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Politics
Reagan’s Note Card Treasures
An annotated selection of those cards was recently published.
Ronald Reagan was known as “The Great Communicator.” What isn’t well known is just how hard he worked to earn that title. Over the course of his career he invented a unique system to prepare, edit, and deliver speeches.
One of his secrets was a stack of 4 x 6 inch note cards that he compiled over the span of four decades. Consisting of quotes, economic statistics, jokes, and anecdotes, they became the core of Ronald Reagan’s traveling research files.
An annotated selection of those cards has just been published as a book. The Notes: Ronald Reagan’s Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom is edited by historian Douglas Brinkley, and the book’s release is being accompanied by a display of some of the note cards at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.
The story of the cards began in the 1950s when Reagan would travel the country giving speeches to groups of General Electric employees. GE was the sponsor of the weekly TV show Reagan hosted from 1954 to 1962. “When Reagan read something he liked, he wrote it down. If someone told him a good joke, he wrote it down,” says Brinkley. “These cards are the tools of his trade. He can take any speech and insert some of these zingers and one-liners. Let’s say he’s speaking to a Kiwanis Club. He knew what to put in. If he was talking to a group of firemen, he had a joke about putting out a fire. If you’re really looking for the hand of a president, and how his mind is working, all of these note cards together, in a way, give you the magic of Ronald Reagan.”
The cards would feature between five and 10 items and would be written on both sides in Reagan’s inimitable shorthand. He compiled hundreds of them over the course of his career. Some were lost or given away as souvenirs, but 91 were recently discovered at the Reagan Library, stored in boxes that contained the contents of Reagan’s desk at his Los Angeles office on the day he died in June 2004.
“It rivals the Reagan diaries themselves,” John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Foundation, says of the note cards that were discovered. “It was like finding buried treasure; his speechwriters and aides have been talking about these cards for a long time. Now we have them.”
Indeed, Martin Anderson, Reagan’s former domestic policy adviser, says that Reagan’s system did wonders for his ability to give speeches. Reagan was able to approach a lectern with no sign anywhere of a prepared speech. Only those seated on the stage behind him could see his left hand drop into his suitcoat pocket and pull out a neat, small packet of cards and slip off the elastic band with his right hand as he set the cards down. And as for helping him in preparing the speech material, “his system was unrivaled,” Anderson remembers. “Before the speech Reagan would pore over the packs of cards, then pluck a few cards from one pack, a few from another, and combine them. In a matter of minutes, he would create an entirely new speech. The system was as flexible as a smooth gold chain.”
Indeed, it proved so effective he carried it into the White House. While he was president he would routinely hand them to his speechwriters to be incorporated into his major addresses.
As one looks at the yellowing speech cards, one can see Reagan was always careful to include the documentation and source at the top. In his shorthand, you can see him quoting Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free in a state of civilizations, it expects what never was & what never will be.” Reagan also kept an extensive file on Communism and the evidence of its evil. One card quotes Lenin thus: “As long as capitalism & socialism exist, we cannot live in peace. Socialists without ceasing to be socialists cannot oppose any kind of war.”
No such care in sourcing was needed for the time-tested jokes: “Those congressmen who worry about being bugged by the FBI—you’d think they’d be glad someone was listening to them.”
WHILE REAGAN was governor, I will never forget his taking time out of his schedule after a television taping to show me—a 15-year-old high school student—how he could instantly arrange his packs of anecdote-filled index cards into a speech tailor-made for almost any audience. I still use a variation of Reagan’s system to construct my own speeches.
Like a previous book, Reagan in His Own Hand, which unearthed and published original scripts of Reagan radio broadcasts, the note cards make a strong case that Reagan was, in the words of Michael Barone, “a voracious reader, a persuasive logician and a graceful writer who incorporated the thoughts of others to develop his own thinking.”
But Reagan was always very modest about his own accomplishments. As governor and president, he famously kept a sign on his desk that read, “There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” Now with the discovery of his note cards, we can better appreciate just how hard Reagan himself labored to be clear and convincing—and, yes, sometimes funny—to his many audiences.
About the Author
John H. Fund is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of the Stealing Elections (Encounter Books).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
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Richard Baker| 8.10.11 @ 6:21AM
Of course the lefties still tell one and all that Reagan was a "dunce." He was a highly organized leader who knew where he was going and didn't take himself too seriously. A shame that the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania can't share those virtues.
Stuart Koehl| 8.10.11 @ 6:49AM
They've mellowed in recent years. Reagan is now an "amiable dunce"--except when the Left wants to appropriate something he said. Then he is a "statesman", a term which here means "a Republican who is dead".
John Navratil| 8.10.11 @ 8:31AM
Stuart Koehl,
You can't fault the Left for inconsistency. To them the only good Republican is a dead one - or the occasional live maverick who will vote with them.
Alan Brooks| 8.10.11 @ 10:19AM
Reagan was a great guy, but unless you can bring him down from Heaven, he is now irrelevant--
we are NEVER going to get out of debt and you probably all know it.
Clint| 8.10.11 @ 10:55AM
You're irrelevant ObamaBoy Brooks.
You trash Big Spender Bush & then become An ObamaBoy.
Alan Brooks| 8.10.11 @ 1:11PM
Bush was president for 3x as long as Obama has been.
Bush is the Great Dislocator.
Alan Brooks| 8.10.11 @ 1:11PM
WAS.
TrueBlue| 8.10.11 @ 6:50PM
Yup, 3x as long and Obama has already added just as much debt... funny that. Not that that says much good about Bush, since he most certainly DID add too much debt, but it sure says a lot about Obama.
POST American| 8.10.11 @ 9:05AM
----'80's Show' RETRO-grade mythology and
NECRO-mancy Tavistock OP --ALERT!--
Somehow they seem to be losing their touch.
Must be the flight of staff from the Tavy as
word spreads about those 1920's-30's behavioral
experiments on orphans, inmates and ITs.
OH WELL-----------nothing lasts forever...
Stuart Koehl| 8.10.11 @ 9:35AM
Paging Doctor Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard.
Paging Doctor Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard.
Alan Brooks| 8.10.11 @ 10:19AM
Kevorkian!
Dan Mathewson| 8.10.11 @ 5:46PM
nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.
Occam's Tool| 8.10.11 @ 8:57PM
You know, Stuart, I remember Tavistock as just a place to learn therapeutic skills. Since I do mostly psychopharm now, I don't track Tavistock. But hey, it's like the Trilaterals, etc.
Appleby| 8.10.11 @ 5:01PM
Ronald Reagan was something that O'Bama, nor anybody in his cohort, will ever be: a classically educated man.
The original purpose of a classical education was to turn out such men as Ronald Reagan. Then came the Sixties and everything had to be "relevant", translated as "will this get me a Good Job?" and college turned into vocational school; then TheKids realized education was interfering with their drunken parties and chasing tail, and college turned into daycare.
Ronald Reagan reminds us what our Founding Fathers meant by "an educated man".
Occam's Tool| 8.10.11 @ 8:59PM
Yes, indeed. Ronnie went to a fine Christian Undergrad College associated with the Disciples of Christ. The Flagship school of that denomination is, of course (wait for it)...Texas Christian University! That affiliation was mentioned in his first successful campaign in 1980.
R. Womack| 8.10.11 @ 8:52PM
I was delighted to find this article today about Ronald Reagan's note cards used for his speeches. In 1977 we had him as our keynote speaker for a Free Enterprise Fair in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Prior to his presentation in Western Ky University's arena we were entertained at a banquet by Warren Rosenthal, chairman of Jerrico, who enthralled the audience with great stories of business successes, such as Harlan Sanders of KFC fame, among others. During his speech, Reagan was shuffling through his cards of stories and discarding those that Rosenthal had used. "Oh, well -- I can't use that one" he said. After Reagan's speech, which was vintage Reagan, and which brought down the packed house, we held a reception where I met Mike Deaver, who was travelling with Reagan. I asked him about the prospect of getting one of his note cards as a souvenir. Deaver politely told me that those were valuable to Reagan and that he used them all the time. Never got one, but the memory remains.
Richard Baker| 8.10.11 @ 10:42PM
Stuart:
He may be gone but his ideas will live on after him. The Founding Fathers are gone but their ideas are hardly irrelevant.
jesse| 8.10.11 @ 11:01PM
we are NEVER going to get out of debt and you probably all know it.
http://www.summer-products.com
http://www.ainibag.com
jesse| 8.10.11 @ 11:02PM
To them the only good Republican is a dead one - or the occasional live maverick who will vote with them.
http://www.jerseys-hats-store.com
http://www.honey-gifts.com
POST American| 8.11.11 @ 1:18AM
-----Like the HAARP-esque nuclear halocaust
and world DEPOP OP pulsing away in Fukishima
----AND the elephant in the room
Globalist RED China sellout and TREASON OP
-----AND the recent 'Break Their Hearts' Masonic
and Templar styled, and, no doubt, set up Norway
horror
------AND this astonishingly neat sudden killing
of nearly ALLL those involved in the ever more
laughable Bin Laden black op
-------------this latest capstone directed 'multi-cultural'
benny violence in England sends the
message --'SEE! NO ONE is safe! YOU NEED
US! (ie the USURER/Globalist police state).
(ALAN WATT's analysis as it happens)
ALAN WATT's breakdown SMOKES everyone
in the Rocker-Feller FAKE OP 'press'.
----------------EVERYONE!
--------------------UNMISSABLE------------------------
POST American| 8.11.11 @ 1:20AM
--------------P.S.
And DO check out Watt's unmasking of the
EINSTEIN fraud yesterday.
--------------------------------TOTAL SET UP.
---------------------------LOL!-----------------------------
Johnny | 8.11.11 @ 12:42PM
Man, some of these posters are complete loons today. I like Ronald Reagan. I akways have and did when I served in the military with him as commander in chief. I respected him, unlike Clinton, Carter and the Bush duo to some extent. I really don't care what the libs say about him. I know he wasn't perfect, but no man is. So bite it libs!