The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom Read online

  THE NOTES

  THE NOTES

  Ronald Reagan’s Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom

  Edited by Douglas Brinkley

  Dedication

  To all the men and women who

  worked with Ronald Reagan in both

  state and federal government

  Contents

  Dedication

  Introduction

  On the Nation

  On Liberty

  On War

  On the People

  On Religion

  The World

  On Character

  On Political Theater

  Humor

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  About the Editor

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  At the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, it’s known as the Rosetta stone—the secret collection of 4-by-6 note cards on which our fortieth U.S. president recorded his favorite aphorisms, jokes, asides, and timeless nuggets of political wisdom. Although White House speechwriters such as Peggy Noonan, Ken Khachigian, and Tony Dolan had heard about Reagan’s private notes collection, even occasionally witnessing him snatching an appropriate note out of his Oval Office desk drawer to insert into a speech draft, no one except Nancy Reagan had ever seen the full assemblage. Just as the fact that Reagan kept a daily diary as U.S. president from 1981 to 1989 surprised most people, the publication of The Notes is an equally important landmark event in Reagan studies. Anyone wondering about how Reagan—dubbed “The Great Communicator”—delivered such oratorical magic as a dinner speaker and itinerant statesman should read this compilation. These notes reveal the real Reagan—a fiercely patriotic, pro-democracy avatar of limited government.

  It’s believed that Reagan started The Notes collection when he was serving as a spokesperson for General Electric, from 1954 to 1962. Compelled to deliver hundreds of upbeat speeches a year to the Fortune 500 company’s far-flung employees, Reagan devised a pragmatic method of keeping his hour-long public presentations both high-minded and lighthearted. A consummate showman, Reagan always padded salient contemporary political points with a couple of Borscht Belt one-liners followed by a wallop of engraved truth from one of the Founding Fathers. All those optimistic Eisenhower-era speeches focused on the virtues of free-market capitalism over Sovietism. Reagan listened, before and after speeches, to GE workers complain about high taxation and unnecessary regulations. He assimilated many of their sentiments into his own.

  The backstory of how The Notes were rediscovered in 2010 is endearing. Under the direction of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, the library was getting a face-lift in time for the centennial of her husband’s birth (February 6, 2011). Fifteen million dollars was raised to renovate from top to bottom the 26,000 square feet of the original exhibit space in the museum. Reagan Foundation executive director John Heubusch issued a clear directive: Let’s find some exciting, new artifacts to put on museum display. The foundation’s chief administrative officer and former Reagan aide Joanne Drake launched a hybrid treasure hunt–inventory to uncover hidden heirlooms—no easy task, given the sheer bulk of boxes deposited at the Reagan Library.

  One afternoon in the spring of 2010, The Notes, published here, were discovered in a cardboard box marked only in pen with “RR’s desk” on its side. There was no label on it. It was randomly stashed among boxes of assorted Reagan memorabilia. What a Eureka moment. Here were the personal belongings Reagan had kept in his office desk right up until his death in 2004. No one but Reagan himself probably ever recognized the historic value of these treasured notes, which he kept among a mass of rubber bands and paperclips. About 95 percent of the Reagan Library archive belongs to the U.S. federal government. The remaining 5 percent of material is the property of the Reagan Foundation. This amazing box of handwritten Reagan leavings—personal property owned by the former president—belongs to the foundation. A decision was soon made by the foundation to publish The Notes.

  All of The Notes were handwritten. When Reagan was recopying various quotations he was especially neat. His scrawl is impeccable—seldom does he employ a cross-out or correct a mis-start. Clearly, legibility was a high priority to him. Sometimes he uses an asterisk or makes a hearty underline for emphasis. Shorthand is often the order of the day. The reader gets the impression that Reagan is a redwood tree and these are the decorations of his own philosophy, the ammunition he will need to survive the hustings ahead.

  In addition to admiring the former president’s penmanship, those who analyzed The Notes made some preliminary historical assessment. The notes that are published in this volume under the heading “Humor” are one-liners that were maintained in a fat stack of cards with a rubber band around them. They were separate from the rest of the collection. Whenever Reagan heard or invented a joke that he deemed a “keeper,” he’d carefully write it out on a 4-by-6 note card and insert it in this stack. All the other axioms and aphorisms in this volume—all written in his own hand and found under the rubrics “On the Nation,” “On Liberty,” “On War,” “On the People,” “On Religion,” “The World,” “On Character,” and “On Political Theater”—were kept in the plastic sleeves of a black photo album. There was no categorical arrangement of the notecards under headings. I devised that method to make it easier for the reader. This album artifact, the notecards yellowed around the edges, is now on permanent display at the renovated Reagan Library, unveiled as part of the 2011 centennial celebration.

  Longtime friends of Reagan’s remember that sometimes when he delivered a speech he’d throw the card of a joke that fell flat or of a nugget of political wisdom that tanked in front of an audience’s ears into a wastepaper basket. What made it into the photo album were his golden oldies, his trench-tested winners, the intellectual ideas of notable others that best reflected his own worldview. At the collection’s core is Reagan’s bedrock belief that freedom and liberty come with the cost of being an alert and well-informed citizen. The collection constitutes a love song to America, the backbone of his most cherished ideas.

  Many of the one-liners, jokes, high wisdom, straight talk, and political aphorisms in The Notes were delivered at one time or another in a public forum. If Reagan had one artifact that he would have saved were his house on fire, it would probably have been his card-stuffed photo album. Its contents were tools of his trade as GE spokesperson, roast master, California governor, and U.S. president. There are hundreds of Thomas Jefferson quotes, for example, that are regularly offered up by U.S. politicians at rubber-chicken dinners and in stump speeches. What is interesting is why Reagan gravitated toward the handful of Jefferson in this volume. It’s his choices that are fascinating.

  The reason the Reagan Library calls The Notes a Rosetta stone is that the general public can easily deconstruct from this collection Reagan’s own political philosophy. There is a gravitas to the quotes he chose to save in his private album. With the exception of the one-liners, all the collected wisdom in The Notes constitutes Reagan’s Greatest Hits. And there are some shockers—who ever thought Reagan would have found anything useful from Mao or Norman Thomas? Even Reagan’s political adversaries in America, like George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Pat Brown, conceded that the Gipper’s great gift was an innate ability to deliver a pitch-perfect joke, put-down, or ice-breaking one-liner on cue. When Robert F. Kennedy debated Reagan in 1967 about the Vietnam War—and Kennedy lost—Kennedy recognized that his rival had honed
his gladiatorial routine to utter perfection, with an acute sense of timing, aw-shucks nods, chuckles, and eye rolls. “Reagan,” RFK concluded, “was the toughest debater I ever went up against.”

  Part of Reagan’s political success was the shrewd incorporation of the Bartlett’s Book of Quotations–like truisms found in this volume. While others thought Reagan was a conservative revolutionary, our fortieth president knew that he was speaking in the same vein as Washington, Lincoln, Paine, and FDR. Books like John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations infused Reagan with genuine intellectual excitement, a collected wellspring of acumen.

  It’s important for readers to understand that The Notes is composed of raw, unedited primary source documents. Reagan, for example, quotes the historian Arnold Toynbee as having written, “Hist. is the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs & thunder of hobnail boots coming.” This quote is, in fact, a paraphrase of Voltaire. But Reagan learned it secondhand from Toynbee; therefore Toynbee receives the attribution. There are a number of examples like this in The Notes. Taken collectively, the notes in this book form a raw primary source document.

  About 40 percent of The Notes published here were written on White House cards. The others were on the personal stationery cards he used as governor of California. It’s thought that others date back to his GE years in the 1950s—survivors from the lecture circuit that he brought with him to his Oval Office desk. Only a handful of the quotes and jokes weren’t handwritten on the 4-by-6 cards. A few rogue ones were penned on irregularly shaped cards, which he clearly scribbled down on the run.

  Around the time The Notes were discovered in Simi Valley, an archivist also found boxes of handwritten and typed speeches on more cards from Reagan’s years as governor, between 1967 and 1975. An ambitious Reagan historian of the future can write a fine scholarly paper mixing and matching the roles the note cards played in these varied high-profile speeches. Over the years I got to know a lot of old Reagan hands, ranging from Martin Anderson to George Bush, James Baker to Michael Deaver and Paul Laxalt. All of them used to collect good jokes to share with Reagan, as if pursuing a hobby. As speechwriter Aram Bakshian noted, “I used to spend a lot of time writing funny lines in the President’s speeches. Then I’d see them taken out by the President in favor of better lines that he would add.” Those fresh infusions of humor came from his note card collection.

  What has become clear to me since I first wrote about Reagan in The New Yorker back in 1999 is that the former president had a communications system all his own. He controlled his own game. He was always his own man. The photo album was how he kept his most essential reference material. Because we know Reagan discarded many cards over the decades, we should consider this collection his pruned and manicured game book. It must have been a nice feeling to have Jefferson, Hamilton, and even Thomas Wolfe in your arsenal. For if Reagan is remembered as the Great Communicator, these notes provide the most effective way of decoding how he perfected his craft. As a historical document, The Notes showcases Reagan as one of the wittiest residents of the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address. It becomes obvious that he found solace from both predecessors and contemporaries who had something memorable to say that reinforced his own Main Street values.

  NOVEMBER 17, 2010

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  ON THE NATION

  John Stuart Mill & Daniel Webster

  The Pres. has ltd. power. He may err without causing great mischief to the state. Cong. may decide amiss without destroying the union because the people may retract their decision by changing the members. But if the Sup. Ct. is ever compounded of imprudent men the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war.

  The Despotism America will face will degrade even men without tormenting them. Above this race of men will stand an immense and tutelary power which takes upon itself alone to secure man’s gratifications and to watch over their fate. The power which this govt. shall exert shall be absolute, minute, regular, prudent & mild. For the happiness of this race of men such a govt. willingly labors. But in return it elects to be their sole agent and the only arbiter of their happiness. The govt. provides for this race security, it foresees & supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their prim. concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of their property and sub divides their inheritance. What can remain for this races govt. but to spare them the care of thinking and the trouble of living. Thus through its regulations—

  Nothing will ruin the country if the people themselves will undertake its safety; and nothing can save it if they leave that safety in any hand but their own.

  But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished govt. Who shall rear again the well proportioned cols. of constitutional lib. Who shall frame together the skillful architecture which unites nat. sovereignty with states rts. individ. security & pub. prosperity.

  Hold on to the constitution of the U.S. of Am. & to the Rep. for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster what has happened once in 6000 yrs. may never happen again. Hold on to your const. for if the Am. Const. shall fall there will be anarchy throughout the world.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  It sometimes happens in a people among whom various opinions prevail that the balance of parties is lost & one of them obtains an irresistible preponderance, overpowers all obstacles, annihilates its opponents & the vanquished despair of success, hide their heads and are silent. (Detoc. explaining the disappearance of the Fed. Party in the 1820’s)

  Dem. will last until the people in power learn they can perpetuate themselves in power through taxation.

  Francis Lieber (Prof. U Columbia [1859] “On Civil Lib & Self Govt.”)

  Woe to the country in which pol. hypocrisy first calls the people almighty, then teaches that the voice of the people is divine, then pretends to take a mere clamor for the true voice of the people & lastly gets up the desired clamor. (Getting up the desired clamor is what we call rocket engineering)

  John Winthrop, Deck of Arbella, 1630, off Massachusetts Coast

  We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken & so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story & a byword throughout the world.

  Whittaker Chambers

  It is idle to speak of saving western civ. because western civ. is already a wreck from within. That is why we can hope to do little more now than snatch a fingernail of a saint from the rock or a handful of ashes from the fagots, & bury them secretly in a flower point against the day, ages hence, when a few men begin again to dare to believe that there was once something else, that something else is thinkable & need some evidence of what it was & the fortifying knowledge that there were those who at the great nitefall, took loving thought to preserve the tokens of hope & truth.

  Former P.M.—Australia

  I wonder if anybody has thought what the situation of the comparatively small nat’s. of the world would be if there were not in existence the U.S.—if there were not this giant country prepared to make so many sacrifices.

  Letter by Samuel Adams (1789)

  I have always been apprehensive that through the weakness of the human mind often discovered even in the wisest & best of men, or the perverseness of the interested & designing, in as well as out of govt., misconstruction would be given to the Fed. Const.—hazard the liberty, independence & happiness of the people—would gradually, but swiftly & imperceptibly run into a consolidated govt. pervading & legislating through all the States, not for federal purposes only as it professes, but in all cases whatsoever. Such a govt. would soon totally annihilate the Sovereignty of the several states not necessary to the support of the confederated Commonwealth, & sink both in despotism.

  Anonymous

  Too many Americans today have little or no faith in Social Freedom. They put their trust in govt. as the distributor of material goods preferring laws passed by their le
gislators to the works of the mkt. place.

  Sen. Fulbright at Stanford U.

  The Pres. is our moral teacher & our leader he should be freed from the shackles of ill informed pub. opinion. He is hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by a Const. system designed for an 18th century agrarian society.

  Henry Steele Commager, 1953

  Only the Pres. because he is the chief exec. is in a position to know all the facts. Only the Pres. and his advisors are in a position to weigh all the facts. Therefore the Pres. alone can lead the country.

  Alex Hamilton on Impeachment

  The greatest danger is that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties than by a real demonstration of innocence or guilt.

  Thomas Jefferson

  The germ of dissolution of our Fed. govt. is in the Fed. Judiciary, an irresponsible body working like gravity, gaining a little today & a little tomorrow, & advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction until all shall be usurped from the states & the govt. of all be consolidated into one.