Words to Live By

To CPAC, with Love

CPAC…do you remember what it stands for? It’s an acronym for the Conservative Political Action Conference, kind of a Woodstock for movement conservatives. Always the headliner, Ronald Reagan appeared in January 1974 as Governor of California in CPAC’s inaugural year. To put it in perspective, that’s just a few months before a Richard Nixon would resign in fear of impeachment. That year, in 1974, CPAC attendees heard California Gov. Reagan urge them to remain united, as the Founding Fathers had, and that America’s responsibility as a world leader had been blessed by God. To be honest, this is a consistent theme throughout all his speeches, and today, we’ll focus on 1983.

The Love Story

Everyone loves a good love story, and presidential love stories are no exception. Since we are in the season of Valentine’s Day, the theme of our podcast is the love story between Ronald and Nancy Reagan, specifically his expressive and loving correspondence which began in the 1950 and continued throughout their marriage. Our archives hold an abundance of letters, telegrams and cards from Ronald Reagan to his beloved wife, and a few cards from her. Because, for holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries, he believed that the best gift he could give her was his heartfelt expression of love and appreciation.

Cars, Chrysler and Ronald Reagan

So today, let’s talk about cars, Chrysler, Reagan and…a looming recession. 40 years ago this week, President Reagan addressed the Chrysler plant in beautiful downtown Fenton, Missouri to stoke the fires of recovery and encourage the employees to stay the course. Recall that President-elect Ronald Reagan endorsed the government bailout of Chrysler during the campaign, reversing his initial position, but really never changed his fundamental belief that automakers should stand on their own without government backing. Let’s listen to the President in February 1983 when the economy was just starting to turn around. His hosts were Lee Iacocca, Senator Danforth and Governor Kit Bond.

Anatomy of a State of the Union Address

At the time of this writing, the date for President Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address has not been announced, only a general time frame that it will likely be delivered in February or March. In 1983, President Reagan’s State of the Union Address was given on January 25, 1983, at 9:00 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives to the 98th United States Congress. So today we’re going back 40 years to 1983. We’ll just listen to a few sections since this is quite a lengthy address. The thing to remember here is that the President has been in office for two years, so he has had a chance to begin rebuilding the military, start establishing ground rules in dealing with the Soviets, and finally, developing policies to strengthen the economy and just beginning to see growth.

Leadership, Reagan Style

In January 1983, 40 years ago, the President began his third year in office, working desperately to improve the economy while determined to convince the American people that the best was yet ahead. As a true leader, he met with his Executive team, exactly two years after his inauguration, to introduce two new cabinet members and to rally his executive squad to keep pushing the ball up the hill. His remarks are funny, inspiring, engaging and a perfect start to working with a brilliant team of individuals. We thought you’d like a taste of our 40th president’s leadership style in this new year: his vision, communication and optimism. You’ll hear him announce that Elizabeth Dole would replace Drew Lewis as Secretary of Transportation and Margaret Heckler would replace Richard Schweiker as Secretary of Health and Human services.

Strategic Arms Reduction

President Reagan’s courage as a leader, skill as a diplomat, and his willingness to confront communism around the world played a major role in ending the domination of the Soviet Union. He developed and applied with constant purpose a strategy not simply to contain communism, but to end it, and he achieved this goal across much of the globe. Ronald Reagan entered the White House determined to restore the strength of the U.S. military. He insisted on military might not for its own sake, but to discourage threats to American interests, defend freedom around the world, and bring the Soviet Union to the bargaining table. So in January 1983, 40 years ago this month, he faced the press, holding a news conference to clarify his position on Strategic Arms Reduction. In this podcast, we’ll focus on his resolve to clearly define, in his words, what his intentions were. To provide context, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time was Yuri Andropov…Gorbachev would not enter the scene for over two years. Also, this News Conference preceded his Evil Empire Speech AND his speech on SDI – his Strategic Defense Initiative – by two months.

Illegal or Undocumented, What did Reagan Do?

Today, we’re being instructed to call them undocumented but most of us still refer to those in this country illegally as…illegals. In the heated debate over immigration reform — despite the politicians and our current president choose to ignore the serious problems, the question that might be asked is “What would Ronald Reagan do?”

How to Handle the Russians

In November 2022, state department officials went to great lengths to prevent a meeting at the G20 summit between Biden and Putin. They knew that at some point, the two leaders would cross paths, but US officials ruled out a formal meeting and took steps to ensure that the American president does not encounter his Russian counterpart in a hallway or even in a group photo. Why? Well, the answer is that President Biden thinks Putin is a killer, a war criminal and, you don’t usually meet with killers and war criminals. Both of Biden’s immediate predecessors — Barack Obama and Donald Trump — crafted foreign policies that involved direct engagement with traditionally adversarial leaders; Obama as a matter of bridging difficult diplomatic divides, Trump as part creating personal and political alliances. Biden has had less engagement abroad. And today, Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine is TIME’s man of the year and awarded such an honor for standing up to the Soviet Union. With that in mind…just how did Ronald Reagan handle those pesky Russians?

New Year’s Day

On January 1, 1985, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev addressed each other’s people in an unprecedented exchange of televised New Year’s greetings. Remember that in March 1985, Gorbachev came into office, after the death of former Soviet leader Chernenko and after his very long illness. Knowing the voracity of the Cold War makes this exchange even more meaningful. The four major American networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN carried the leaders five minute speeches at 1pm EST. Even more remarkable, Soviet television agreed to broadcast Reagan’s message to the Soviet people simultaneously, or at 9pm Moscow time: prime time in the Soviet Union.

Eight Years of Christmas

President Reagan, a man of devout faith, loved Christmas deeply. And he chose to share his feelings about the holiday in many different ways over his eight years in office. So today in our podcast, rather than focusing on one single address or message, we’ll take an overview of the President’s eight years in office to look at eight mighty ways to express his joy during the holiday season.