In 1980, when George Bush won the Iowa Caucuses and candidate Ronald Reagan was reeling, out of money and momentum, I was approached by the Fund for a Conservative Majority about running a high-dollar independent expenditure to help boost Reagan in the next six primary states, starting with New Hampshire.
We helped Reagan turn around his campaign operations at a time when Bush was well ahead in the polls. Reagan went on to win the GOP nomination, the election, and historic recognition as one of America’s greatest presidents.
I never thought it would be possible, but forty-five years later, the Reagan Foundation and Library have gone the way of so many other formerly conservative institutions, such as the Reader's Digest Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Smith -Richardson Foundation, the Sam Walton family and turned aggressively to the Left, completely forgetting its reason for existence.
The great John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher once said, “Every organization that is not actively conservative invariably moves Left.”
The Reagan Library has thrown Reagan’s own conservatism on the ash heap of history and embraced Leftism and monied elitism and all these encompass. Recent Reagan board member additions, for example, have been loaded with wealthy donors and cronies who want their names on the Foundation’s letterhead but have no association with Reagan, his legacy, or conservatism. Alia Tutor, wife of a wealthy California construction executive, and John Momtazee, a media investment banker, have no connection to conservative causes of any kind. Susan McCaw, Elaine Chao, and Condoleezza Rice – all prominent figures in the neocon Bush ’43 Administration, have been added over the years.
Walter Benjamin was right when he noted that “You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps.” The Reagan Library has censored most conservative books about Reagan from their online gift shop and disinvited conservative authors (me for one) from their conferences while inviting myriad liberals who have no expertise on Reagan to appear at the Reagan Library.
My six books on Reagan are now gone from the Library’s shelves and online site, including my best-seller, Rendezvous with Destiny, which was cited as one of the five finest campaign books by a Wall Street Journal columnist. So too are Dr. Kiron Skinner’s two out of four books on Reagan. With my old friends Dr. Martin Anderson and his wife Annelise Anderson, who were close aides to Reagan, Skinner wrote two books on Reagan’s correspondence and one on his radio addresses, valuable for anyone who wants to understand the mind of Ronald Reagan.
Reagan’s Secret War and Decision of Greatness by the Andersons are also missing. Important books gone.
So too are the significant books by Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Milton Friedman, Ken Khachigian (one of Reagan’s oldest and one of his favorite speechwriters), Newt Gingrich, Art Laffer, Peter Schweitzer and Peter Robinson, another Reagan speechwriter and other conservatives. At the same time, the book on Nancy Reagan by ultra-leftist Karen Tumulty is prominently displayed. And a little read and badly reviewed book by Trump hater Chris Christie is for sale at the library.
I am especially disturbed, as I was, for many years, a champion of Reagan and his legacy. My wife Zorine and I worked for Reagan. I wrote many op-eds and papers and books on Reagan and his times. And the Reagan Library often called on me to help them out with problems defending our 40th President’s reputation over the years.
When Ronald Reagan, Jr. wrote a half-baked and silly book on how part of his father's brain was removed during a surgery, the Library called me to mount a public campaign to question the book's credibility. Yet it is currently for sale at the Reagan Library. There is no accounting for taste.
When a vial of President Reagan's blood was stolen during the assassination attempt, to prevent the vial from going on the market and being auctioned to the highest bidder, the Library called me asking that I create a public pressure campaign to have the blood turned over to Mrs. Reagan and then the foundation where it belonged. We were successful.
When Bill O'Reilly wrote his false book about Reagan and Alzheimer’s, the Library called me asking that I again mount a public campaign, this time to undermine the credibility of O'Reilly's book. We were wildly successful. Together with several historians, we wrote several op-eds disproving O’Reilly’s false accusations while convincing George F. Will to appear on O'Reilly’s show to dispute O'Reilly's untrue claims.
When the assassin and murderer John Hinckley was released, the Reagan Library asked me to again write pieces and make media appearances ripping Hinckley and the Leftist Clinton-appointed judge who set the killer Hinckley free. And Hinckley was a killer. When Jim Brady passed away, the coroner’s report said he was murdered.
When the Library needed to boost its display of campaign memorabilia, I gladly loaned containers of campaign materials. When I finished my important book. The Search for Reagan, I donated a great deal of research materials and books to the Library.
In my book, Last Act, I defend his legacy against the lies that he suffered from Alzheimer’s while in office. No one but the most feeble minded say anything falsely about Reagan being afflicted with this terrible disease while president anymore.
And I received many letters from Nancy Reagan thanking me for my various books.
When Donald Trump Jr. appeared at the Library to promote his book, the event was standing room only, but nonetheless was met with derision by some of the powers of the Reagan Library.
I had spoken many times at the Reagan Library, but those days are now sadly over. When the Library held a conference on the “Age of Reagan” last summer, I called offering my services as a panelist or moderator thinking they had accidently not invited me. But an intern there informed me that, while I was welcome to sit in the audience, I was not needed for any panel because I was “too old.” Ahem. At the time, I was one year younger than Reagan when he ran for president in 1980.
Besides, Agism is not very politically correct.
Apparently, the Library was embarrassed by the whole affair, as a list of the participants is no longer available on the Library’s website. But the panels were loaded with liberal academic types. Speaking of academics, I taught two well-received graduate level classes on Reagan at his alma mater, Eureka College and the Batten School at the University of Virginia.
All these efforts for the Library I was proud and glad to do and never thought about charging a dime. Yet none of those people now sanitizing and cleansing the Reagan Library of Reaganism would have a job without my efforts in 1980. They might now be working as greeters at Walmart.
This is all doubly ironic to me as Reagan dedicated his life to promoting conservatism and defeating collectivism – a labor of love. As Reagan once said, “The conservative movement believes that government is not the solution to our problems.” The modern iteration of the Reagan Library and Foundation is not the solution to our problems either.
The great Bill Buckley once said he’d rather be governed by the first four hundred names in the Boston phone book than by the entire faculty at Harvard.
And Reagan got off a good joke in his 1964 landmark speech about Harvard not being the answer to juvenile delinquency.
But as far as the Reagan Library is now concerned, it appears that Harvard in now in charge.
The final irony is President Donald Trump is carrying on the Reagan agenda more than the Reagan Library itself.
Historian and Reagan biographer Craig Shirley is the author of Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All; Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America; December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World; Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan; Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980; Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative; Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington's Mother; April 1945: The Hinge of History, as well as many articles and essays on politics and the conservative movement.
We helped Reagan turn around his campaign operations at a time when Bush was well ahead in the polls. Reagan went on to win the GOP nomination, the election, and historic recognition as one of America’s greatest presidents.
I never thought it would be possible, but forty-five years later, the Reagan Foundation and Library have gone the way of so many other formerly conservative institutions, such as the Reader's Digest Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Smith -Richardson Foundation, the Sam Walton family and turned aggressively to the Left, completely forgetting its reason for existence.
The great John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher once said, “Every organization that is not actively conservative invariably moves Left.”
The Reagan Library has thrown Reagan’s own conservatism on the ash heap of history and embraced Leftism and monied elitism and all these encompass. Recent Reagan board member additions, for example, have been loaded with wealthy donors and cronies who want their names on the Foundation’s letterhead but have no association with Reagan, his legacy, or conservatism. Alia Tutor, wife of a wealthy California construction executive, and John Momtazee, a media investment banker, have no connection to conservative causes of any kind. Susan McCaw, Elaine Chao, and Condoleezza Rice – all prominent figures in the neocon Bush ’43 Administration, have been added over the years.
Walter Benjamin was right when he noted that “You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps.” The Reagan Library has censored most conservative books about Reagan from their online gift shop and disinvited conservative authors (me for one) from their conferences while inviting myriad liberals who have no expertise on Reagan to appear at the Reagan Library.
My six books on Reagan are now gone from the Library’s shelves and online site, including my best-seller, Rendezvous with Destiny, which was cited as one of the five finest campaign books by a Wall Street Journal columnist. So too are Dr. Kiron Skinner’s two out of four books on Reagan. With my old friends Dr. Martin Anderson and his wife Annelise Anderson, who were close aides to Reagan, Skinner wrote two books on Reagan’s correspondence and one on his radio addresses, valuable for anyone who wants to understand the mind of Ronald Reagan.
Reagan’s Secret War and Decision of Greatness by the Andersons are also missing. Important books gone.
So too are the significant books by Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Milton Friedman, Ken Khachigian (one of Reagan’s oldest and one of his favorite speechwriters), Newt Gingrich, Art Laffer, Peter Schweitzer and Peter Robinson, another Reagan speechwriter and other conservatives. At the same time, the book on Nancy Reagan by ultra-leftist Karen Tumulty is prominently displayed. And a little read and badly reviewed book by Trump hater Chris Christie is for sale at the library.
I am especially disturbed, as I was, for many years, a champion of Reagan and his legacy. My wife Zorine and I worked for Reagan. I wrote many op-eds and papers and books on Reagan and his times. And the Reagan Library often called on me to help them out with problems defending our 40th President’s reputation over the years.
When Ronald Reagan, Jr. wrote a half-baked and silly book on how part of his father's brain was removed during a surgery, the Library called me to mount a public campaign to question the book's credibility. Yet it is currently for sale at the Reagan Library. There is no accounting for taste.
When a vial of President Reagan's blood was stolen during the assassination attempt, to prevent the vial from going on the market and being auctioned to the highest bidder, the Library called me asking that I create a public pressure campaign to have the blood turned over to Mrs. Reagan and then the foundation where it belonged. We were successful.
When Bill O'Reilly wrote his false book about Reagan and Alzheimer’s, the Library called me asking that I again mount a public campaign, this time to undermine the credibility of O'Reilly's book. We were wildly successful. Together with several historians, we wrote several op-eds disproving O’Reilly’s false accusations while convincing George F. Will to appear on O'Reilly’s show to dispute O'Reilly's untrue claims.
When the assassin and murderer John Hinckley was released, the Reagan Library asked me to again write pieces and make media appearances ripping Hinckley and the Leftist Clinton-appointed judge who set the killer Hinckley free. And Hinckley was a killer. When Jim Brady passed away, the coroner’s report said he was murdered.
When the Library needed to boost its display of campaign memorabilia, I gladly loaned containers of campaign materials. When I finished my important book. The Search for Reagan, I donated a great deal of research materials and books to the Library.
In my book, Last Act, I defend his legacy against the lies that he suffered from Alzheimer’s while in office. No one but the most feeble minded say anything falsely about Reagan being afflicted with this terrible disease while president anymore.
And I received many letters from Nancy Reagan thanking me for my various books.
When Donald Trump Jr. appeared at the Library to promote his book, the event was standing room only, but nonetheless was met with derision by some of the powers of the Reagan Library.
I had spoken many times at the Reagan Library, but those days are now sadly over. When the Library held a conference on the “Age of Reagan” last summer, I called offering my services as a panelist or moderator thinking they had accidently not invited me. But an intern there informed me that, while I was welcome to sit in the audience, I was not needed for any panel because I was “too old.” Ahem. At the time, I was one year younger than Reagan when he ran for president in 1980.
Besides, Agism is not very politically correct.
Apparently, the Library was embarrassed by the whole affair, as a list of the participants is no longer available on the Library’s website. But the panels were loaded with liberal academic types. Speaking of academics, I taught two well-received graduate level classes on Reagan at his alma mater, Eureka College and the Batten School at the University of Virginia.
All these efforts for the Library I was proud and glad to do and never thought about charging a dime. Yet none of those people now sanitizing and cleansing the Reagan Library of Reaganism would have a job without my efforts in 1980. They might now be working as greeters at Walmart.
This is all doubly ironic to me as Reagan dedicated his life to promoting conservatism and defeating collectivism – a labor of love. As Reagan once said, “The conservative movement believes that government is not the solution to our problems.” The modern iteration of the Reagan Library and Foundation is not the solution to our problems either.
The great Bill Buckley once said he’d rather be governed by the first four hundred names in the Boston phone book than by the entire faculty at Harvard.
And Reagan got off a good joke in his 1964 landmark speech about Harvard not being the answer to juvenile delinquency.
But as far as the Reagan Library is now concerned, it appears that Harvard in now in charge.
The final irony is President Donald Trump is carrying on the Reagan agenda more than the Reagan Library itself.
Historian and Reagan biographer Craig Shirley is the author of Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All; Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America; December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World; Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan; Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980; Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative; Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington's Mother; April 1945: The Hinge of History, as well as many articles and essays on politics and the conservative movement.
