Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. There may be more to Ronald Reagan and his legacy than what most Americans think, at least Max Boot seems to think so. Max is an historian, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for the Washington Post where he covers national security. He joins me to discuss his latest book, Reagan: His Life and Legend, which delves into the 40th president’s life from his time in Hollywood to the Oval Office to his death and the legacy he left behind. Max, welcome back to the show.

Max Boot:

It’s a pleasure to be back.

Preet Bharara:

So congratulations on the book.

Max Boot:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

We have so much to cover given the size of the legacy, the length of the life, and the length of the book, frankly.

Max Boot:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

So I’m going to try to pick my spots. For folks who are listening who are a little younger than we are, Reagan was the president when I was in high school up until my sophomore year in college. So my formative years becoming aware of the world of politics and government was all about Reagan, but a lot of people did not have that experience. Could you explain something that seems unfathomable today that a President of the United States of one party or the other at his height had the popularity that he had? As we’ve mentioned on the podcast before, I don’t think any president, given the polarization of the country, could come anywhere close to winning 49 states. That’s exactly what he did in 1984. Explain the depth and breadth of his popularity and why that was so.

Max Boot:

Yeah, it kind of seems like science fiction today, right? When America is so polarized.

Preet Bharara:

It seemed bananas.

Max Boot:

Yes, 49 states, wow. That’s a heck of an achievement. A lot of it had to do with the way that he appealed to people across partisan boundaries. Part of it also had to do with the fact that the country was just in general, much less polarized than it is today. Because in the 1980s, there were actually liberal and conservative wings of both parties, which again seems like crackers, bananas today, where all the conservatives today are in the Republican Party, all the liberals in the Democratic Party. But back then, the political landscape was much more cross-cutting. And so Reagan was able to do so much in Congress by working with so many Democrats including to pass his major economic initiatives with tax cuts and spending cuts. He had to pass those through a House that was run by Democrats. And in fact, Democrats ran the house during his entire time as President, so he had to work with Tip O’Neill, the House Democratic speaker. He had to forge alliances, and he did that very effectively.

Part of what made Reagan so successful was that he was such an effective communicator with such an uplifting vision of America as a shining city on a hill. And that was something that appealed to Democrats as well as Republicans. But I think what also made him so effective and popular was that he was also fundamentally pragmatic, although he could be very ideological on the campaign trail in office, he was very pragmatic and he often said that he would rather get 80% of what he wanted one day and come back for more the next day than refuse to take yes for an answer. He had nothing but disdain for Republicans who go over the cliff with their flags flying. And that was a quote he often used. Of course, today the Republican Party doesn’t even try to, or at least the national leadership, Trump and others don’t even try to reach out to Democrats. They view compromise as being a four-letter word. That wasn’t Reagan’s perspective. He believed in working with Democrats to get things done, and that helped to account for his popularity across partisan lines.

Preet Bharara:

Is it all attributable to what Tip O’Neill used to say and write about that he and President Reagan would have a drink once in a while?

Max Boot:

Well, they would have a drink every once in a while, but it wasn’t the case that Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan were great friends. They were actually kind of frenemies and Tip O’Neill-

Preet Bharara:

Well, frenemy is better than what we have now.

Max Boot:

That’s true. That’s true. I mean, Reagan and Tip O’Neill were not calling each other vermin or some of these other names that get exchanged. They didn’t see each other as a threat to democracy. They certainly had kind a shared, a little bit of similarity, and they would always emphasize their Irish American roots. And they both were kind of genial guys who were not intellectuals but enjoyed swapping a good story, but they could also be very tough on one another. In particular, Tip O’Neill was very tough on Ronald Reagan. He viewed Reagan as somebody who was really helping the wealthy at the expense of the country’s workers and he wasn’t afraid to say that. I mean, Reagan didn’t normally engage in invective, but he could be pretty irked by some of Tip O’Neill’s criticisms. But I think at the end of the day, they were both practical politicians and knew how to get things done and realized how to count votes. And they were both interested in passing legislation. That ultimately enabled them to work together without being best friends or even having very different worldviews, but still to work for the country.

Preet Bharara:

Speaking of political coalitions, there was a famous category of voter that we heard a lot about during the Reagan years. We call them Reagan Democrats. I don’t remember anyone talking about Bush Democrats or Obama Republicans or Trump Democrats, unless I guess you include Bobby Kennedy Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard. What was a Reagan Democrat and how important was that to his winning formula?

Max Boot:

Well, Reagan Democrats, again, this goes back to the fact that in the eighties there was a conservative wing of the Democratic Party, which really no longer exists, and Reagan was able to appeal to that conservative wing. Now, a lot of the ways that he appealed to them were not things that we would necessarily be supportive of because a lot of it was really kind of a backlash against civil rights legislation, for example, which Reagan certainly embodied. And a lot of the Reagan Democrats were white Southerners or working-class ethnic voters in the Midwest and Northeast who were very upset with civil rights legislation, but also kind of generally upset with social trends and society at large, intended to blame Democrats for that and thought that Democrats were insufficiently patriotic. And so they loved the way that Reagan invoked American patriotism and talked about how great the country was, which was very significant after all the turmoil and troubles of the 1970s.

But he was basically able to woo a lot of these folks from the Democratic Party into the Republican Party. Remember, a lot of very conservative people in Congress like Phil Gramm and others started out as Democrats and then became Republicans. But now, I mean, you just can’t do that kind of cross-partisan appeal anymore, in part because Trump and people like that don’t even try. But also just because if you’re a Republican trying to appeal to conservative Democrats, there’s just not a lot of them. Or if you are a Democrat trying to appeal to liberal Republicans, there’s just not a lot of them because the people who are Reagan Democrats in the 1980s are probably just Republicans today.

Preet Bharara:

One of the bits of advocacy that Reagan did on a regular basis, and what he’s famous for was criticizing government, criticizing big government. That was a big part of his platform and he’s known for it. What would you say decades later was the impact of that strategy? Is there a subset of Americans in part because of Ronald Reagan’s advocacy who were forever skeptical of, bitter about or anti-government?

Max Boot:

I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I mean, Reagan came into office at a time when skepticism about government was already pretty high. I mean, this was after the failures of Vietnam and Watergate, all these numerous disasters

Preet Bharara:

And Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Max Boot:

Yeah, Jimmy Carter’s presidency, seen as a failed president at the time. So faith in government was already falling, but it certainly felt further under Ronald Reagan. He often harshly criticized the very government that he led. I mean, he often joked that the most alarming words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” The weird thing about Reagan was he was very anti-government while he was outside of government, but he was also very anti-government while he was running the government. And I actually ran across-

Preet Bharara:

Which he expanded, did he not? His legacy on reducing the size of government is what in fact, as opposed to the rhetoric?

Max Boot:

Yeah, he didn’t really reduce the size of government. You could maybe argue he reduced the rate of growth of government, but government continued to grow under Reagan. But I think he certainly undermined, further undermined confidence in government. Some of the things that he did kind of inadvertently undermined confidence in government, like the Iran-Contra affair where his aides sold weapons to Iran and then secretly funneled the proceeds to the Nicaraguan Contras. Huge scandal and he was probably unaware of the diversion of money to the Contras, but that certainly heightened cynicism, as did various scandals at the Housing and Urban Affairs Department or the S&L bailout, where in the 1980s there was a bipartisan push to deregulate savings and loans while keeping their federal guarantees, which led to disasters with risky investments leading to S&L failures, massive bailouts.

So these were things where Ronald Reagan was largely oblivious. I mean, he was focused on a few big priorities. He was oblivious to a lot of these scandals and managerial failures, but you could argue that inadvertently, he certainly further undermined confidence in government with all the scandals and failures that occurred on his watch, as well as with this constant rhetoric of denigrating the government. I was actually, I ran across a very interesting letter written to him by a career civil servant who actually wrote to him, “Mr. president, I’ve served this country faithfully for years, and why do you keep making fun of me? Why do you keep denigrating my service to this country?” And Reagan didn’t really have any good answer.

Preet Bharara:

You’ve written, obviously about Trump. You were a very vocal conservative. You now consider yourself to be politically independent. And the question does arise in light of this book, how do we think of Reagan? How do we think of the path, whether it’s a straight line, a dotted line, or no line at all between Reagan and Trump? You write in your book, “Did Reaganism contain the seeds of Trumpism? That is a question a modern biographer cannot avoid.” What’s a modern biographer’s answer to that question?

Max Boot:

Well, I think that Reaganism in some ways did contain the seeds of Trumpism, even though Reagan and Trump were very different types and very different personalities, very different politics. I mean, remember Reagan was pro-immigration, pro-trade, pro-NATO, anti-Russia he had a very optimistic vision of America as a shiny city on a hill. He would’ve never depicted America as this apocalyptic hellscape-

Preet Bharara:

Although, although am I not correct that the first person to advocate for the phrase “Make America Great Again” was Reagan, not Trump?

Max Boot:

It was, although the irony is that, and Reagan did use that slogan in 1980, although the irony is if you listen to what he said, he consistently said that it was actually immigrants who made America great.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Max Boot:

And he talked to that campaign about lowering barriers between the U.S. and Mexico to allow more people to go back and forth, ultimately the genesis of NAFTA. So there were huge differences.

Preet Bharara:

Did Reagan at any point, because you’ve done exhaustive research, how often did Reagan accuse Haitians of eating pets?

Max Boot:

Pretty sure the answer is zero. I mean, in fact, he was often paying tribute to the great contributions of immigrants, and he very keenly felt that his own family, just a few generations before, his father’s side of the family had come from Ireland, his mother’s from England. So he was very-

Preet Bharara:

Didn’t he on his last day in office, talk about the glory of immigrants?

Max Boot:

Yeah. His farewell address, included a tribute to immigrants, which completely impossible to imagine.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s different.

Max Boot:

Very, very different, very different. But I think there are some historical through lines, starting with the obvious similarities that these were both people who had hosted nationally televised TV shows before becoming president. They were populist, harshly critical of the government. They both played to white backlash politics, both denigrated the government as we discussed, although Reagan did not use the phrase “deep state”, but he certainly saw the government as a malevolent force. They both mishandled pandemics, AIDS for Reagan, COVID for Trump. And I think there was also in other historical through line is that Reagan also pursued economic policies that wound up greatly exacerbating income disparity in this country. His policies really benefited the wealthy far more than the middle class or the working class, whether it was tax cuts or anti-union policies or relaxing antitrust enforcement. He wasn’t focused on the impact of those growing income disparities. But they have really served, I think to undermine trust in the government and really fostered populism and even extremism on both the left and the right. And that’s something that Trump takes advantage of today.

Preet Bharara:

But take for example, a specific policy proposal like tariffs that Donald Trump advocates for, doesn’t seem to really understand and would’ve been complete and total anathema to the free trade guy, Ronald Reagan. Now, I know that some people have no memory of Ronald Reagan, but there are many who do who are Republicans. Have they just changed their minds on issues like tariffs? Are they just beholden to Trump whatever he advocates for, or is something else going on? It’s kind of confusing to understand. not with saying the line that you said that can be drawn between Reagan and Trump, that you could have somebody who’s so different.

Max Boot:

Yeah, no, I mean, although there are some continuities, I would argue that differences are greater than the continuities, and that’s certainly one of them. And Reagan was somebody who lived the Great Depression, and he had very personal memories of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which made the depression far worse. And so he was always a very committed free trader. Again, he started the NAFTA negotiating process, which Trump later denounced as the worst deal ever. And in the 1980s, by the way, Trump as a property developer was very critical of Reagan. He was taking out newspaper ads claiming that the Japanese were eating our lunch and were laughing at us because of Ronald Reagan’s policies. So yeah, it is kind of puzzling that the Republican Party has embraced Trump.

I mean, part of it, I think is that Nativists and anti-free trade, protectionists, all these kinds of sentiments were in the Republican Party all along. They just were not being given voice by people like Ronald Reagan and Trump has tapped into that. But I think it ultimately comes down to the power of personality. I think that was actually the most important component of both Reagan’s and Trump’s rise, that they both had these kinds of powerful personalities, very charismatic presidents, both guys who were very good on TV, and I think the Republican Party in both cases kind of fell in love with them and then fell in line behind them. And so even people who have very different views often keep quite about those views because they don’t want to be at odds with the party’s leader. And I think there’s still a lot of pro-Ukraine pro-free trade Republicans left today, but you just don’t hear a lot about them because Trump just so dominates the party. But Trump loses and is gone from the scene, perhaps you might see a different Republican Party in the future.

Preet Bharara:

I remember growing up and hearing people on the Democratic side speak with great frustration about the “Teflon President.” I don’t know if that phrase had been applied to prior presidents, the point being that nothing really sticks to him. He retains goodwill for long periods of time. One could argue that also applies to Trump, not broadly across 49 states, but within his base. Is there some point of comparison on that?

Max Boot:

Yeah, no, I think that’s true. I mean, with Trump, it’s kind of shocking the kind of misbehavior and crazy statements that he can get away with and never shake the base’s affection for him. But I think in the case of Trump, the cost of that is that he never gets above 50% support. He never even reaches 50% support because he alienates so much of the country. Whereas Reagan, the Teflon President, he maintained very high, well over 50% support throughout most of his presidency. He was very popular, and a lot of Democrats as well as Republicans ignored criticism of him because fundamentally, they liked the guy. They had an affection for him. He had such a pleasing personality, and he won over so many people. So I think the Teflon effect with Reagan was much more widespread. With the case of Trump, it’s really truly limited to his base.

Preet Bharara:

One of the things you talk about in the book and that you made reference to earlier in the conversation was that Reagan was not really an in the weeds guy. He was not a technocrat. He was a bit detached. Now, there are a lot of folks who criticize that and say, “Well, he wasn’t engaged. You want a president who’s engaged.” And yet whatever side you’re on, you have to acknowledge at least electorally at a minimum, he had enormous success with a policy and an approach of detachment. Is there an argument that that’s the best way to govern, is to allow people you appoint to be in the weeds and figure stuff out while you set the broad goals and agendas and priorities for the nation. Do you have any view of his management style and what that says about how others should manage the vast and almost impossible job of the presidency?

Max Boot:

Well, I would say about Reagan is that he was a great leader, but a poor manager. He really knew how to inspire the country and to set priorities. That style worked very well when he had very effective subordinates, as he did, for example, during his first term, when Jim Baker was the White House chief of staff, one of the most effective White House chief of staff ever. But Reagan, because he was so disengaged from the actual day-to-day management of the government was much more at the mercy of his aides than many other presidents who are deeper into the weeds. And so-

Preet Bharara:

He actually had a deep state?

Max Boot:

I mean, he-

Preet Bharara:

I mean, that’s kind of what you’re saying, Max.

Max Boot:

Yeah, I mean, to some extent. I mean, he certainly had subordinates who often took decisions in his name and didn’t necessarily check with him because they thought he would be okay with the broad parameters. And again, that worked well when you had subordinates who knew what they were doing. It didn’t work so well in the second term when Jim Baker and Don Regan was in the Treasury secretary decided to swap jobs and Reagan kind of casually allowed them to do that. And then Don Regan turned out to be a horrible White House chief of staff whose presence led to the Iran-Contra affair, the worst scandal of the Reagan presidency. So Reagan’s very aloof, hands-off approach worked very well when he had subordinates who knew what they were doing, but when he didn’t, there was hell to pay.

Preet Bharara:

What’s the legacy of Reagan’s approach and attitude and strategy with respect to the Soviet Union?

Max Boot:

Well, I think at the end of the day, Reagan’s strategy of the Soviet Union was a huge success. I mean, he was not a huge success in his first term because he tried a very confrontational approach, talked about the evil empire, raised defense spending, launched the Strategic Defense Initiative. All of that ratcheted up tensions, but didn’t actually produce results. I think his strategy really paid off in the second term when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. That was really the turning point, because Gorbachev was a black swan. He was somebody who rose to the top of the communist system, but lost faith in the system and wanted to reform it. And Reagan’s genius, his pragmatism was that he was to discern that Gorbachev was somebody he could work with. And he did work with him, even though many conservative Republicans were very suspicious of Gorbachev. But Reagan met him in Geneva in 1985 and formed a partnership with Gorbachev to peacefully end the Cold War. And that was a monumental, massive achievement.

I mean, this was a conflict that could have led to World War III, and there were dangerous points in the Reagan presidency itself in 1983, but Reagan and Gorbachev walked the world back from the brink, working very cooperatively. I mean, the irony is that today there’s this kind of conservative myth-making around Reagan, which only focuses on his first-term policy of confrontation of the Soviet Union without realizing that his real success came with the more conciliatory and cooperative approach in his second term. And I think that’s ultimately his greatest legacy.

Preet Bharara:

What do you say to people who ask, what was the reason for, and the foundation for Reagan’s, I think widely panned terrible approach and strategy when it comes to AIDS? That crisis began during his presidency. Could you spend a minute on how he handled it and how history looks back on that?

Max Boot:

Yeah, that was one of the great failures of his presidency, although it was not often commented upon at the time. Democrats in the 1980s were not attacking Reagan on AIDS. They were attacking him on budget deficits, which in hindsight don’t look so terrible. But there was this horrible pandemic going on at the time that Reagan largely ignored. He didn’t even talk about AIDS until 1987 while tens of thousands of people were dying. And a lot of it was just rooted in homophobic prejudice, although he probably had less than a lot of straight men at the time. Nancy had a lot of gay friends, but Reagan was a product of the early 20th century small town Midwest. And so he would speculate that maybe AIDS was God’s punishment to homosexuals. Things that sound bonkers or very offensive to us now. But those kinds of prejudices were pretty widespread at the time.

So he largely ignored it. He was just oblivious to it. The people who were actually trying to get stuff done, one of them was C. Everett Koop, who was his surgeon general. And the other one was a fellow named Anthony Fauci, who was already the director of the National Institutes of Health. And Fauci and Koop actually worked with moderates in Congress to get some funding for AIDS, but they had to do that in a complete absence of presidential leadership.

Preet Bharara:

Did we, as a nation, or at least the opposition, underestimate Reagan’s intelligence?

Max Boot:

I think there has been some underestimation as well as overestimation of Reagan’s intelligence. There were people at the time like Clark Clifford, the Democratic elder statesman who called Reagan an amiable dunce. But in subsequent years, there’s also been overcorrection with some people on the right claiming he was some kind of Machiavellian genius who engineered everything.

Preet Bharara:

Well, it wasn’t that. But I feel like over the years and learning more, I mean, I had a lot of problems even as a teenager with his policies and the way he dealt with many issues and the race baiting and the dog whistles and the white backlash stuff. But I have, and maybe this is wrong to have happened, I have had a greater respect for his thoughtfulness and his writing ability. Somebody once told me, if you go back and listen to his radio programs before he got into politics I think, or maybe he was in between stints in politics, you would remember better than I, that they were actually, whether you agreed with him or not, well-crafted and reflected somebody who had a decent amount of brain power. Fair?

Max Boot:

Oh, absolutely, yes. I mean, he was by no means an intellectual, and he was not very up on the details of a lot of policies, but he was interested in issues. He was a voracious reader, and he was actually a very elegant writer. I read all of his letters that are extant, and he was a terrific letter writer who often knew exactly what to say to somebody under any circumstances. He also had a long career as his own speechwriter, because of course, he had speechwriters as president, but before he became president, he was often his own speechwriter going back to the 1950s when he was working for General Electric and speaking at plants and writing down talking points on index cards and improvising his speeches as he went along. And in fact, Stu Spencer, who was his longtime political consultant, going back to 1966, Stu actually told me that Reagan was the best speechwriter he ever met. Not just speech giver, but best speechwriter.

He was such an effective communicator. He knew just what to say to connect with an audience. And his radio addresses in the late 1970s were an example of that where he wrote a lot of those scripts himself, and it always was very effective, because remember his whole life, going back to his days as a sportscaster in the 1930s in Iowa, his whole life was communicating orally, whether it was on radio or film or television. He knew how to get his points across very, very effectively. And so he was very, very good at that.

Preet Bharara:

What was his best speech during his presidency, and why was it the speech he gave after the challenge or disaster?

Max Boot:

Well, there’s certainly-

Preet Bharara:

Because that’s mine. That’s my favorite.

Max Boot:

I mean, there were a handful of landmark speeches that he gave that are well remembered. There was the Westminster address in 1982 where he predicted that the communism would wind up on the dust heap of history. There was his Normandy speech in 1984 on the anniversary of D-Day where he paid eloquent tribute to the boys of Pointe du Hoc. But then there was also the Challenger speech, which you just mentioned, where only hours after the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up carrying including a teacher as well as the crew. And he gave a very brief address to the nation that paid very eloquent tribute to the astronauts and talked about the importance of continuing space exploration.

Ronald Reagan:

We’ll continue our quest in space. There would be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews, and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here. Our hopes and our journeys continue.

Max Boot:

It was interesting because after that speech Tip O’Neill, we were talking about Tip O’Neill earlier, Tip O’Neill recorded that he had never met a president who was as effective a communicator as Reagan, that he perhaps rivaled even Reagan’s boyhood hero FDR. So even his political opponents like Tip O’Neill were incredibly impressed by speeches like the Challenger one.

Preet Bharara:

We’re running out of time. Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you, did you learn anything that surprised you about his relationship with his wife, Nancy Reagan, a partnership and a marriage that was much commented upon, and the consensus about it is that it was truly extraordinary, but did you learn anything new or different in your research about that relationship?

Max Boot:

Well, I think the two big things that I learned, one is that it was truly a love match, and it was kind of touching to see that even though they were married for nearly half a century, they were still very much in love from beginning to end. And even as President Reagan greatly missed Nancy when she was gone from the White House. But I think what I really learned is how important and central Nancy Reagan was to the political rise of Ronald Reagan. In fact, I had Reagan aides who tell me that Reagan would’ve never been governor and president if it hadn’t been for Nancy Reagan. And that wasn’t because she had any political ambitions or any political ideology. She really didn’t. Her whole worldview was about helping her husband Ronnie Reagan to achieve what he wanted, which in this case, of course, was political office.

But she was instrumental to that because Ronald Reagan himself tended to be very trusting kind of pollyannish, always assumed the best of people, hated confrontation, wasn’t really adept at hiring or firing. So she did a lot of those things for him. She, as one of his aides, put it to me, Nancy Reagan was kind of the human resources department of Ronald Reagan. I think that she was the one who got rid of aides who were not serving him well, like for example, Don Regan or many others. So she played a critical integral role in his entire political career, and largely helped him to become not only governor and president, but also a much more successful governor and president than he probably would’ve been on his own.

Preet Bharara:

Well, congratulations again on the book, Sir, Max Boot. The book is Reagan: His Life and Legend. Thanks so much for being on the show again.

Max Boot:

Thanks so much for having me on, Preet. Always a pleasure.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines become a member of the CAFE Insider members. Get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney, Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, Stay Tuned.