The Search for Reagan
By Craig Shirley
(Post Hill Press, 336 pages, $29)
It was 20 years ago today, June 5, 2004, that Ronald Reagan passed away. I remember where I was when I heard the news. Many of you might remember where you were as well. No, it wasn’t akin to where you were when you first heard of the Kennedy assassination. That was a shock, whereas Reagan’s death was long expected. It had been almost 10 years since his Nov. 5, 1994, letter informing his fellow Americans that he had Alzheimer’s disease. By June 2004, he had hung on longer than almost anyone expected — to the point that he had become history’s longest living former president when he died at age 93.
What was akin to the Kennedy assassination was the extraordinary national remembrance, an outpouring of affection that left many liberals stunned, though it was no surprise to the tens of millions who twice elected Reagan in landslides in 1980 and 1984. Reagan’s reelection 20 years earlier was incredible: he took 49 of 50 states and the Electoral College by a margin of 525 to 13.
I could go on and on about the week that followed Ronald Reagan’s death, especially the moving memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on June 11, 2004. What recently took me back to that service is Craig Shirley’s new book, The Search for Reagan.
Craig and I have written more books on Reagan than any other biographers, with well over a dozen books between us. We’re both often asked if we’ve hit the limit on what there is to write about Reagan. The answer is most assuredly no, especially given that leftists have never stopped trashing the man and always open a new front for us to defend him against yet another sleazy, unsubstantiated attack.
In this book, Craig Shirley addresses some of those attacks. He provides an eclectic survey of various Reagan-related topics, issues, persons, ranging from his time at the Screen Actors Guild and as governor of California to figures such as former Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, House Speaker Tip O’Neill, Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and even Illinois Rep. Dan “Rosty” Rostenkowski. The book includes a nice foreword from Mark Levin, who, like Shirley, started his storied career in the conservative movement by working in President Reagan’s administration.
Reviewing a book like this in under 1,500 words isn’t easy, but two things jumped out that particularly struck me and are worthy of your attention: 1) that funeral service at the National Cathedral and 2) Shirley’s chapter on President Reagan and AIDS. I’ll hit the latter first and circle back to the second.
Among the nastiest, stupidest attacks on Reagan from the Left is the outrageous assertion that he did nothing about the AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) crisis that emerged in the 1980s. Shirley puts it this way: “The false narrative—promulgated by his political enemies—was that Ronald Reagan did nothing in the face of the AIDS crisis and coldly let hundreds of thousands of gay men die needlessly.” As Shirley retorts, this claim “is untrue,” a “fabrication made up out of whole cloth.”
Shirley walks through how this fabrication developed, including the misinformation in an insidious docudrama aired on Showtime. He also succinctly shows how and why this is false. Among other reasons: “At Reagan’s direction, the government spent untold amounts of money communicating with the American people generally and gay men specifically how to practice safe sex.”
I lived through the 1980s — it was my teen and high school and college years — and I remember this very well, and especially how liberals lampooned the “safe sex” campaigns. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear, nor do. Many of them reading now will rage that such money spent was naively ineffective, and will want to assert that nothing else was done. But of course, that’s not true.
As Shirley documents, Reagan in 1985 told a reporter: “Including what we have in the budget for ’86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS, in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it’ll be $126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.”
Reagan knew those numbers off the top of his head. He knew plenty of people from Hollywood who were homosexual and even had AIDS, including fellow actor Rock Hudson. The vast majority of Americans didn’t know anyone who had the disease, but Ronald Reagan did. His administration focused on prevention, transmission, and research on vaccines and drugs to manage or possibly even find a cure for AIDS. It was a central priority for his FDA and Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Craig Shirley notes that the Reagan administration’s AIDS funding requests to Congress went from $8 million in 1982 to $26.5 million in 1983 — a 300 percent-plus increase in one year. Congress raised the amount to $44 million, from which it essentially doubled each year thereafter throughout the Reagan presidency. That was a huge amount of money back then, especially for a disease that only a tiny percentage of Americans acquired.
Craig Shirley’s short but powerful chapter ought to be required reading for anyone with an opinion on Reagan and AIDS, especially for Leftists looking to smear Reagan on the issue. Unfortunately, many of the smearers likely will not bother, given that their goal is less to learn the truth than to slime Ronald Reagan.
On the plus side, the vast majority of Americans looked at Ronald Reagan with a more open mind. That was how he ended up winning 49 of 50 states. They knew this was a good man and a great president. They felt that way all the way until Reagan’s death in June 2004. When death came for Reagan, they came out in droves to pay their respects in California and Washington. That brings me back to that service for Reagan at the National Cathedral.
Craig Shirley puts that National Cathedral service in further context by commenting on the Washington funeral services for other notable figures, which he notes often became uncouth occurrences for Washington’s hoity-toity to slap backs, shake hands, give air kisses, exchange business cards, and look for important people to suck up to. He recounted the tragic death of Barbara Olson on September 11, 2001 — a woman very close to The American Spectator and to its founder, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (Olson actually introduced Bob and his wife Jeanne, and was the maid of honor in their wedding. Our magazine has a Barbara Olson award for courageous journalism.) Shirley also recounted how the “beautiful people” in Washington gathered for the funeral of longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, which was “actually the social event of the season,” and was, like a Georgetown cocktail party, covered with great glee in the Post’s silly Style section.
Shirley also remarked upon President Bill Clinton’s disgraceful behavior at the funeral of his secretary of commerce, Ron Brown. “At the Washington funeral, Bill Clinton was observed by television cameras laughing afterwards when decorum dictated a modicum of grief and remembrance,” writes Shirley, correctly. “Instead, Clinton was having a ‘heigh-ho’ time, right up until he spotted the camera spotting him, immediately turned his smile into a frown, and instantly went into his act, pretending to be sad and thoughtful.”
That is indeed precisely what happened. It was the juvenile Boy Clinton at his worst.
All of which was a complete contrast to the Ronald Reagan remembrance at the National Cathedral on June 11, 2004. This was a deeply moving experience, which I would encourage you to watch online if you’ve never seen it before. Shirley notes that Washington’s “swank” and “tony” did attempt to turn the event into party, but were thwarted by the serious Reaganites and international dignitaries who came to that cathedral to mourn and pay their respects.
I watched the event live and provided coverage for the Associated Press radio network. I recall most vividly glimpsing Reagan’s closest aide and my close friend, William P. Clark, sitting in one of the pews in tears. Clark (I was his biographer) called me immediately after the event and said, “I tried to keep it together, Paul. I tried to stay composed. But when [Irish tenor] Ronan Tynan starting singing ‘Ave Maria,’ I just lost it. I didn’t expect that.”
Many Americans had the same reaction. They loved Ronald Reagan. They — many of them Democrats — wish we had a Ronald Reagan right now.
Kudos to Craig Shirley for his ongoing work in keeping Reagan’s memory alive and reminding us again and again of the man’s contributions.
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