Perspectives On The Reagan Presidency

And U.S Ambassador Richard Carlson, the former director general of the Voice of America and current vice chairman at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, both of whom joined us today from Washington, D.C and from San Diego, Dinesh D’Souza author of “Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.” He was the senior domestic policy analyst in the Reagan White House. He is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institute.

Welcome to you all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nice to be here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nice to be here.

HAFFENREFFER: Ambassador Carlson, I want to begin with you because I know you were at the funeral earlier today. I wanted to get your sense of what you heard there today and what you think of most prominently.

AMBASSADOR RICHARD CARLSON, FMR. DIRECTOR, VOICE OF AMERICA: Well, I don’t think there was a person in that lovely church, if you can call it a church, it’s enormous, but it’s a basically touching place and I don’t think there was a person there who was unmoved by the words that were spoken and by the ceremony itself. It was really – it was an historic event and I happen to have been – and Jim Miller was there too, I know, at the Capitol Rotunda two nights before, Wednesday, late afternoon, early evening when they had the ceremony, when they had the coffin in the rotunda. It was terrific to go secondly to the cathedral and see that happen today.

HAFFENREFFER: Jim Miller, what kind of president was he to work for? What was it like being under him so to speak and under his direction when you were working for him?

JIM MILLER, REAGAN ADMIN. BUDGET DIRECTOR: He was a kind man, a person easy to approach, a person easy to have humor with. I could tell you a story about having played a joke on him and I was so comfortable in his sense of humor, others thought I was out of my mind. He was a person that you wanted to be around, else you might miss something. He was just a wonderful man and I just wish I’d had more time with him.

HAFFENREFFER: We heard so much about that kindness in the funeral service today. Dinesh D’Souza I’m going to try to trace this back to his childhood and is that possible in your research that you worked so diligently on. Do you think it can be traced back to very humble beginnings?

DINESH D’SOUZA, HOOVER INSTITUTION FELLOW: Yes, I think that Reagan was a success story in some ways, if you look at his background, unlike Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, he didn’t have an aristocratic pedigree at all. He was a very ordinary guy. He grew up poor in the Midwest. His father was a kind of alcoholic.

He came to Hollywood with no connections and became a pretty big star. He entered politics quite late in life. And in some ways I think the puzzle of Reagan is when we look at this ordinary man, we see that extraordinary things happened in the 1980s; the conquest of inflation; the technological revolution; the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. So we have to ask did this ordinary man do those extraordinary things. And I think at the end of the day had a large part in those enormous events that defined the ’80s.

HAFFENREFFER: Yes, and I know Ambassador Carlson, I see you want to jump in there. I wanted to get your sense as to whether or not, be it — as some critics have tried to portray — that he was simply present at the time when these changes would have been taking place, regardless.

CARLSON: Well, those critics — some of them anyway — have also portrayed Reagan in much more negative terms than that over the years. I actually knew the president in a superficial way, long before he was president. I met him when I was a very young man in 1963, in the spring, in Los Angeles. And I spent some time talking to him.

He was at Loella (ph) Parson’s house, who was a gossip columnist who was quite well known in those days. And I was 21 years old; I sat at a bar in her house and talked to — Mr. Reagan was then the host of General Electric Theater. And he was with a fellow named Taft Schriber (ph), who was the number two person at MCA, which totally dominated Los Angeles entertainment industry at the time.

And I was taken by the fact that because I was so young and inexperienced no one paid much attention to what I had to say and no one ever asked me anything. Reagan asked me lots of questions. We talked for about a half an hour.

He was truly a democrat in the finest sense of that term, with a strong small D. Of course, he made the segue from Democratic politics to Republican after that. And I have to say he affected me in some ways politically, too, in that conversation.

HAFFENREFFER: Jim Miller, I want to get around to some policy issues here and certainly cutting taxes. That Reagan Revolution that took place shortly after he came to office in the early ’80s. Tell me your — we’ve been hearing from people about how enormous the deficit was, that grew over the course of his eight years in office.

And I guess when we get around to talking about deficits we talk about the harm that they do to the economy in some people’s opinions. Your thoughts on the tax cuts and what they did to the economy.

MILLER: OK.

First let me comment on the notion that he might just have been around when all of these, especially the dissolution of the Communist empire was taking place. It was Ronald Reagan who framed the issue of Communism as in moral terms, and it was not just to contain Communism but to defeat Communism.

And I don’t think anyone today would really question had it not been for Ronald Reagan’s perseverance on the build up of our national defenses, national security and to seeing that the Communists would not win a Cold War, that they might fight. No one questions whether that was instrumental in bringing the evil empire down.

Yet, Ronald Reagan had incredible opposition to his policies all through his term in office, even from some people within his own party and from within his own Cabinet. So it was his perseverance that I think meant the difference, or made the difference.

Now, with respect to the deficit, let’s bear in mind what happened. President Reagan took office. We knew that there was going to be some downturn in the economy, it had been presaged by that famous Dunkirk memo by David Stockman and by Jack Kemp. And what happened was, with the economy shrinking in this recession that was already in place, I think, when he took office.

The revenues to the federal government took a downward trend. And when that happened the economy went down, the revenues to the federal government went down an even greater percentage. And at the same time we had the collapse of inflation and when Congress appropriated money, it’s like, you know, we kept back during that time, you kept thinking about 10 percent more every year, 12 percent or something like that.

Well, they were appropriating monies based on an assumption there would be a great inflation, that didn’t materialize. And so we had more spending that we really should have had and at the same time the revenues fell. So that is the reason we got the deficits underway. Now, in 1982 the president had some setbacks in Congress and the House and the opposition was firmer thereafter than it had been before, and then, of course, we lost the Senate in 1986 as well.

And what happened the opposition demands that we get more domestic spending, whereas the president wanted less domestic spending and more spending on national security. Something had to give in this impasse and what gave was the deficit. And the president said, many times, if faced with having to increase taxes or to cut my defense spending or incur a deficit, he would incur a deficit every time.

And I think it has panned out that that was the right decision to have made. And we did, as we had the fall of the so-called evil empire, and as Madam Thatcher said, in the film today, again, referred to her famous statement that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a single shot.

HAFFENREFFER: So, even though he was able to get those initial tax cuts through — Dinesh, maybe you can pick it up from here — he did not get the Congress to follow along with like minded cuts in spending.

D’SOUZA: Well, he couldn’t. The Congress was a Democratic Congress. And the House in particular was lead by Tip O’Neill. I think Reagan realized that if he was going to get his defense hikes, and if he was going to get his tax cuts he could not tell Tip O’Neill, look I want money for B-1 bombers and I’m going to take it from out of the food stamp program.

So what Reagan did is he made a gamble. He gambled that if I cut taxes dramatically, if I increase defense spending precipitously — now his aides warned him, not just the Democrats. But David Stockman warned him and Martin Feldstein (ph), his economic advisor warned him; you are going to get a big deficit.

But Reagan gambled that over time the economic juggernaut, the economic recovery produced by the tax cuts and by privatization and deregulation would create a lager economy. And if you could push back the Soviet Union there would be defense savings over time. Ultimately, with the end of the Cold War, there were huge defense savings.

They didn’t kick in until the early ’90s, but all the deficits that the critics had warned about in the ’80s; they said our children will be laboring to pay off the debt. When the ’90s came along and Clinton found himself in office the deficit simply vanished. And it vanished because of the larger economy, which resulted in larger tax revenues for the government and also it resulted because of gigantic defense savings as a result of the end of the Cold War. So even on this one issue, the deficit, Reagan ended up to be vindicated.

HAFFENREFFER: We will pause for just a moment, get back with our three guests in just a moment, as we look back at the life and times of President Ronald Reagan after this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let them be forewarned, no matter how well-intentioned they might be, no matter what their illusions might be, I have my veto pen drawn and ready for any tax increase that Congress might even think of sending up. And I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN DANFORTH, FORMER SENATOR, EPISCOPAL PRIEST: He liked to laugh, especially at himself. There was nothing petty or mean-spirited about him. Even his opponents liked him. I recall sitting at a table with President Reagan and Speaker O’Neil, listening to their jokes. It was the opposite of negative politics.

He inspired devotion more than fear. Mike Deaver wrote: “There was something about him that made you want to please him and do your best.” This applied to everybody. It certainly applied to those of us who served in Congress.”

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAFFENREFFER: That was former Senator John Danforth, an Episcopal priest, with a divinity degree from Yale, who officiated the funeral ceremony for former President Reagan today at the National Cathedral.

Back with us now for more of our look back at the life and times of Ronald Wilson Reagan, Jim Miller, who served as both chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan White House. He is now the chairman of the Cap Analysis Group; and U.S. Ambassador Richard Carlson, the former director general of Voice of America and current vice chairman at the Foundation For The Defense of Democracies, both of whom are in Washington. And from San Diego, Dinesh D’Souza, author of “Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became and Extraordinary Leader”. He was a senior domestic policy analyst in the Reagan White House. He is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution.

And Ambassador Carlson, I want to get to something that former Senator Danforth got to, talking about negative politics. There was no negative politics in the room he said. And we had also heard in one of the tributes at the funeral service today that President Reagan would never let an adversary become and enemy.

And this is a part of the Reagan legacy, that was perhaps the first, I think, to slip away after he left office. Because if you fast-forward to today, it almost feels as though all politics is uncivil at this point. Speak to me a little about the way that President Reagan played this game of politics.

CARLSON: Well, first it does feel that way doesn’t it, David? I know exactly what you are talking about. The president, it has been said many times, was a decent and kindly and courtly. And on a personal level that makes a great difference with many people. Of course, the majority of Americans didn’t have a chance to personally interact with the president.

I remember, because I was a reporter, at one time in my life, in the beginning of the middle ’60s and continuing on until the mid-’70s, that President Reagan had many, many enemies. They must of people who didn’t meet him. Because I remember all of the unkind things they said about him, and the neo-fascist was one of them and lots of terrible negative and unkind and unfair comments.

That is all sort of washed away and in part I think because of the magnificent contribution that he made to this country and the fact, though, that he was such an extraordinarily kind and decent human being who did exactly what Bishop Shane (ph) said today, that when he touched people they walked away at least not as enemies, even if they were adversaries.

HAFFENREFFER: Yes, I wonder, Jim, maybe you can contribute to this, just why that feels to be such a distance notion at this point. That it could almost be, you could have respect for somebody and yet disagree with them?

MILLER: Well, he was able to put things aside. He said Tip O’Neill is my friend after 6 o’clock, although they would argue till 6 o’clock, or whatever. He was just — he loved people and he loved to engage people and ideas. I was looking at one of the web sites on the Internet this morning.

And there was a little caption about well, it turns out that the people in line going through giving their respects were not all Reaganesque in their dress. And they showed a picture of a fellow in cargo pants and looked like tennis shoes. And he had a T-shirt on that had an American flag on it. He was standing in front of the casket with his hand over his heart.

And it was as if to make fun of this. And you know, if Ronald Reagan had come out of the casket he would have wanted to talk to this fellow probably more than anybody else going through the line. That was the kind of fellow he was.

HAFFENREFFER: And I heard a sound byte over the weekend. I believe it was from his second inaugural address, it was inside the Rotundra, so you three will be able to correct me on this if I’m wrong. He talked about, when I’m gone, I hope you all think of me as somebody who appealed to your every confidence. And he talked about — it was a much more positive tone, when talking about politics. Rather than what we hear today.

And, again Dinesh, this gets back to this same notion here that you can be a politician and be positive and be kind in the way you treat your adversaries, as well as the people that you are serving, from the White House.

D’SOUZA: Well, I think the largeness of Reagan’s ideas and to some degree the radicalism of Reagan’s ideas was combined with a temperamental geniality. He was able to deflect criticism.

At one point Sam Donaldson of “ABC News” approached him; Reagan had given a speech criticizing the Congress and even the media. And Sam Donaldson said you have criticized the Congress. You have criticized the press. Does any of the blame belong to you?

And Reagan said, well, yeah, a lot of it because I used to be a Democrat.

And this was his way of sort using humor, very often, spontaneous humor to deflect criticism. But having said that, we should remember that Reagan was a divisive figure, particularly when he first came to office. He was challenging in some ways the great idea of the 20th century. The great idea of the 20th century was collectivism and we saw it in the expansion of the Soviet empire abroad and in the growth of the welfare state at home.

And Reagan wanted to stop the Soviet empire and he wanted to reverse the growth of government. In a way, Reagan — the era of collectivism that began with FDR in the ’30s came to an end with Reagan in the ’80s and early ’90s. So they form, these two large men, the bookends of the 20th century.

HAFFENREFFER: Well, was he successful, Jim Miller, in making the government smaller in his eight years and does the rhetoric necessarily match the size difference between the time he started and the time he left the government?

MILLER: Well, I think he did, in a way that I’ll mention in a moment. But just a follow up on what Dinesh was saying, he really was a controversial figure. I mean it was striking. Just think, in the context of the time, he comes up and he says government is not the solution, government is the problem. And then later he refers to the Soviet system as the evil empire.

And then later he said, Mr. Gorbachev, come tear down this wall. You would never have thought a president of the United States would say — any politician — would say such a thing.

But he had a clearness of vision, a clarity of vision that — and he expressed things in moral terms and he said them straight out and he knew what he was doing. And I think he was very successful.

He attenuated the growth of government. Had it not been for the opposition demanding more social programs, more expenditures on domestic programs as the price of some of the tax cuts and some of the increases spending on national security, he would have done an even greater job in attenuating the growth of government.

He made some substantial reforms in government, also in regulation, that I think enabled the economy to grow faster, to grow better. He lowered marginal tax rates dramatically. He did other things that I think in enabled the economy to reach its potential and I think laid the groundwork for the expansion that we’ve had up until today.

HAFFENREFFER: Ambassador.

D’SOUZA: If I could.

HAFFENREFFER: Go ahead, Dinesh.

D’SOUZA: If I could add a brief thought.

He also produced an enormous cultural shift. In the late ’60s the ethos in America had been defined by John. F. Kennedy, who said if you are young, if you are idealistic, join the Peace Corps. In other words, become a public servant. And Reagan challenged that idea. To him the embodiment of American idealism was not the public servant. In fact he dismissed the public servant as a kind of bureaucrat.

Reagan extolled the entrepreneur. Reagan’s idea is that if you are young, if you are idealistic, don’t join the Peace Corps, join the Marines or start a company, invent something, come up with something new. So we’ve seen, in this country, a cultural transition away from the public servant and toward the entrepreneur, and Reagan had a lot to do with that.

CARLSON: Oh, David, I must say, on the subject of incivility, if I can add this comment?

HAFFENREFFER: Sure.

CARLSON: I remember well, 25, 30 years ago, when Pat Brown, who was the governor, Jerry Brown’s father, was the governor of California. He was defeated by Ronald Reagan in his first serious political attempt. And the bitterness that came Democrats and came from Pat Brown, himself, was overwhelming at the time. And the name-calling was just as it was today. The kind of same thing you see on political talk shows, where people are simplistically characterized and name called. And there is really a lot of, in essence, McCarthyism. It is thrown back and forth.

Pat Brown actually wrote a book about Governor Reagan. I remember it well. I was a reporter in Sacramento for UPI, at the time. And slaying Reagan after he had been beaten himself by over a million votes, because he was so bitter. But there was never any criticism about the ridiculous idea of the loser writing a nasty name-calling book about the winner. So, we had a lot of that now, but we had a lot of that then, too, I must say. And Reagan overcame it.

HAFFENREFFER: Do you think Ronald Reagan had any regrets when he left office? Were there areas that he wished he had gotten to, or perhaps, spent more time on that he didn’t have an opportunity to?

CARLSON: Well, I think it is possible that he did. I don’t know what they might be. Of course, the Cold War had not ended at that point. But I must say that Ronald Reagan did end the Cold War. I am convinced because of my involvement at Voice of America, which was an intellectual lifeline for 10s of millions of people around the world, along with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

And it was personally supported so much by Reagan who brought us money and considerable personal interest that kept it going, that caused it to expand, caused it to have a greater effect on those governments. That he might have been disappointed that it hadn’t as yet come down. But then, of course, it did soon after. And he was wholly responsible for it, in my opinion.

HAFFENREFFER: I want to pick up on this question in just a moment, with both Jim and Dinesh, as well, but first we have to take one more break. We’ll be back with our guests just after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAFFENREFFER: Back now with our guests on this Friday afternoon as we think back on the legacy and the contributions of former President Ronald Reagan, whose national funeral was held today at National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Jim Miller, I want to get back to you on this idea of regrets, that the president may have had after he left office. We’ve been hearing over the past few days from some various social groups, AIDS activists, people representing the poor and minority groups, largely critical of president’s eight years in office. Do you think President Reagan had regrets, when he left office, about areas that he might have paid more attention to?

MILLER: I don’t really think he did. He liked to characterize himself as some who did the best he could. And I think he did — did that, he did the best he could. I think he did see the eminent fall of the Soviet Union. He saw that before many others saw that. He felt good about that.

And to say something about the man, just an anecdote. He told me a couple of times, he said, Jim, I’m going back to California. I’m going back to the ranch. This was at the end of the term. And he had another life. He was president to do things, and he did them, and he felt good about that and he went on to the rest of his life. He didn’t serve as president to be president, he served as president to do thing for his fellow American citizens.

HAFFENREFFER: Dinesh?

D’SOUZA: I think probably his one great regret was the Iran/Contra scandal. In trading arms for hostages Reagan had in a sense gone with his instincts, his instincts that had previously held up so well. But in this case he got burned. So I think that probably was a regret for him.

But the important thing is that looking back on his presidency I think the way Reagan saw it, he thought that you can’t change the world in 25 ways. You can change the world in two or maybe three ways. And he focused on his priorities, fighting Communism, helping democracy spread around the world, conquering inflation, cutting taxes. The other stuff, in a way, he delegated.

So, I think Reagan was vindicated on the big issues that he cared about. Of course, one can quibble about welfare and affirmative action and AIDS and those were important issues, too. But Reagan achieved his large objectives an I think for that, he would have a sense of great accomplishment and I think history will judge him very well.

CARLSON: In my view, I think these criticisms are coming, and I’ve read most of them, are coming from the hard left, who are annoyed with Reagan and never liked him. And some of them are not founded in any facts, at all.

I refer, specifically, to the AIDS situation, where $5.7 billion were spent by the Reagan administration on AIDS research and to combat that disease. And now they’re saying that Reagan was responsible for AIDS, it is ridiculous.

MILLER: It really is so outrageous. I was sitting in Cabinet meetings and budget meetings about the AIDS matter. Remember, early on, we really — no one fully comprehended what the AIDS epidemic was going to be like. And he sat in meetings and we looked at these things very, very carefully. And the president was occupied with these issues, as well as others.

On Iran/Contra, I think he doesn’t have — left without regrets about that in the following sense. There is really nothing systemic, I think, that he might have done differently. There was a failure on the part of some people to whom he had delegated some responsibility, but I don’t think, he viewed it as his personal response, or that it was a personal failure on his part.

D’SOUZA: See, ultimately, I think history doesn’t preoccupy itself with minutia. The diplomat Clare Booth Luce said history will ultimately judge every president by only one line. Like Washington was the father of the country, or Lincoln freed the slaves. And I think for Reagan, what history will say he won the Cold War and revived the American economy and the American spirit. And that is a very large record.

HAFFENREFFER: Has that legacy move onward into subsequent presidencies? Do we see, sort of a Reagan application — I guess we’ll call it, since many are crediting him with writing this conservative playbook — being applied in the current White House? Ambassador, I’ll start with you.

CARLSON: Oh, I think he’s had — heh, heh, — I think those years in the White House, Ronald Reagan, and before as well, back to when he gave that speech in Dodger Stadium in 1964, he’s had an enormous effect on American politics. You think of the changes that have take place.

Just on the subject of the Cold War, I think it is very important for us to remember how terrible the conditions where for 10 of millions of people who were captive of the Soviets for almost 70 years. And I say that from my perspective at the Voice of America, because people were denied basic information and the Soviet Union, all the satellite countries, Cuba, Burma, et cetera, all of the Communist influenced countries. And Ronald Reagan has removed all of those barriers to those people, all for the good. Kind of an amazing accomplishment and one that has to be continually reminded, I think.

HAFFENREFFER: Jim Miller, George Bush came into office, cut taxes, and the economy certainly picking up at this point, but is he having success in trying to use the Reagan playbook in his administration?

MILLER: I think he is, and I think, let me go back — and I know this is a financial program, but I think the Ambassador’s correct. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the greatest accomplishment was the liberation of 100s of millions of people. And Mrs. Thatcher today, in her tribute to President Reagan referred to him as the Great Liberator.

On the economic side, I think there are really kind of three phases. President Reagan was a supply-sider and emphasizing the need for economy to move forward, to remove the shackles of government, to increase supply.

President Bush, Senior, had a period where there was some transitional problems that occurred. There was a slight recession, but it was more a bobble than anything else. President Clinton was benefited so greatly by the information technology revolution that increases productivity so dramatically.

President Bush inherited some problems, a recession already underway, and he has dealt with these by focusing, again, on the supply side and cutting tax rates and trying to enable the economy to move forward and that is exactly the correct policy.

HAFFENREFFER: We will have to leave that there. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on with us today and sharing your thoughts and recollections.

D’SOUZA: Thank you.

CARLSON: Thank you.

MILLER: Thank you.

HAFFENREFFER: And you are watching CNNfn’s special coverage of this National Day of Mourning. I’m David Haffenreffer. Ali Velshi will pick up our coverage after this break.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: General-Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.