, people who had, you know, Reagan was, was handsome and affable, but he just did not have that, that kind of that underlying danger. You could just not imagine this guy's going to gun down somebody because he was too nice of a guy and he is what he was really strong in, but he didn't like to hear this. He was really strong in romantic comedies. He was kind of the nice guy that,

you know, that often caught the girl. And that was, that was really a strong suit, but he wanted

to be this, you know, kind of macho action star, which he never really was. And he did his own

stunts as well, right? Yeah, he certainly did some of his own stunts and at one point, you know, gotten pneumonia in the bargain. He lost hearing in one of his ears because he got these guns with flanks being fired right next to him. So yeah, and actually one of the things he didn't do, again, he didn't do a lot of cowboy pictures, but, but the few that he did, he really liked because he loved riding a horse and so he actually got to, you know, ride a horse in those movies.

It is interesting, though, because you're right, I even remember some of it, you know, whether it was, you know, being a kid and he's the president and then older relatives like talking about him.

“I think he can even envision like a family reunion, different aunts and arguing whether or not”

he was like any good. It probably had more to do with the political ideology than it did with his acting skill decades prior, but he described himself as the arrow flint of the bees, but then it's like, well, he's almost saying, I can say that because it's also arrow flint, but at the same time, like, I don't want you to say that. Yeah, I mean, he started off as the arrow flint of the bees, but again, by 1941, he was getting equal billing with arrow flint, so that counts for something

and Hollywood. How did the war derail is acting for her? What happened with the war was, I mean, he did not go off to fight, but he did go off to Culver City, which was a few miles from his home, to serve in an Air Force propaganda unit that was making training movies and propaganda movies for the Air Force. Now, he, he often talked as if he was off to battle or something like that.

In fact, he never went anywhere, but so there was no danger involved in terms of personal danger,

“but it was not good for his career, because during, during the war for a period of several years,”

the only pictures he was making were these Air Force propaganda pictures they were, so that he was not in the commercial movie industry, and then meanwhile, other folks, like John Wayne, who, by the way, was basically a draft Dodger, he was making a lot of movies and becoming a big star during World War II. I'll Reagan was sideline, and so when the war finally ended in 1945, you know, Reagan took off his uniform, he was a captain by that point, and he had a high-priced

contract with Warner Bros. What he found was he wasn't getting cast on a lot of pictures, because movie audiences had changed, tastes had changed. The whole industry was kind of in decline in part because of the rise of TV, in part because of just the Superman anti-trust suit. I broke up the studios where they had owned movie theaters in the long-grown theaters, but anyway, the studios were basically laying off stars, and Reagan's career was kind of a victim of

that kind of the post-war Hollywood economics. On the timeline, communism is such a constant theme, you know, the fear of communism, whether it's the fear of communism, that I would have as a kid and watching the day after, and which is a real thing, like I can explain it to younger listeners and viewers, and it's just like whatever challenges you have today, and I'm not saying that this is worse, so your challenges are worse or whatever, but it was just such a strange thing

to be a little kid expecting that this country that you've never going to see is going to destroy

your world, and it was like an accepted thing. You know, you would talk about it, it recessed like it's a little kid, and then you think of that in a very selfish way of like,

and the communism fears, like clearly he becomes important to actors as the president of the

“Screen Acting Guild, but he's also working as an informant with the FBI because basically”

it feels like at that point everyone is worried the guy next door is a communist. How how different in your studies of fear of communism then, which felt far more newer than say once he was actually president, and then obviously how much I'm probably hold off on that question, but you can just see how all of these influences almost place him as president at the perfect time for us to have those fears in the 80s. In the late 40s, right at the height of that

red scare, right at the start of the Cold War, that was when Reagan was basically seeing as

movie career dry up, and he was finding a new life in politics, and he was also changing his political ideology because in the 1930s he had been this ardent New Deal liberal who worshiped FDR, but then in the late 40s he started becoming he was still pretty liberal economically and still a Democrat, but he started to become this very hard-line anti-communist, in part because it was context with the FBI, and as you mentioned he became an informer

for the FBI, and Hollywood, and in those days the FBI, and or Jack or Hoover, they were pretty paranoid, they kind of saw red under every bed, and so they would see the most innocuous movies as evidence of communist influence and Hollywood, and they convinced Reagan

like a lot of other people that there was this made in the Kremlin plot to take over Hollywood,

and then so Reagan became president of the Screen Actors Guild in the late 40s. He kind of had a front rosy to the McCarthy era. He actually testified before the House of American Affairs Committee, again, he was an FBI informant, so he became convinced that it was his actions, and in those of

“a few other hard-liners who were preventing this communist takeover. Again, I think in hindsight,”

a lot of these concerns were really exaggerated. I mean, I looked at the Russian files. I looked at a lot of weather stuff. I don't think that there was this actual communist plot to take over Hollywood. A lot of it was just kind of normal labor disputes where the studios would claim that the labor unions who were trying to get a better shake for the studio technicians, that they were part of a red conspiracy, and they were going to take over Hollywood,

and all this other kind of stuff, which was just not true, but Reagan genuinely believed it,

and so he gained his first prominence representing the movie actors and negotiations of the

studios, but also as somebody whose profile was that he was this anti-communist fighter in Hollywood, which obviously positioned him well for a future transition in the politics. It is really funny going back and looking at some of the fears and, you know, would be okay. I mean, some of the union stuff, I can see the connection of like, "Oh, well, if you guys are pushing for this, this is like planning the seas of communism in these industries

and all that." Like, I can at least get to that conclusion, even if it feels pretty far-fetched, but the part that's like laughable is the idea that these directors and these writers and these actors would all be together to build these movies that were essentially propaganda for the communism part. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, they're in the business of making good pictures. They're in the business of hoping people want to show up to the theaters, and it's such a

like overreaction to, "Hey, what are you doing? What is this one movie about here?" And every time, like, you go through it and you think about some of this stuff, it's like, it's just, it's absolute paranoia without really any evidence whatsoever that the messaging was being changed during these years to try to get more Americans to switch to communism. Right, not to absolutely right. In fact, I quote David Nevenon, the movie who is this

British actor, duck-rated British officer from World War II, and actually pretty conservative, but, you know, he pointed out that all ludicrous it was to imagine that communism could take over Hollywood when the entire industry was under the control of about 12 men, and they were all Republicans, the studio moguls. I mean, how could somebody imagine that the communist would tell these very rich Republican studio moguls, what the hell they were supposed

to put on in the movie theaters? And even if they did start suddenly putting on copies of propaganda, why would anybody show up and pay money to watch it? It didn't make a lot of sense, but this was the kind of the paranoid atmosphere of the late '40s or late '50s. I don't usually get excited about loyalty programs. They promised big rewards, then it's like, you actually have to eat 50 sandwiches to get one free,

“who has time for 50 sandwiches. But here's the thing, the shell fuel rewards program is actually”

super practical. You're already getting gas. You're already grab and take out. You're already buying

get rewarded for that and not in a fake point you'll never use way. It's actual savings on gas.

And the savings stack. So it's not like one sad little discount. It's you fill up your eat, you shop and it all piles up into real savings at the pump. Joining takes less than three minutes in the shell app and you'll save on every fill after that. I'm saving right now. I love it. Literally every single one. Join the shell fuel rewards program and save. During his time as the president of the screen, I actually feel that he's his interest or

changing his talking about his ideologies. And it feels like he's, it's not like he's getting noticed for the first time because I mean, he's been in movies now for for a really long time. He's not working. So maybe by do you think it was by necessity for the next paycheck that there's the pivot into politics or was that truly his calling? Because if he's probably in a lot of good

“movies still, he might never become governor of California. I think well, it's really important”

was that, you know, when his movie career dried up, his agents found him a new gig working for General Electric, GE Theater, which was hosting this this this Sunday night show on CBS. And in those days, General Electric was a very conservative company, very right wing, because they saw spreading free market ideology as being kind of an inoculation against union troubles. And so they went to a lot of troubles to make sure that all their managers and spokesmen read all these

conservative publications. And we're fully indoctrinated into this kind of right wing world view. And Ronald Reagan was a very faithful employee and he had a lot of time to read because he was a fatal flying in those days. So he would take the train from L.A. to New York to speak on behalf of General Electric. And then he would go around the country speaking of GE plants and

“civic organizations in elsewhere. And he wasn't just speaking about how great GE's products or”

he was talking about the issues of the day. And, you know, he was reading, you know, reading national review, reading human events, reading readers died just all these other publications. And hearing what his GE bosses were saying. And so his world view was changing. As I mentioned, he had already become the staunch and anti-communist by that point. But it was really his cent with GE in the 1950s. That also converted him into this hard line free market guy who saw any kind of government

regulation as the destruction of freedom in America. And that became kind of the the gospel that

he was preaching on behalf of GE, basically talking about the threat of communism from without,

from the Soviet Union, but also from within and suggesting that any kind of social welfare legislation was going to read to communism in America. And he in the 60s, he went when the bills to create Medicare and Medicaid were being debated in Congress. He called that socialized medicine. And it's like predicted it would lead to this totalitarian regime in America. So he became this

“very staunch hard line right winger. I think during his, you know, during his tenure working”

for GE, and I don't think that was a coincidence. Yeah, going back and reading the excerpts that you share with us where he becomes incredibly impressionable. It feels like at that time. And some of the stuff is like absurd. It's so right wing that like I would think even modern Republicans today would go, like I don't, I don't want to be aligned with that. But at the beginning of the political run for Reagan, it is, hey, I look, I mean, clever, two basic

rewards here, but it's rather clever that like he believes a lot of this stuff, but he's very, very cautious of how far he's publicly aligning himself with some of some of these like really right wing thoughts. Is that accurate? 100%. I mean, he had very right wing beliefs, but his genius was that he was genius, that he, that he came across as kind of your, you know, your lovable uncle.

He really became prominent politically for the first time in 1964 when he was campaigning on

behalf of Barry Goldwater, who was at that time, was seen as this right wing cook. And it was very interesting for me to see there was a journalist who watched both Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan speaking on this same platform. And he noted that, you know, Barry Goldwater came across as your, as an angry man, as somebody who was kind of scary and frightening, whereas Ronald Reagan was thought was, was Mr. Genio. He was, you know, the journalist compared Reagan's personality to

taking a warm, soothing bath. He made everybody feel good. He had the exact same message as Barry Goldwater, but he delivered with a smile and a wink. And just made it seem very unthreatening and and very acceptable in a way that Barry Goldwater did not. Yeah, I, I, I, I love the 64 mentioned

is building this and he's not running the present, but it's, it's one of those moments sometimes like when you'll see it debate and then maybe you'll see like a vice president debate and the country

“just feels like, well, wait a minute, why isn't this guy? Why isn't this person going to be in charge?”

And it must plant seeds for Reagan who is very, again, it's, it's interesting how calculated he is. You know, it almost reminded me of like some of the early George Washington stuff where Washington knew he was going to be in charge, you know, after like he, he aspired to be in charge, but he was like incredibly reserved, not wanting to have it be known that he was seeking power. Like seeking power and having to be public would be far worse than not having power to him,

but then, you know, again, different times sort of understood that he would be leading up, you know, different times in history and Reagan clearly knows deep down like I'm, I plan on being president, but it would still be much like his, his career from play by play to acting. It would be way ahead of schedule. So when he dances with the idea, which I think he's historically ignored that he's, he announces that he's going to run for presidently at 60s. Like, it was that just

“to be on the radar or did he think he was actually ready for at that time?”

Well, the first thing that happened, of course, was that he ran for governor of California against Pat Brown, but it was a very popular two-term governor and nobody expected this, you know, quote, unquote, washed up actor could possibly be Pat Brown, the two-term governor of California, and yet he did be Pat Brown by a million votes showing that he was one heck of a politician, but then the first thing that happened right after he won in November of 1966 was,

within a month, he sat down in a specific policy house with his advisors and started talking about how he could seek the presidency in 1968, which is, you know, a very aggressive schedule shows just how ambitious he was, but he never wanted to let on that he was at ambitious. And then, of course, the 68 campaign fizzled out, it just was not his year, Richard Nixon, making a political comeback was the clear favorite and won the Republican nomination. And then,

so then after that, Reagan's other skill, aside from pretending he had no ambition, was he out

away of rewiring reality so that bad things never happened. And so after 1968, he basically pretended

that he had never run for president in the first place. He just pretended, oh yeah, a few people wanted me to run, but I never seriously thought it never thought I was ready. In fact, he had a real campaign. He announced it, didn't he? Yeah, he announced it. Well, you know, he was trying to be a favorite son from California, then at the convention, he announced that and he worked very hard. I mean, you traveled all over the country, trying to get votes, but when it didn't work out,

“he just pretended it had never happened. How did Nixon feel about him?”

That's a great question because Ronald Reagan loved Nixon. He was 110% for Nixon even after the Watergate scandal came out. He kept being convinced Nixon couldn't have known anything was wrong. He kept thinking that Nixon was going to be vindicated. He often said that Nixon was the victim of a lynching. So he was 110, 110% gone home for Nixon. Even at a time when a lot of

writers thought that Nixon was too liberal, but Reagan was always defending him. On the other side,

it's really amusing to listen to some of these White House tapes. We're richer Nixon and Henry Kissinger are talking about Ronald Reagan because their basic view is Reagan is a dope. He doesn't have a thought in his head. He's this airhead actor, but we gotta keep him happy because he's really popular, so we don't want him causing problems for us. So let's go and something to do. And so they would send him around to on these foreign trips representing the president basically visiting

right wing dictators all over the world. And so Nixon actually had complete contempt for Reagan, but he was an off. He thought that they were wonderful. I think the record shows he's a pretty good governor of that one. He was a very popular governor. He shocked a lot of people because a lot of people said like, this guy's a washed up actor. He has no experience. He's also this right wing cook. So who are we electing? But in fact, he was able to pivot to the center, work with Jesse

Andrew, who is the very powerful speaker of the California Assembly, a Democrat, and get things done.

And he upended a lot of expectations. He signed one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country. He signed one of the toughest gun control bills. He raised taxes. He balanced the budget. He expanded wildlife protections. And so he actually became a very popular governor. Then in '76, this is where it really could just be over to challenge Ford as the sitting president same party. And it doesn't work. So I imagine Ford maybe had more to stain for Reagan personally

to kind of agree on limited intelligence. But the Ford move that that really should have been his

“undoing. And yet it is. Yeah. I mean, that was people forget that was an incredibly gutsy move”

to challenge a sitting president of your own party in the primaries. And he did that because Reagan had no respect for Ford. He thought Ford was an accidental president, which in many respects he was. Reagan really thought he himself, Ronald Reagan was the natural successor to Richard Nixon. And so he did not want Ford's standing between him and the old office. And so he challenged him in 1976. And lost some of the early contests. And if that had, you know, if he had to pull out of the

of the primaries early, that probably would have been the end of Ronald Reagan's career. But he pulled off this unexpected upset in North Carolina with the help of the Jesse Homes political machine. And then it was really a fight all the way to the convention. This was he didn't win. Reagan didn't win. But he came closer than any other challenger to taking the nomination away from a sitting president. And so he emerged actually stronger than when he had gone into it. And so even though he

lost very narrowly to Ford, he delivered a tremendous speech at the convention. And after Ford lost Jimmy Carter in the general election, Ronald Reagan at that point was seen as as kind of next man in line for the Republican nomination. Unless, yeah, it was hard to keep going. Yeah, a lot of people that he was rolled. But other than that, he was kind of the next man in line.

“It doesn't feel like Reagan happens without those four years from Carter. Is that fair?”

100%. Yeah, because, you know, of Carter have been a very successful president. If the economy had been in great shape, if there hadn't been an Iran hostage crisis, it's hard to imagine Reagan mounting a political comeback. But because Carter's, you know, presidency was a hot mess

basically with Stagflation, you know, double digit inflation high interest rates, the Iran hostage

crisis, everything that went wrong that couldn't go wrong went wrong. And so that created an opening for the Republicans. And there were a lot of Republicans are eager to run. But Reagan was the guy having run before who was the front runner from the kick-up. This is, you know, it's pertinent to what we're talking about here, though. But like sometimes you're just the president to the wrong time, right? And, you know, we're still probably scarred

and Vietnam, certainly with Nixon and Ford loses because it feels like there's enough moderates that are like we need something different, which is a very predictable voting pattern, like throughout history. I mean, Reagan's great campaign slogan was, "Are you better off than you were four years ago, and what would say no?" Yeah, I mean, he's the, he's actually the originator, is he the originator of make America great again? He was, yeah, that was also, that was another

lot of his campaigns, slogans, but, you know, it had had a different meaning in those days, because if you'd asked Ronald Reagan, what makes America great? His response would probably be immigrants because he often talked about how we were a country of immigrants. And it was really people from all over the world coming here. That was the true greatness of America. So same slogan, but different meaning. What was your favorite part of the

Carter Reagan face off, where it just felt like Carter didn't have much of a chance and Reagan, you know, four years later, is going to pull off something that people thought he would be. He just wasn't going to be an option anymore after losing a Ford. Well, Reagan, again, was, was a master communicator, very genio guy, he had everything going in his favorite except for one thing, which was people still had some doubts. Was this former actor

“up to the job of being president or was he some kind of scary right-wing cook? And I think Reagan”

really put a lot of those doubts to bed in his one debate with Jimmy Carter, where he kind of wiped the floor with Carter. And of course, his most famous line from that debate was, there you go again. Now, of course, the reality of that line is very different from the way people perceived it because it was, it was kind of a killer line that made Carter seem like this mean, grumpy guy and Reagan as this as this genio woody, woody fellow. Of course, if you actually look at

what they were talking about, Carter was right because he was accusing Reagan of having opposed the creation of Medicare. And Reagan said, there you go again. And then proceed it to argue about

why he would be had been in favor of medical insurance all along, whereas the reality is as I discovered,

Reagan had been in favor of legislation that would have covered like 1% of seniors. Whereas, of course, Medicare covers all seniors. So Carter was right, he was opposed to Medicare, but, you know, fact checking didn't matter what mattered was he was the master of these genio one line

of his critics was that he was too stupid to be present and that he was an error. In fact,

“he showed he was very quick on his feet, very, you know, he was very good at reparty. And that”

showed a lot of things, including a sense of humor, but also that he was, yeah, this mental agility to be present. He seems to step in with like two things in mind. One is based on his previous fears of communism, defense spending through the roof. Okay, we need to beef up our defenses. We need to prioritize the military. However, ridiculous, it can feel 45 years later, whatever time you want to pick of like living in constant fear. And we have to spend all this

money on all these weapons that we're never going to use. And then also his tax plan, which I did

not know this, this is incredible. This is like a baseball general manager hiring the next genius from Yale to run his baseball department. And then you don't realize that the kid from Yale's never watched a baseball game in his entire life. So Reagan, who definitely can be criticized for this, just because like, hey, everybody, you go and do all the stuff and then let me know what stuff we've agreed on. And then I'll go out and sell the stuff. But again, his ideology is like, we need to

fix some of these tax things that we've had, which obviously has been criticized for for decades. But can you dig a little deeper for us here in the audience on how absurd it was that it was

basically this guy that he thought was like a financial genius of what like 30 years old. And then

ultimately, he was maybe overselling his ability to pull a pull off an entire new tax reform. Yeah, you're talking about David Stockman, who is this wonderkin budget director who had been congressman for a couple of terms and that Reagan basically turned over all his economic policy to this guy. But, you know, Stockman had sort of an impossible job because if you look at what Reagan was promising during the campaign, he said he was going to raise defense spending

substantially and he launched the largest peace time defense build up in American history. He said he was going to cut taxes substantially and he did. We went from a top rate of 70% to a top rate of about 30%. But at the same time as he was raising defense spending and cutting taxes, Reagan also promised he was going to balance the budget within a couple of years and the math just did not add up. This is why George H. W. Bush called it Voodoo economics. And so

David Stockman came in. He had the job of translating these Voodoo economics into an actual policy blueprint and very quickly he figured out he couldn't do it. They could cut taxes for sure that was popular. But cutting spending, well, they could cut subspeading. But they couldn't cut enough spending to balance the budget, especially not when they were increasing the defense budget. So it just did not add up and the result of all that was sky high budget deficits,

which was Reagan later said that was no one regretting out about his presidency was he didn't balance the budget like he had been promising to do and has he had been campaigning for decades against federal deficit spending and he added to the deficit spending. But it kind of worked out anyway because the reality was even though he did add to the budget deficit, it didn't make

“much economic impact. And I think the most important thing that Reagan actually did economically”

was to support Paul Vogue or the chairman of the Fed as he was raising interest rates to ring the inflation out of the economy, which was very painful because it led to this massive recession from 1981 to 1983. It caused a lot of economic pain. But Reagan stood by the Fed. He did not go on and criticize the Fed chairman. And so that gave Volcker the support and the time to read the inflation out of the economy and then Reagan and in a bipartisan Congress passed

tax. That's 1981. And so the result of all that was to get the economy growing again and creating very strong economic growth just in time for his reelection campaign in 1984. Again, at the cost of of of these high budget deficits, which you know David Stockman admitted he had no idea how to solve that problem. But at the end of the day, it wasn't that much of an economic problem.

It was more of a political problem. It's so you lay it all out and it's always a nicer

“reminder. I think for everybody is that if you go back to like World War II and then post World War II,”

think what the government was getting away with taxing at the highest rates is absurd. I mean, if you explain, I'm sure a lot of people used to be the first time to hear it. But Kennedy, when he steps into office, which is also something else that I think you're great at pointing out here, as you have Kennedy this Democrat is going, we're taxing the top earners at 91 percent rate past this threshold. I think that's that's insane. But they were getting away with

okay, you know, I think the world was different than to what people felt like they owed it to their country at times and it feels like the world could possibly end certainly going back to the 40s. It's like, hey, whatever it takes. But then you keep those taxes in place for a decade and a half and then Kennedy's like, okay, well, this is ridiculous. Like, we can't have it be at 91

“percent over this threshold. I think almost everyone would agree with that. Maybe not.”

It's at 70 percent. Reagan wants to take it way below that because they're big into the trickle

down stuff, which I think you do a good job of being fair and like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if this is really, you know, it's sold over and over and over again and how cutting rates is going to stimulate the economy. But the irony is you just point out is that this ergonomics thing that we've heard about forever and maybe creating the greatest divide, maybe eliminating the middle class that none of that happened for the first few years. And it's even more interesting

that if he's not, if there's not an assassination attempt in March of 81, we didn't even know of the bill passes. Yeah, all of that is absolutely right. I mean, he was, I call the my chapter on the assassination attempt to find his finest hour because it really was because, you know, he came much closer to death than people realized after he was shot by John Hinkley.

He was bleeding out at the hospital and yet he never lost the sense of humor. And, you know,

even as he's going to the operating table, he's joking with the doctors saying, I hope you're all Republicans and telling his wife, honey, I forgot to duck. And so when those comments were relayed to the public, there was just this wave of affection and support for Ronald Reagan. And so he came back out of the hospital stronger than ever, not only physically, but politically.

“And that's what enabled him to pass these, these tax cuts, which as you point out, had strong”

bipartisan support. I mean, remember, in those days, the house was in, was in Democratic hands. So he needed Democratic support to pass this bill. And he had it because, as you say, there was a bipartisan consensus. The tax rates were too high. Now, in hindsight, I think it was kind of a

mixed blessing because on the one hand, it did help the turbocharged economy. It did lead to

stronger economic growth. But the downside of it is just what you said. It also led to greater income inequality because so many of the benefits accrued to the top 1% of earners. And so if you look at charts of income inequality in America, they tend to go like this in the early 1980s. They start to diverge very radically. So you have the top earners, you know, making more than ever, but then you have the middle class stagnating and the working class going backwards. And that's, that was

“certainly not intended to be the consequence of of Reaganomics. But I think Reaganomics was one of the”

factors that led to that. I mean, there were other factors, including the information age, computers, free trade. There were a lot of stuff going on. But there's no question that that the Reagan era tax policy contributed to some of that income inequality. Yeah, do you see that as a definitive line of like had had we taken a different course? You know, I mean, it's hard to say, hey, we wasted all of this money on all his defense stuff when we were constantly worried about it. But we absolutely

wasted billions and billions of dollars. And that's where the budget kind of gets out of whack with so much defense spending. And then, you know, unfortunately, too, like there's there's certainly questions like when you think of the income disparity and then you think about how many minorities are impacted by this of where so much of of these demographics like show up on on what kind of earnings you're talking about here. There's just a lot where you go, hey, Reagan actually

set us down a path that we're still trying to dig ourselves out of. Or, you know, again, the other argument is without him, we don't become the superpower that we became. Yeah, I think both, you can make the case for both arguments truly. And he was just not worried about income inequality. This was one of his blind spots. His entire focus was on economic growth. He didn't really think about who is getting the benefits. He just wanted to get the economy growing. And that, you know,

you can see that the logic for that. But I think this was a big blind spot. And I think we are we are paying a price when it part of the prices that Republican Party has been dramatically transformed and a more popular direction since Ronald Reagan's day in part because of these trends that Reagan himself inadvertently set into motion. Jason state them stars in mutiny. It's die hard on a boat from the director of plane from the star of the beekeeper, the mag and the

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this guy isn't a racist at all, right? I think it just doesn't. And I don't think you're trying

“to sell that. You know, I think you're incredibly fair. You, you have critiques of him. But the thing”

that you can't ignore is that his use of the term states rights, which is basically this dog whistle to the south to that voting base that he's like, it's basically going to be okay. How do you think history should remember him on how he treated minorities in this country? That's complicated because as you say, he was actually brought up by his parents not to be back at it and he really wasn't. I mean, he had black teammates at Eureka College. He brought them home when they were not allowed

to stay at a segregated hotel. So his own personal feelings were actually he was he was pretty

good personally. He was, I don't think he was personally a racist, but I think the reality is he

did indulge in kind of dog whistle politics from the beginning of his political career all throughout and it began in 1966 when he really wanted part on a lawn order appeal after the Watts riot and basically there was massive fear of crime in California. A lot of it was white suburbanist, fearful of black inner city people committing crimes and he played into that and said he was going to protect them and later he talked about welfare queens and how they're ripping us off and a lot of

people understood that to be code words for black people on welfare. And then as you mentioned, he in in 1980, he went out to the showbook County, Mississippi, inside of a horrible crime during the civil rights era and talked about how he's in favor of states rights. And by the way, throughout his career, he was opposed to civil rights legislation. I mean, I think a lot of people didn't realize this that later on that he had opposed the 1964 civil rights act.

He opposed the 1965 voting rights act. He criticized Martin Luther King. He opposed sit ins and protests saying that they were breaking the law. He talked about how desegregation was very unfair to the south and it was really an imposition on the south. So he definitely played to a lot of white backlash politics throughout his career. Even though I think he himself was it was not really racist. How important was Gorbachev becoming the leader of Russia to

finally fall. What had been going on now for decades between these two countries?

“I think Gorbachev's tension in 1985. That was really the key turning point towards the end of”

the Cold War because during Reagan's first turmoil, he was increasing defense spending. There was one crisis after another with the Soviets. In 1983, we actually came alarmingly close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And at the same time, as he was confronting the Soviets, Reagan also wanted to deal with them. But as he complained, I wanted to meet with the Soviet leader, but they all kept dying on. They were all these old timers who were in the hospital

instead of meeting with Reagan and all of a sudden in 1985, he got Gorbachev who was as much more vigorous reformer sky in his 50s who wants to transform the Soviet system. And I think it was very much to Reagan's credit that after he met with Gorbachev in Geneva in November of 1985, he concluded that Margaret Thatcher had been right to say, "This is somebody you can work with. This is somebody we can do business with." And at the time, there was a lot of suspicion of Gorbachev

and conservative circles. A lot of people said, "Oh, you know, he's just another typical communist hoodwinker." He's trying to pull the wool over your eyes. He just wants to make the continent so even more menacing than ever. But in fact, Gorbachev, as we now know, was a true reformer. He was somebody who was, would risen up within the communist system. But lost faith in it, he really wanted to create a democratic social system with a kind that he had seen in Western

Europe. And so he launched his great reforms of gloss and wisdom perestroika. And the consequence

of that, which he had not intended, was to destroy the Soviet Union, because basically the Soviet

Union had all these captive nationalities, including Ukrainians, including vaults, including Kazakhstan, so many other nationalities, and all of Eastern Europe, of course, was part of the Soviet Empire. And all these people were basically held captive by force. And once Gorbachev said, "I am not going to use force to keep the Soviet Union together anymore." The whole thing

“disintegrated. And so that's what led to the end of the Cold War. And it wasn't, I don't think”

it was directly Ronald Reagan's defense photo. I don't think it was the pressure that Reagan applied. But I think Reagan, to his great credit, was able to put aside half a century of his own anti-communist ideology and realize that Gorbachev is somebody who could work with and to support. And he did form a friendship and did support Gorbachev. And I think that was really the, that set the stage for the end of the Cold War.

I mean, this isn't him just being present like he despised communism. He seemed to be in constant fear of Russia. And he couldn't work with any of the previous leaders. And by the end of it, you're like, "Hey, him Gorbachev, they feel like they're friends." And what's kind of funny is that here's Reagan, essentially like, I don't think it's wrong for all these other leaders to be like, "I don't know how smart that guy is." And it feels like Gorbachev early on comes the same conclusion.

But yet, wherever Reagan is on the intelligent scale, it became so frustrating to go shape with them that it actually seemed to work in Reagan's favor because Gorbachev is like, "I can't, he doesn't understand what I'm talking about." Like, I can't keep having the same conversation over and over again. Like, "Fine, fine. We'll do that then, too." And I don't think that Reagan was doing it tactfully. I just think they spent so much time together, the Gorbachev got to

know them a little bit, realizing like, "I'm not going to get through to him." And we need to come to

“some resolution today. Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think, you know, Gorbachev himself talked”

about how when they first met in Geneva in 1985, they had these caricatures of each other,

where Reagan saw Gorbachev as the world's number one communist, Gorbachev saw Reagan as the number one capitalist. And they thought that they were doomed to be perpetual enemies. But in fact, when they talked, they realized they actually had a lot in common. And both of them were very scared of World War III. Both of them wanted to, in the arms race, even abolish nuclear weapons altogether. And so they found that they actually had much more in common than they realized.

And again, I think that's very much to Reagan's credit that after decades of vilifying Soviet leaders, he found a Soviet leader. He could actually work with and realize that no Gorbachev was not just like all the other ones, as so many right wingers were standing at the time. He talked about the budget being his greatest regret. Is that him conveniently absolving himself for any involvement in the Iran contra affair? Because if you go back to, like,

it feels like he knows a little bit more. It feels like he's a little bit more involved than say Grant in the whisky ring scandal, where that feels like everyone around Grant was just doing whatever they wanted and Grant kind of was a little removed. And I do think it's kind of funny when I was reading the chapter about Oliver North and his inability to negotiate with Iran. Where, I mean, it's so embarrassing. It's so funny, but it's so embarrassing. It's like they have

these hostages. They want these missiles and they're negotiating with the shady character. And they go, look, we'll give you all the hostages if you give us 10 of these missiles and Oliver

“North thinks like, oh, cool. I'm going to be this secret operative. And then I'm going to funnel”

that money to the contra. And so, okay, fine, here are all the missiles. They're headed your way right now. And then they gave up like one person. And then they're like, we need 100 missiles. And like, I, cool, we'll give you 100 missiles. And then they're like, well, we need 400 missiles. And it just keeps going on and on and on. And it's so ridiculous. And it's even crazier reading it now because as a kid, I was like, what's going on? You know, again, I was like 10 or 11. And then Oliver North

just based on his testimony becomes this national sensation where you go to the gas stations and there's Oli T shirts. And he just became popular when, in fact, he was completely full of shit. And he was awful. It's even in his involvement in this. He was terrible at it. And then there's Reagan's kind of like, is it a wink in it? Hey, get it done, but leave me out of it? Or like in so many other cases, it felt like the cabinet in all of the positions were acting independent

“of Reagan because Reagan preferred it that way. Yeah, I think what I say about Iran contra,”

which was the worst scandal after Watergate. And the first two decades after Watergate,

the reason why Reagan got into Iran contra was basically the same reason he got out of it. Which was that he was a very hands-off manager. He had very little involvement in the day-to-day running of the government. And so you had aides like Oli North, his boss John Poindex, sure it was the National Security Advisor who came up with this crazy idea of we're going to trade arms for hostages to Iran. And then in return, we're going to take the profits from selling weapons

to the Iranian Lula's and funnel them to the contrast. These Nicaraguan rebels, even though Congress passed theville Sanger, not supposed to provide money to the countries. And so they did that. And Reagan clearly signed off on the first part of that, the arms for hostages,

because he thought that would improve relations with Iran. And then he always claimed

that he didn't know about the diversion of money to the contrast, which was really the impeachable offence in this, in this whole deal. And nobody could ever prove otherwise, because Poindex, sure, was widely seen as basically falling in a sword for the commander-in-chief and saying

I mean, I don't know. I mean, this is one of the secrets that Reagan took to his grave. And nobody will ever-- I don't think he even he himself knew, because it's possible that Poindex or may have mentioned it in passing. And Reagan thought that sounded okay, but didn't remember. Nobody really knew there was no evidence that he knew about the diversion. But at the end of the day, when this whole scandal broke out in the fall of '86 and then into 1987, Reagan's defense was,

I didn't know what was going on. Now, if Richard Nixon had said, I didn't know what was going on. Nobody would believe it, because everybody knew that Nixon was a micromanager who knew every little thing that was going on on the government. But with Reagan, the sky was falling asleep, but cabinet meetings, it was very plausible for him to say, I didn't know what was going on.

And so basically, the Democrats had to conclude. They couldn't impeach the guy because A,

he was too popular, and B, he had this alibi, which they couldn't crack.

“Does it bother you when people think of him solely as an actor acting as the president?”

Yeah, I don't think that's fair, because one of his great lines was he was asked how could, you know, a lot of people wonder how an actor could be president. His reply was, I don't understand it, honey, but he bought an actor could be president, because of course, anybody who was the chief executive of the United States, there's a high element of communication and artifice that goes into that job. And people used to say about Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

who was Reagan's great hero as a young man growing up in the 30s, people used to say that FDR was this great actor. And I think you kind of have to be a great actor when you come in the bully Pope, and that was something that Ronald Reagan was very good at. And it's true that that was his strength as a president and he was a much weaker manager, but it's actually really important that a president who was very good at communicating, because in many ways, that's the chief part of the job.

Did you ever know when you were younger that a lot of these national events were being scheduled based on Nancy Reagan's astrologist? That was one of the great secrets of the Reagan administration. Very few people knew about that. It was very funny because during the Iran Contro Fair, Don Reagan, who was the White House chief of staff, presided over this disaster. And so the

Nancy Reagan finally convinced their husband Ronnie to fire Don Reagan. And Don Reagan was

filming. He was this former CEO of Maryland. He was not used to being fired. And so he went to write his memoir while the Reagan's were still on office. And in his personal files, which are now at the Library of Congress, I actually found a folder marked revenge. You know, a lot of people get revenge. They really write down revenge on one of their folders, but that's exactly what he did. He got his revenge because he wrote this memoir in which he revealed the deep dark secret of the

Reagan White House, which was Nancy's reliance on this astrologer, the celebrity astrologer named Joan quickly out in San Francisco. And she became really paranoid after Ronnie's near assassination in 1981. And so she constantly consulted Joan quickly to schedule the president's events, speeches, travel all the stuff, because she wanted to make sure the stars were aligning to keep them safe. And so when Don Reagan revealed this, the kind of turned Nancy Reagan into into this

laughing stock. But she had been right to fire Don Reagan. He was a terrible chief of staff. But you know, he did get his revenge.

“I think back to, you know, again, when I'm really actually aware of things, you know, I don't”

know what's going on, right? But there's this, I grew up with this, this swell of American pride, you know, and it's, it's, it's rocky for, it's the Rambo movies, it's all those movies, right? Yeah, it's one top gun. It's, it's all of the stuff where all of a sudden like you, you wouldn't even think of not having pride in your country. You know, the way we talk about some things now, which I think, you know, some of the criticism certainly affair, but like back then,

I was like brainwashed, but, you know, you just kind of looked at like, hey, we're the best, and I love it, and everything's great. And it, it maybe was like the right correction, post Vietnam, and how the country felt about themselves in the 70s, and how how the country, you know, obviously with the car stuff that we've covered already, where it's like, hey, we need something different. He really felt like the perfect guy for it, and I, even though

the military spending that you point out, it can even bump, and I was reading that, I was like,

well, how bummed out do you want to get about this? When, basically, after the Cold War's over,

you go over and speculate like the Russians hadn't zero chance, by the way, like we spent all this money and all this stuff, and they had zero chance to even compete from an arm standpoint,

“but the thing I think you do a great job of pointing out is like, okay, yes,”

the imbalance budget, defense spending fears all overblown, but the country and the military

20 years, is that fair to say? Oh, 100 percent, I think, you know, people asked me where I would place Ronald Reagan and the presidential pantheon, and I basically agree with the consensus of historians that he is a near-great president, often ranked around nine or ten among all the presidents,

“and that's the spot all of his faults and foibles and setbacks and defeats, because I think”

he did two big things right. The first we already talked about, which was in his second term, he worked with Gorbachev in the Cold War, but his other great achievement in his first term, which we're now talking about, was to kind of give the country its mojo back after this very difficult tumultuous decade of the 1970s, which I'm just barely old enough to remember. This was a time when you had the Stagflation, Watergate, defeat and Vietnam, the Iranian hostage crisis,

everything that could go wrong was going wrong. And the country was really down on itself. There was kind of a sense of malaise, which was a term associated with the Jimmy Carter presidency,

but this was really Reagan shining out, because he always viewed the country as the city,

shining city on a hill, as this wonderful place, he never lost that faith. Kind of he had kind of the same gift as FDR, who in beauty Americans, with confidence during the Great Depression, Reagan and beauty Americans with confidence after the 70s, and during the terrible recession from 1883, he made people believe it was all going to work out, okay, and he revived pride in the military, he revived pride in the United States, and I think that was

a tremendous achievement, so that he was able to run for reelection in 1984 with these famous commercials, proclaiming that it's morning again in America, and people believe that that resonated really felt like we had turned a corner from all the defeats in despair that 1970s, all of a sudden things were looking up, and there were a lot of things that went into that, but part of it was Ronald Reagan's sunny personality, his optimistic outlook, and his ability

“to communicate his confidence in America to the American people. I think that was hugely important.”

Now is the mass of achievement? Well, finish here, and I still, I'm so impressed with the brilliance of what's a simple back and forth and back to the future, and the first one, where when Marty goes to Doc's place, I'm from the future, and he's like, okay, future boys, like who's the president, and he's like Ronald Reagan, and that he just laughs, he's the actor, and just, you know, it's like this is crazy, this guy's not from the future, and then once he convinces him that he is

from the future, and he sets up the camera, and he's like holding the camcorder, and he's thinking, it makes perfect sense that the president would be an actor with this kind of technology, and I just,

I'll always forever be impressed. I think it's one of the most impressive little things in

what is still one of the great movies I think of all time, and there is something about the power, excuse me, the power of liability, and you know, wherever you are, he just, he seems so likable, which is also shocking that he wasn't close to anybody other than Nancy, but that may have

“been his, I think his compromise, the fact that he was very pragmatic, he just had this super power”

that other presidents are never going to have. I, you know, look, there may be some other future president, but for the time and in the, in the bat, it's just, it's such a huge part of his run that you looked at him on TV, and you kind of felt better. Yeah, no, I think there were a lot of secrets of success. Big one was that he was very pragmatic, he was willing to compromise, and other part of it was that he had this tremendous communications ability known as the great communicator,

you know, was in just that he was reading speech as often teleprompters for decades. He was writing his own speech as he was making his own remark, so he really, and this was a skill really honed as a radio broadcast during the 1930s. He knew how to communicate with people and he got across to them, but another part of his appeal was simply as you said that he had a very likable personality, even though in real life he was kind of a remote person with very few real friends.

He project of likability, he was very soft-edged, and he played into that because he didn't go

out and and and attack his political opponents. You know, he always, he never engaged in that

hominomatax. He, he was always a consummate gentleman, and so that made it much easier for him to engineer bipartisan agreement and also to win votes from Democrats, which he needed to do in those days because Democrats were still the majority party. And so, you know, he was at the end of the day Ronald Reagan, even if he disagreed with his policies or his politics, he was just a very hard guy to dislike personally. He was just so emiable, genial, so low key. He was so unassuming and

aspects of my research was visiting his ranch near Santa Barbara, and I would encourage anybody

“who has opportunity to go out there because I think it's really a window into who Ronald Reagan”

was, and it's this beautiful land with the view of the Pacific, lots of riding trails. But if you go to the actual house, it's unbelievably modest that's a place where, you know, the day core

looks like he came from a flea market. It's never going to be featured in architectural digest.

And this was a place visited by very few people. And one of the really touching aspects of learning about Reagan was learning, talking to this fellow named Dennis LeBlanc who used to be a California State Police Officer, used to protect Reagan, then went to work for him on his ranch and talking about what Reagan was like there in the 1980s, and Reagan with Dennis, and in another former State Police Officer named Barney Barnett, they would go out there and do ranch work all day,

then they would come home, you know, dead tired and sit down to dinner with Nancy, with a very stingy meal prepared by the housekeeper, because Nancy Reagan was always watching her way and made sure everybody also was too. And so, you know, they would get up from the table, almost as hungry as when they sat down, and then they would go to this very modest living room and flopped down on the sofa, like so many other Americans, turn on the TV and watch murder she wrote,

or one of these other shows from the 1980s and then at some point, they would all kind of fall asleep in front of the tube, and Nancy would nudge, you know, Dennis on the foot and say, okay, guys, time to go to bed, and so Dennis and Barney would kind of shuffle off to their trailer and the housekeeper, Michael, and a couple of chocolate chip cookies as is a going away present,

and then the president and the first lady would go to their extremely modest bedroom and fall

asleep, and that's where Ronald Reagan was happiest, was on his ranch, doing ranch chores, hanging out with these two former state police officers living very, very modest thing. That was really

“what who he was, and I think people came to understand that, and it was just hard to dislike that.”

With all your research, and I know this took you a really long time to write. The fact that you watched all of the Reagan movies and time, everything else, truly makes you the authority. Thanks so much for the work on this, I appreciate. Great conversation. Thanks so much for having me on. Still blue coffees, new can lattes are here, crafted with a hundred percent Colombian coffee, each can is a good source of protein and comes in two smooth flavors, espresso cafe mocha and a

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percent off. Do you want details? Bye. I'm driving Ferrari, 355 KBLA. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South fork. I have every toy you can possibly imagine. And best of all kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Like advice, like advice, [email protected]. That is the email address of Good Kyle. We've got Steve Let's get into it. Maybe one little feedback one for us to start things here. Sure.

Let's see here. There's a lot of adults swim stuff going on. People thinking it's stupid. It should be abolished. Relax. I'll read this one because this one just annoys me. All right. Live reaction to adults swim email. Let me get this straight. The three of you really sided with people that openly shit talked to baby. Is that what we did? I certainly should

“talking the dad. I don't think it was not the game. It was mad at the baby. I think it was more of a”

breach into corn from the father. Pretty sure I also said that I didn't agree with that. But I'm sorry to hear what you're talking to the baby. They might have been talking about the baby. Come on. Let's be honest. I think he was saying that. He was saying that's trying to strengthen his argument. I thought in the moment. I don't think anyone should talk in that baby. I don't think there's one moment where anyone could proceed from us talking about that email that

it's like, yeah, man. I mean, you came in and talked eight months. I can like you on the probably peeing in the pool right now. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like the fuck out of here. The email continues. I can excuse the ignorance of the two of you that don't have children. The one that does has no excuse. That's the Rudy and the crosshairs. Love the show. Listener since

Ask him to leave his fine stupid, but rules his rules. Shit talking and infant should never be

defended. Sir. I don't know. You missed read this one. I'm going to be honest with you. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'll go back and listen. I heard them say like he's not an adult. They were talking about the baby and you know, come on. What do you said anything like wag their finger in his face? Like

“you get out of here. That's crazy. That's why so many of us on air suck at the job now because all”

we're doing is qualifying everything to try to just put up a shield in case it's like what is that counter? I didn't see that angle. You know, we don't get to the point. We start. I do it. Start a monologue going like all right. Here's the 17 things you could possibly say in opposition to what I'm about to say and it's like four minutes later. You gotta even made the fucking point. Yeah. All right. Um, is it dumb to pursue my future roommate? Hmm. 24 years old. Mail six

foot 160 currently on a never ending bulk that never gets anywhere because I can't find the

balance of being a lift or who runs instead of a runner who lives. Probably shouldn't run before you lift. Start there. I'm a grad school because of clinical rotations. My crush and I are about to live in the same city for a few months, then accidentally become roommates accidentally. It's not an accident for one of you. Placement are basically random. From August, October will be in one city and then from October, December will be back in a college shot. One of my classmates

26 female in older women. Let's call her Rachel. Happened to get the exact same placements. I've had a harmless crush on Rachel for a few months. Nothing's ever had besides plenty of flurry nights out, studying together for exams. A few drunk texts for me. Nothing worse than quote, "I want to see you." Oh, no. Do you get a response to any of that right? I said, "Yeah, what did she say?" If at all. You can even lift out. Yeah. Other than that, we're good friends. We talk in class,

techs occasionally. We're in the same friend group. She's single. We've never hung out one on one.

“We've never hung out one on one outside of studying or being with friends. So I honestly can't”

tell if the flirting means anything or if that's just how we are. For our first rotation, we each have our own apartments lined up, both one bedroom and good areas. When we head back to our college town to our classmates, offered to sublease us, their two bedroom, two bathroom apartments, since they'll both be gone. I talked to one of them. It's a great deal. Nice apartment, great location. Sheep in the finding my own place. The only catch was that Rachel had already

talked to the other roommate about taking the second bedroom. I told my friend, I'd only do it for Rachel was comfortable living together. I asked her about it. She had no problem with the idea. So we're currently planning to sublease the apartment together. Nothing has been signed yet, but that's the plan. So here's my question. Is it dumb to try pursuing her romantically now that we're likely going to be roommates. Part of me wonders if she's interested in another part.

Thanks she may have just agreed because she sees me as a safe, easy roommate. My biggest concern is that if I ask her out, she's not interested. I've made an awkward living situation. I've made it an awkward living situation before we've even moved in. On the other hand, if I wait until after we live together, that feels like it could be even messier. Should I shoot my shop before signing release, or just treat her like a roommate move on, or is there another new girl

adjacent play? I'm not seeing. Thanks for the help of the pot. Well, you can't do this before,

“unless you have a really good option one be because of you ruin this, you have to not live there.”

You can't ruin this for her and then be like, all right, you either option A or option B. You know, so you can't do this before. And if you're planning to try and break up with somebody you're not dating before you move in with that. Yes. And you can't, if you're going to wait until you guys are like in the same domicile, you definitely have to be like, you have to let this come to you, you can't like, pounce in any way, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't,

you can't, so I want to push the best together. What's going on? You have to be way more careful in the, you know, in the second phase of this. Um, yeah, this is, it's messy because you, you would have thought you would have had some sort of inkling, whether this is good or bad, but you say drunk texts. Now, I think people can respond to that. If it, with a no response in two ways, if it's too late, it's like this person's a fool. If he really cares, he'll text me during the daytime or it was like,

that's creepy and I'm just going to pretend this never happened. So it's hard to, you know, really have a good temperature on how those texts were received. You've never hung out one on one. She's certainly not interested in instigating that in this point. So I don't know, you know, maybe just living room, should we watch movie tonight, stay on separate couches or, you know, see, see if there's anything that blossoms there, but definitely no hint dropping before you guys

get together because that would, that would be shitty. Now, it does seem like a great scenario, like if something happens during the time it's living together, then like it's, it's a great meant to be scenario. Yeah. You know, like, hey, like, oops, like this thing kind of just happened, like, whatever, and if it ends up being a thing,

do 30,000 jumps before breakfast. No, hey, you're making eggs early. I'm really off a lot. Oh, yeah, yes. Answer the door. Cut up five new t-shirts. We like, yeah, thanks in the house. That's my rule. But I am a little worried about the, like, the one way flirting this of this. Like, it does, it does feel like there was no other thing from her outweigh, and you're, you know, some kind of kind of coming back to you on this. And it would also scares me a little bit that,

like, maybe she sees you as just like a safe living partner because she doesn't find you a future romantic partner. You know what I mean? So that I, I'm a little nervous for you, but I do think this is a good situation. At least figure that out, but definitely do what don't do anything is the guy said, don't do anything before hand. I don't think this is going to go well. Um, and there's, there's another reason that we haven't touched

on here. And that is, okay, first of all, she's not responding to, I want to see you drug

texts. That's not a great sign. Okay, and I was kidding when I said older woman, but 26, 24 in the academic field, she may actually look at you as the harmless younger guy, even though it's insane that it's only two years, but you have to like get to like 30 before you start, like thinking people are the same age when they're not. So that could come into play here. So I, I hate the idea of you asking her out before, because it feels like it's going to lean towards a no

and then it's really awkward. So what you need to do to find a way, if you want to live with her, and I don't know if you have those ferramones that eventually like inside of the same

“domicile, she's going to start to like you. I'll never forget, I think it was like 16”

wash and dishes at this restaurant, and they were trying to figure out summer housing,

which is always a disaster where I, where I was living. Um, and there was these other two older

diswashers, and then there was like a new hostess, and she needed a place where they got down. Yeah, that's what hostess, like they don't even know. Like there's been plans made about you for months that you were unaware. And these two diswashers were ready to fucking kill each other over this living arrangement with this hostess, because it was like she got assigned to live with one of the other diswashers. And I was like, hey, what's the problem? And then I'll

never forget the diswashers. Like 20 just looks at me and goes, well, because whoever ends up living with her is going to be sleeping with her, and we both like her. And like you haven't even met her yet. She just got here. And they were like, yep, they're like, we're diswashers, man.

“But we don't. And it was true, like the guy dated her, like that entire summer. I think the other”

guy had like a breakdown over the whole thing. Um, so anyway, the point is that maybe if you're just living together, she sees some newer version of you. And it works out. What I don't want you to do is think about that. I do not want you get your own stuff. I do not want you to think any of these things about. I just want you to be you the entire time. And if that works great, and if it doesn't work, now you know the the downside to you, because I do think you

care about this person a lot, or you convince yourself that you do is if you ask her out before she says, no, that sucks. If you don't ask her out, but you like her, and you live there, but it doesn't go anywhere, that also sucks. What happens when you don't address any of it and you're just living there, and then she is going on dates. And that's the part where I'm fearful that I don't want your grades to suffer. Because I don't know if you're built for that.

Yeah, dude, in the pie chart of who's thinking about this, it's like 98 to 2. And it's so exciting. I sort of feel like I can think about like if this opportunity was presented to like 24-year-old me or whatever, be like, I'd be so excited about like the best version of this scenario, which again, probably not going to happen. I guess if housing isn't that serious, if it's not that like hard to come by, you could just try the, you know, Jim and Pam just tell her your feelings, and then if

not just moved to the Stanford branch, just like I'm going to get a different one, tell her during the first placement. Well, there's enough runway. You know, I mean, if it's really that and wait for that to be able to control yourself and this, and this however many months you're actually going to be in the same place, you could just try to put it out on the table before. But again,

“I think this is, you're always thinking about this, and she's almost never thinking about this.”

And that could have been because of how you expressed your feelings in the past, or she might just

be totally aware of everything that's going on, and she's like, guys, never going to jump this wall.

So, all right. So, what's the answer then? You give it in a couple of weeks living together, or you just, you know, maybe crack open a bottle of wine and try to do some serious or like,

opposite? Right? Yes. Just pay the 30 bucks to watch it said, "Oh, me interested." You got what you have, like, you literally know. That's the point, right? So, you can. If you,

“well, I think, I think if you let it linger, then you're opening up to her just, yeah, like,”

just being normal when trying to date people potentially. And if you don't want that, you kind of have to do it early. If you get to it early, where you're like, wow, you're just waiting the entire time to just basically get to the situation. So, we can hook up. I don't know. You also have to be honest with yourself, like, is this somebody that would have interest in you in any other scenario? You know, with people feel like I can't believe

you're dating her. It's not like you're working on a cruise ship or something. It's all right. So, if the odds are already stacked against you, I would say Denzel, this inside man.

You know, just be there and see what happens. Maybe she sees the side of you. She never saw

before. He was there in front of me the entire time. Good luck. I think you're best hobbies to bring over, too. Yeah, a lot of reading.

“Yeah, get some nonfiction hard covers in there. Maybe some incense, you know, things that”

things like things of that nature. I didn't know you had classed that late. No, I was volunteering again. Yeah, and we'll shelter. Need a man. There's a bad rabbit co-op on house rabbit thing. I like to work that rabbit. No, there's a pick it up. All right, how to respond to chirping from the local use. So, Rudy Ziger, go to guy here at 30. Two-year-old male 5885, Bench 175. Could probably push for a bit more. But my spotter is Jesus.

It's opposite of the way. Jesus would never let you hold any weight. He doesn't think you could handle.

Jesus take the bar, you know. Yeah. Oh, man. Player comp, Danny HiFFITS. Okay. We love hyphids. Yeah, I mean, what context? Yes. That's just we like Danny, but I know one knew what to do with that comp. All right, try to keep it short. Second job part time paid out of my student loans and

“ensure I'm still able to invest save, except look at this guy. Lovers had that.”

I work as a field supervisor at a local municipality's parks and wreck department. This basically means I unlock equipment, turn on lights, make sure any rental group has private access to the turf. Naturally, the worst part of the job is kicking public users off the field. Yeah. These are often local teenagers who get mouthy when kicked off the field. Usually, they just get a little bit of an attitude going and keep it moving tonight. However,

oh, man, this guy was still heated. He sent the email that night. I kicked a group of three off the turf. I'm assuming they're around 13 years old. They said, hey, guys, the field is closed for a private rental. You're welcome to use any of the grass fields in the park, but you can't be on the turf. I proceeded to walk away. I turned around 20 seconds later to catch them trying to sneak onto the turf. I stopped and made eye contact until they realized I was looking and walked back off. This happened

a few more times until I eventually had to come back down to the field and said, do I really have to babysit you guys? You're not allowed on the turf during their practice. It's that simple. I then decided to just sit near the field and watch the ongoing practice so that they wouldn't keep bothering the renters. Usually, I walk around the park once. I cleared the field, but now I actually had a place security guard. This prompted them to go into one of the grass fields behind me and start chirping,

knowing I was within an ear shot while they kicked their soccer ball around, quote, he's a little snitch. quote, he's got nothing better to do, bro. quote, do what all this just to make 15 bucks an hour. Man, the easier to push him in hat and beach, because I still think like the most evil thing I see day to day is like the 12 to 13 year old Manhattan Beach kid walking around town to just

there's crazy how much I figured out about the world at that age. It's really incredible. They

scare the shit out of me across the street. The only non-80 it's walking around at 13. Crazy. They've got everything figured out and everybody else sucks. I mostly just ignored this because I don't necessarily see the benefit of a verbal altercation with a 14 year old. They left for a bit on the bike shortly after this. I'm assuming one of their moms made pizza rolls. One of them shouted me a bitch. Yeah. As he rode away. I hate to revert to the classic MI a bitch for not fighting

these children. But I'd love to hear from reform, churper, sorruti in the quick-witted Kyle Ryan on how to respond to those who ligands in inevitable future altercations. For the record, I would I didn't churper these scenarios. This is just a home other level. These kids are obviously douchebags. I have gotten into a bad habit though. I don't take feedback from the golf rangers

different dudes that have just threw out the range of just throws me up whenever they say anything.

And we got a couple new guys in the group and they do slow down. I try to keep everybody moving. But I've had some issues with rangers in the past. So I feel like my bad habits are coming to the forefront again, which is a little bit scary. But this guy, but on the range of thing real quick, like when you know you're not slow, it doesn't let it go. You see the cards, like hey, you're 10 minutes behind and the ranger comes up. And you know when you play with a slow

group or not a slow group. And it's like we're not lining up pots all day here. As you're picking it up, if it's a disaster hole, we don't have one guy in the group that's fucking Indiana Jones over here looking for some Kirkland. All right. So we're playing slow. Sometimes we're just playing today. Everybody's behind. There's no gap between us in the next group. I had one. That can annoy me too when you just go, all right. It throws you off, man. Maybe I'm mentally weak, but like I had

one where the guy was like hey, you know, you're, you know, however many miss behind. And on the damn cart, it tells you if you're on time or behind you're on time. And I was like, I'm on time. And like I am

“hyper aware of that too. And I honestly like I can't stand slow play and like in the ways”

me, and I tell my buddies like, all right, let's go. Like stop taking nine practice swings. It's making movement. So I am aware of it, but man, when they start doing it for some reason, like my teenage or rational anger just comes back out. I mean, I'm like, got damn it. And you know, I've said a thing year or two to different guys. I'm not proud of, but sometimes I feel like they don't want to talk about, they don't want to talk to the blue hairs in front of you that are taking

forever. You know what I mean? That happens, too. It's like, so I don't get this. Come on, what am I the coaching son? You're going to yell at me for no reason with God. Yeah, and I know it's your job, but like it's just like, hey, man, I feel like you got it use some common sense. Where these, this situation that we're email is talking about, like, these kids don't have any common

sense. They're stupid. I would, I was never that dumb type of trip. I feel like I only

churped in like situations where it deserved to be churped even if I wasn't, you know, big enough to probably be churping at the time. These kids are clearly assholes. What were they playing? Could you challenge them to something? Like, where they play and pick up hoops? You want to play one of one? Are you good? Like, they're soccer. And they just wanted to use the turf part, which I would, too, 13 years old, fresh turf, instead of grass, ACLs, just completely leave.

You guys don't like turf. But yeah, it is a little, it is a 13 year soccer guy. Tough as an American soccer guy. He doesn't even know enough to know he shouldn't like turf as

“much yet. So the problem is, when the perceived power that they have over you is that you have to”

be there. And it's not like you're some guy who's walking around. It's like, you know, it's not right. But that's the, that's what's going on in their stupid little brains. It's like, this bum, this bum works for me. Kind of, and if you do anything, it's not only illegal, but, you know, you just want to find a different round time job. Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough man. Teenagers are brutal. Teenagers do it's a brutal. Kyle, you got anything here? Well, I think

the kind of binding thing is like, I think I'd, my brain immediately goes to like say some worse curse words that, but like again, like you're, maybe this, maybe the C word or something, like, just to try to throw them off a little bit, because, you know, my, my bag is not that deep when it comes to dealing with 13 year olds. I just, I don't know, and especially we throw out, you know, you're being employed to be there as well. I mean, I'm sure there's not a ton of oversight.

You're like the one guy in charge of these four fields. You know, probably not too much would get back to your, you know, the town supervisor or whoever's in charge of parks and wreck, but yeah, I don't, I don't actually have a ton because what's the next thing? Like, am I going to have to get you guys banned from here tonight? Now you look even nerdy to them. Now they, you just made them more badass as they just got banned from the town park. So I don't,

this is tough. I would, I would totally defer to Serruti. You can just say they suck. You're like, hey, you guys are going to get anyway. So you play, like, you know, this is for this field, it's for advanced only. Like, you could just, I don't know. You're for obviously, and you suck. Come back,

yeah, you got some hair on your legs. Plus yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, the problem is,

“I think anybody that's a parent can understand this or has been a child, which is even a larger”

group. Um, if the kids suck, and then you cross kind of a weird adult adolescent line here by like let them have it. You know, maybe you feel better in the moment, those guys are going on their bikes. They're going back to their parents. And they're talking about you. They're going to turn into kids again. Right there. That, that presentation of their case is going to be so flawed, but overwhelming. And then the parent, there's likely going to be one parent out of that group.

He's very chill. Yeah, tattoos. I don't know where that shift or when it's happened or maybe I'm wrong, but it seemed to be back in the day, parents were okay with another adult telling their kid they sucked. The first thing we did, what did you do? What did you do to make this happen? Right, like you know your kid. Yeah. And it's like, oh, here we go again, right? You've been lying to me

It feels like there's been this shift to just blind belief of the child. And I don't even know if this is accurate or not. Again, some of you are probably like based on what research were so

“of like wall of your kids. I think most of the teachers and anyone who deals with kids who tell you”

you're correct. Yeah. Yeah. I look, I think coaching, you know, friends of mine that have been youth

coaches and and like this stuff didn't happen. I mean, granted, parents have always got involved,

but there wasn't this default setting of believing your kid over the adult every single time. So my fear for you would be that you would, if you felt better for like a quick little win that is about as temper as it gets for this well crafted, slightly aggressive, retort that you could then be dealing with parents that have these three hyperventilating by kids, crush and piece of rolls. And then next thing, you know, you've got like a dad coming

“over who's completely wrong. And it's been sold this story, this bullshit. And it just leaves”

it a bigger headache for you. I do kind of think of the wire the Xerox machine, lie detector,

test scene, where the kid put his hand on machine and they're asking them questions. And then they would have these pieces of paper to come out of. It's like true, yes, or false. I wonder if there's a way you can just go up get each and every one of their names and go, you guys are all going in the file. You guys are all going in the file. And if you do it again now, you already have one strike against you. And you're not going to be allowed on the premises.

And it can be all bullshit. Kids are going to believe that. Secret files. Junior high. Oh, that's going in your file. What does that mean? I can't buy a house in a molder. Like what's going on? Yeah, it's actually ready. So you don't go to something in the SUNY system because they'll know. Yeah, I don't know if that helps. It's going to have to go private school. There's nothing satisfying enough for you to probably feel good about this.

“Like you're just going to probably have to take the ill here. To part-time job, remember that part”

of it? You guys on the team, you guys on the high school team, or you're not good enough? I like it. That's what you're practicing. But you're going to feel that much better later on. Especially if they have like some better shit to say to you. You know what I mean? If you got any sort of if it's kind of physical flaws, how's the back of your head looking? Do you have anything because they're going to find it? And you may have just opened a bigger can of worms. Just get through your

shift, I think. Yeah, there's nothing probably worse than like a 13-year-old kid who, you know, it's right in a nice play because I'm good close on whoever talking about how you are. We're going to minimum wage job. Like there's just, there's really no, there's really no probably satisfying come back to that. He's not smart enough to know that you got him either. So it's just double. You're going to be when you grow up. And then he says something awesome. You're like, probably not.

The problem is there's no rules for them. There's none. And there's rules for you.

They more from these adult like creatures back to children when it suits them. It's really tough. It's really tough. You know, they get all the consequences of, you know, lack there of being children, but they can explore the world as adults. It's shitty. It's really shitty. Do we have any tattoos? Maybe you could try to like kill them with kindness and go the other way with it. You're like, hey, you guys want to see something cool. This is a dagger on my thigh.

You guys want to kick the ball around? Then it's almost like you're a youth counselor. I don't know. That probably would work either. All right, that'll do it for life advice today. Thank you to Tom and Kevin and Kyle in Surruity the Rhyme Resolute Show. Our school sports. To you.