All language subtitles for BBC.Storyville.2011.American.Idol.Reagan.PDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.Forum_track3_[eng]

This programme contains
some strong language

Hello.

In the traditional
motion picture story,

the villains are usually defeated.
The ending is a happy one.

I can make no such promise for
the picture you're about to watch.

# Mine eyes have seen the glory

# Of the coming of the Lord

# He is trampling out the vintage

# Where the grapes of wrath
are stored. #

Ronald Reagan was more
than a historic figure.

He was a providential man
who came along just when our nation
and the world most needed him.

Ronald Reagan was a president

who inspired his nation
and transformed the world.

We have lost a great president,
a great American and a great man.

As his vice-president
for eight years,
I learned more from Ronald Reagan

than from anyone I encountered
in all my years of public life.

We know, as he always said, that
America's best days are ahead of us.

But with Ronald Reagan's passing,
some very fine days are behind
us and that is worth our tears.

May God bless Ronald Reagan
and the country he loved.

# Smile, though your heart is aching

# Smile, even though it's breaking

# When there are clouds in the sky

# You'll get by. #

Ronald Reagan changed
the conservative movement.

He changed the Republican Party.

Through that, he changed the country
and through that, the world.

Happy birthday, Ronald Reagan!

We live in a nation
President Reagan restored
and a world he helped to save.

Ronald Reagan's
principles would apply now.

We're still living
in the Reagan era today.

Let's talk about Ronald Reagan.

He would have adored being with him.

He was an extraordinarily
beautiful human being.

Just always a gentleman.A very
attractive man. You liked him.

I did not say anything
about Ronald Reagan.

So you wanted to see him succeed.

Who is your favourite
Republican president?

You talked
about admiring Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan came with an
unshakeable set of principles.

Ronald Reagan would say, as I do,
that Washington is broken.

Ronald Reagan would endorse
any of us... Ronald Reagan, 1976...

Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan.

Argh!

Some day it might be worthwhile
to find out how images are created

and even more worthwhile to learn
how false images come into being.

All of us have grown up accepting
with little question certain images

as accurate portraits
of public figures.

Some living, some dead.

Seldom, if ever, do we ask if
the images are true to the original.

Even less do we question
how the images were created.

This is more true
of presidents in our country

because of the intense spotlight
which centres on their every move.

Ronald Reagan is still seen through
the prism of people's prejudices.

Either for or against.

There's nothing wrong with America
that together we can't fix.

We don't know
who the real Ronald Reagan is.

We have plenty of testimony
from people who served him

who say, "I never understood
what made him tick. "

Why don't you ask questions
that can be answered yes or no?

There was a kind of a wall or a veil
between Reagan and everybody else.

The old reactions
and memories of Ronald Reagan
are not gone, but faded.

And history's judgment is yet to
be made. Going live, and action!

Welcome, fellow Republicans.
Brother Hibbert

will read a report on our efforts
to rename everything
after Ronald Reagan.

All Millard Fillmore schools
are now Ronald Reagans.

The Mississippi River
is now the Mississippi Reagan.

And my good friend Frankenstein
is now Franken-Reagan. Excellent!

My name is Grover Norquist.
I created the Reagan Legacy Project

with the goal of naming
things after President Reagan.

Something big in all 50 states,

something significant
in all 3,000-plus counties
in the United States.

It was our project
to rename Washington National
Airport, Reagan Airport.

I remember Reagan saying,
"Stand up and fight for what's right
or sit back and let evil prevail. "

To this day, I love him
for his honesty and integrity.
I wish he was here right now.

I am Michael Reagan.

The son of Ronald Reagan in
his first marriage to Jane Wyman.

In 2001, my sister, Maureen,
was dying from melanoma.

She says, "I'm not going to be
here for much longer and, Michael,
the legacy needs to continue. "

I promised my sister I would
carry on the legacy of my father.

Days and nights like this make
me feel so happy

that when I was available
for adoption, the Carter family
wasn't also looking.

LAUGHTER

Washington, Jefferson, Madison,
Abraham Lincoln.

Ronald Reagan fits right in that
line of American iconic leaders.

And I'm lucky to be the executive
director of the Reagan Legacy
Foundation promoting,

celebrating the life,
leadership and legacy
of Ronald Reagan around the world.

If you don't
remind people who he was, a lot
of people want to rewrite history.

To recreate Ronald Reagan
in their own image or likeness,

instead of what Ronald Reagan
truly, truly was.

Welcome home!

My name is William Kleinknecht.

I've been a newspaper
reporter for 25 years.

I came to Dixon, Illinois,
Ronald Reagan's hometown,

to try and answer
a very interesting question.

Why it is that people in communities
like this across the country

continue to be so devoted to him,
why they love him so much.

Ronald Reagan helped to bring
America back to its roots.

Family, home, the community.

He was a true American
with great ideas, as you well know,

Iike when he said, "Mr Gorbachev,
tear down that wall. "

If you look at Ronald Reagan's life,
what you see is a man who,

from the most ordinary beginnings,

grew and grew and grew

to become one of the
most powerful men of the century.

My father saw himself
as a real child of America.

He clearly had
a love affair with America.

That "shining city on a hill"
business that he talked about,
he meant it. He felt that.

I think he was a man who saw
himself as a quintessentially
American kind of guy.

Here is a kid who grew up in not
fabulously wealthy circumstances,
by any stretch of imagination.

His father was a shoe salesman at
the time when he wasn't drinking.

The thing that is most interesting

is that the successful child
of an alcoholic

is able to repress
all of the tough stuff
and concentrate on what's positive.

I think those were formative
years for him in a lot of ways.

We are sitting here by a swimming
pool. There is a lifeguard stand
in the background.

As a young man, my father
was a lifeguard at Lowell Park
on the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois.

You can see he's kind
of squinting into the camera.

Maybe it's because the sun is shining
on his face, but maybe
it's because he can't see anything.

He's terribly near-sighted.

I've thought about this a lot,
just in relation to his life,
not necessarily in relation

to his governance or anything,
but just what he was like as a human
being, what informed his character.

Over the course of 7 years,
my father pulled 77 people
out of that river.

He grew up seeing himself as
somebody who saved people's lives.

I think that carried through into
his later years as well, the sort
of roles he liked to play in movies.

He wanted to be the hero.

What's your name? Gip. George Gip.

You can take this
all the way to the presidency.
He wanted to save America.

He saw America in trouble.
He saw America drowning.

Tax rates too high. Lost confidence.
Our standing in the world diminished.

America needed rescuing and he was
the guy to do something about it.

His dad's awesome!

Thank you, guys.

Well, this is a red, white
and blue cupcake, it looks like.

That's very nice of you.
Thank you, guys.

So what exactly was that?
That was people coming over

and obviously thinking
very warm thoughts about
my father, as many people still do.

How do you do, everybody?

I'd like to introduce myself.

My name is Ronald Reagan.

A few months ago,
I was a sports announcer on
a radio station in Des Moines, Iowa.

One day I ran into
one of these movie talent scouts.

I think I caught him off guard
because the next thing I knew

I was taking a screen test
for Warner Brothers.

I guess it was OK. At least
I liked Hollywood, so here I am.

I'll see you in the movies.

Reagan is a man who seems
to have gotten lucky
at several points in his life.

But if you look at each instance,

you'll discover he worked hard
to make that luck happen.

APPLAUSE

Judging from the applause,
I take it that you are a performer?
Duh, duh, duh...

It's important to understand him
as a person, but it's important
to understand him as a performer.

This young man
is intensely competitive.

And you see that from
the moment he leaves college.

In the midst of the Depression,
he talks himself into
a good job as a radio announcer

and becomes a regional celebrity
while he's still in his 20s.

I'll be back with more hot news
and just between
you and the microphone...

From that moment on,
Reagan is on the move.

He went to Hollywood with
the Chicago Cubs baseball team as
a sportscaster for spring training.

But at some point, Reagan decided
to look up an old girlfriend,
Joy Hodges.

# I can't give you anything
but a song and a smile... #

She got him a screen test
at Warner Brothers simply
on the strength of his good looks.

Hey, why don't you leave
those off for a while?

I think he always
wanted to be an actor.

I've been waiting a long time
to get even with you.

He identified heavily
as a performer, as a craftsman.

Randy! Where's the rest of me?

Frank. Randy!

Yes, Drake?

Hollywood, when he first arrived,
was the golden age.

Celebrities on every hand.
Flashlights flashing.
The crowd cheering.

A lot of the movies that were being
made reflected America in a way that
I think he would have approved of.

As soon as I can afford to build us
a home, I aim to marry the girl.
Marry her?

My intentions are honourable.

He wasn't a great actor,
but he was a good actor.
He was a very good-looking guy.

You've got to admit.
This is one good-looking guy.

I'm the one they're all talking
about. Do you see him? Delicious!

I started
as sort of an Errol Flynn of the Bs.

You don't seriously figure
on getting away with this.

I made 8 of those in 11 months.

All you have to do is send
a telegram to Washington.

I was brave, but in a kind
of a low-budget fashion.

Think I'll lose, huh?
Good luck, son.

Most of those pictures were the kind
where there was always a line where
I put my hat on the back of my head,

picked up the phone
and said, "Get me the City desk.

"I got a story that'll
crack this town wide open. "

JB? Boy, have I got a story!

We interrupt this programme
to bring you a news bulletin.

The Japanese have attacked
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air.

Hollywood's most famous movie stars
leave the film capital to help
the national war effort.

Reagan was a reserve officer
at the beginning of World War II.

He regretted extremely the fact
that he did not see military action.

But it really wasn't his fault.
He was as blind as a bat.

He was so blind that
they figured that he wouldn't
be able to distinguish

a Japanese soldier
from an American soldier
at a distance of more than 12 feet.

What's up? See something?

It's a plane all right.

What sort of a plane?
Friend or enemy?

He spent the rest
of the war working in Hollywood
at the First Motion Picture Unit.

This is the Army Air Force's
First Motion Picture Unit.

Here are produced training,
operational and inspirational films.

Glad to you have you with us,
Lieutenant. Glad to be here, Major.

We can certainly use you.

We were waging a war against
a demonic force in Nazi Germany.

But we were making
propaganda films and Reagan
was making propaganda films.

How was the flight over?

Well, I made it, sir, with the
help of a P40. You like our P40s?

Oh, yes, sir. It's a nice airplane.

Reagan came to see the power
of the movies.

I guess we'll hold
Christmas service in this hole.

And the power
of acting to move people.

Take over the guns, Tony!

For most of his early career,
of course, the enemy was fascism.

It's Hitler and Mussolini
and Imperial Japan.

But then, as the war winds down
and the late '40s and '50s
are upon us,

the new enemy is communism.

Mary!

Before the war, Reagan had been
an up-and-coming young actor,

but now that it was over,
his career began to languish.

Attaboy, Bonzo!

He did see his film career
starting to wane.

You can hit the state highway
seven miles through there.

The big parts
were not coming his way.

It was the post-war era,
where suddenly heroes

become anti-heroes and it's more
James Dean, as opposed to John Wayne.

But at the same time,
he was rediscovering
himself as a politician.

Goodwill ambassador
of the motion picture industry...

He became President
of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947.

He took another role, which
prefigured his later political roles.

I can't be the performer in this way,
I'll be the performer in another way.

Ronald Reagan,
the Screen Actors Guild President,

follows with a statement
of action against communism.

Reagan changed, politically,
very rapidly after World War II.

This is Ronald Reagan
speaking to you from Hollywood.

You know me
as a motion picture actor.

But tonight, I'm just a citizen,
pretty concerned about
the national election next month

and impatient with those
promises the Republicans made

before they got control of Congress.

A lot of people might
not realise that Ronald Reagan

started his political
career as a Liberal Democrat.

He worshipped FDR in the 1940s,
he thought the New Deal
was a great thing for the country.

The New Deal had bailed his family
out during the Great Depression.

When he went to Hollywood, he was
known around all the Hollywood lots

as a "haemophiliac liberal",
his own words.

Well, I suppose I really
kind of converted myself.

I saw a transition. I saw myself
making speeches about problems

besetting the picture business
tax wise and economically.

Hollywood, today the scene
of violence on the labour front.

As President of the Screen Actors
Guild, Reagan got involved

in a strike which
was largely brought about
by communist agitation.

It was one specific meeting
that he used to talk about

that began to changes
his attitudes.

Changed them practically overnight.

One screenwriter stood up
and said that he personally,
if he had to choose,

would choose the constitution of the
Soviet Union in preference to the
constitution of the United States.

And by the time that long strike
came to an end, Reagan
was a militant anti-communist.

A startling story from
Lenin in 1914, with 13 followers,

to the present,
with one billion people

under the control of
a comparative handful of communists.

In the 1950s, the FBI
was pouring a lot of resources

into its investigation of communist
infiltration of the United States,

and one of the focal points
of their inquiries was Hollywood.

George Murphy, Ronald Reagan
and Robert Montgomery are among

the top-flight movie actors
testifying

before the House Un-American
Activities Committee in Washington.

During the days of the Red Scare,
when McCarthy was identifying a
communist in the State Department,

even in the intelligence community,
Ronald Reagan, in his function as
President of the Screen Actors Guild,

was in a position to know
who was discussing subversive ideas.

Is a screenwriter or
an actor involved in socialist causes

a burgeoning communist,
a budding communist?

Are you now or have you ever been
a member of the Communist Party?

Reagan performed magnificently
before the House Un-American
Activities Committee.

There has been a small group
within the Screen Actors Guild

that has been referred to,
has been discussed,

as more or less
following the tactics that we
associate with the Communist Party.

He never named any names
in front of the House Committee,

and he made a very strong argument
that American institutions are quite
capable of defending themselves.

That it was not necessary
to go after these people
with draconian means.

However, in private,
he did co-operate with the FBI,

giving information
about his Hollywood colleagues.

He was registered under
the name informant T -10.

It's very important
to understand this.

The President, Ronald Reagan,
was an informant for the FBI.

He was an informant
for the people who were serving
McCarthy and feeding the Red Scare.

I'm quite sure
that the FBI was talking

to all sorts of people in Hollywood
back then, and they probably
gave a lot of people code names.

He was the president of the union,
somebody they wanted to talk to.

Some of the people
from our own FBI made contact

because of what they saw
I was doing,

that I'd become
President of the Screen Actors Guild

And they came wanting some advice,

some findings from me on people
that I had dealt with and so forth.

And I got an insight
into what was happening
to the motion picture business.

Do you swear the testimony you are
about to give here is the truth?

Mrs Miller, we were hoping
that you might work for us

within the committee
to uncover a communist connection.

You mean spy? You'd be doing
your country a real service.

Look, why can't I do it?

What does this tell us
about Ronald Reagan?

In the space of about 18 months,
he went from left-wing liberal

to becoming an FBI informant
informing on his fellow liberals.

When I see the clip of him refusing
to name names before the committee,
that makes me feel pretty good,

cos there were other people who went
the other way, who knuckled under.

Now, when I hear that maybe he named
names outside of the committee, and
again, I don't know this for a fact,

well, that makes me
a little worried, yeah.

You know, I don't know
the circumstances of that

and I don't the reality of it,

but even the thought of it
is troubling.

REAGAN: Communism is neither
an economic or a political system.

It's a form of insanity,
a temporary aberration

which will one day
disappear from the Earth because
it is contrary to human nature.

My father took a very hard
line with the Soviet Union.

This is no civil rights,
this is no human rights,
this is no personal liberty.

At the end of World War II,
after the Soviets got the
atomic bomb, America changed.

We began changing as a people,
as a society, as a country.

We must learn to live in a world
where we have the hydrogen bomb

and the enemy of freedom
has the hydrogen bomb.

The threat of Soviet communism
was both real and imagined.

And the country was
vulnerable in some ways

to those who wanted
to use that threat
for their own political benefits.

But it was real.

What can we do in the face
of this communist threat?

Ronald Reagan realised that,
he understood that, and
the rest, as they say, is history.

During his career, Ronald Reagan
passed through 1,000 crowded places,

but there was only one person
he said who could make him
lonely by just leaving the room.

CHEERING

They're yelling for you!

CROWD. Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!
Nancy! Nancy!

It was a love affair. Chances are,
Ronald Reagan never would have
been President without Nancy.

She was his best friend.

My mother was crucial to my father.

He needed somebody who was there
for him at the end of the day

who had as her primary concern
him and his personal well-being.

"And then along came Nancy, "

as he used to say.

"Nancy Davis saved my soul. "

She saved him in the sense
that he met her some time in 1949,

at the time when he was
a pretty broken man.

In the summer of 1948,
he and his first wife, Jane Wyman,
had lost a child.

It was a catastrophic
shock for both of them and the
marriage never recovered from that.

And then along came Nancy Davis.

She was a very important factor
in his success.

Nancy Reagan is described
as a shrewd politician
who wants to be First Lady...

I believe...

.. as much as Ronald Reagan
wants to be President.

For all the sunny amiability
that we think about

when we think about Reagan,
he didn't really have any friends.

About the only one
he had was Nancy Reagan.

She mothered him, nursed him
and adored him, which was very
important. He liked to be adored.

She would have done anything
for him, but she ended up having
to make an awful lot

of the unpleasant decisions
that he really wouldn't face up to.

Firing people, for example.

Ronald Reagan

couldn't fire people.

I could ask Nancy
to verify it for me.

She watched his back at all times.

She was his personnel director.

She made the basic decisions
as to who was around him -
who was hired, who was fired,

and the criteria she used was,
"Will this person be working
with my husband's agenda

"or their own agenda? "

For General Electric,
here is Ronald Reagan.

Ow! That's hot. Oh, it's not.

Oh, but delicious. Everything's
just right, isn't it, Patty? Yes.

Well, it's the easiest meal to make.

My electric servants do everything.

That's part
of living better electrically.

In the 1950s, when his movie career
had begun to slide, Ronald Reagan

was far more successful as a
salesman than he was as an actor.

When we're on a Death Valley
set and water's not handy,

Boraxo waterless
hand cleaner cleans up for us.

In Hollywood, he had formed an
alliance with the Music Corporation
of America,

which was a talent agency.

He had done them a lot of
favours while he was the head
of the Screen Actors Guild

and they did him a favour
by landing him a role
with General Electric Theater.

For General Electric,
here is Ronald Reagan.

Good evening.
Tonight, George Sanders stars
on the General Electric Theater.

He began performing in their
productions and eventually went
to work for GE as a salesman.

# You can make your
family's life much brighter... #

It's light too.

I see one. You know what this is?
#..To live better electrically. #

What is fascinating about
the GE years is how he mutated

from actor into corporate spokesman
into politician.

Ronald Reagan was a master salesman.

He gradually became the
ambassador of the company.

He would go around the country
giving speeches to GE employees.

He had a certain speech that
he gave. A free enterprise-private
sector type speech.

He'd crystallise some of
his thinking because he had to
write the speech and talk about it.

I'm Ronald Reagan.

I'm speaking to you
not as an actor endeavouring to
entertain you,

and certainly not as an announcer
speaking for a sponsor.

I talk as Ronald Reagan,
American citizen.

GE had 250,000 workers in 40 states,
and the idea of sending GE's most
famous face out into the plants

to talk with the workers
was really to give them

a sense of
belonging to a company.

I've been privileged to meet
people all over this whole country

while I'm out on the road
travelling on what I call
the mashed potato circuit.

They are not the masses or the
common man. They're very uncommon.

Individuals, each with his
or her own hopes and dreams,

the kind of quiet courage
that makes this country

run better than just about any
other place on Earth.

I think people don't realise
just how critical

the General Electric years were

to making Ronald Reagan
into Ronald Reagan.

He spent six years in that job.

A man's talents may be
used for good or evil.

Exceptional talents only widen
the possibilities for both.

Those six years give him the
self-confidence and the skills

that he later
deploys when he becomes
an overtly political figure.

Well, he's learning to sell himself
in a way other than being
on the movie screen.

He's learning to sell himself
face-to-face, in a room,

and to judge, "how is what
I'm saying of going over here?

"Are they are reacting to
this or not reacting to that?"

And he begins to hone his message.

General Electric is one of
the most successful corporations
in the history of the world

and GE gave him an ideology,
a very conservative

pro-corporate view that the
business of America is business,
and this made sense to Reagan.

Most of this ideology
came from watching his

mentor at GE, Lemuel Boulware,

who may have been the greatest
labour negotiator of all time.

People now are realising what a
critical figure this little-known
GE executive was,

because he really came up with
the idea of trying to change

the politics of
the blue-collar American.

What he wanted to do was
wean blue-collar workers away from

the New Deal politics of Franklin
Roosevelt and trade unionism,

and towards a new politics of
anti-communism, patriotism.

Progress in the
defence of our nation.

And the need for a strong
defence because, of course,
GE was in the defence business.

Ronald Reagan became the genial
celebrity front man of that effort,

pitching ideas that were
probably against
the workers' self-interests.

This, in a way, set the stage
for the conservatisation of
blue collar America.

Ronald Reagan moved from Liberal
to Conservative while he was at GE,

there's no question about it.

The question is,
was he supposed to talk to

the workers about political issues,
conservative issues, and the sort?

And the immediate answer is no.

Reagan's contract with GE was just
to talk about Hollywood gossip,

various other things,
but this went further than that.

He and GE had different idea about
what he was supposed to be doing.

They figured he was
selling washing machines.

He thought he was out there
talking to the American people

about things he thought were
really important in American life.

The American people, if you put it
to them about socialised medicine

and gave them a chance to choose,
would unhesitatingly vote against it.

The speech begins to touch
on politics.

It goes from
the greatness of the nation.

He begins testing out themes about
where the nation should go next.

The importance of free people
standing up to the Soviet Union.

You see him thinking through his
position and working out
his presentation

before audiences of
ordinary Americans, these are
ordinary working people.

As Reagan became more and more
conservative in his philosophy as
spokesman for GE,

it began to
be a problem for his employer.

Ask not what your
country can do for you...
Things were changing in Washington.

John F Kennedy was elected
and suddenly government
was much more liberal.

And Reagan began to sound more
and more hawkish and conservative.

Reagan was fired from GE.

He was told he could continue,
provided he did not talk about

any political ideas,
like whether or not

we should have social security,
or taxes, but if he only talked
about GE products. And he said no.

He refused to do that.

I have spent most of
my life as a Democrat.

I recently have seen fit
to follow another course.

Reagan's transition from a
Democrat to a Republican, that is
the story of our lives.

There's many members of my family
that made that same transition.

After World War Two,
they were all Democrats.

They came of age
in the Great Depression.

They believed in the New Deal,

but I think the 1960s really soured
that whole generation on liberalism.

They're watching
this crazy stuff go on

and are saying, what the hell
has happened to my country?
And turning against liberalism.

I know probably hundreds of people,
all of them older than me,
who'd say the same thing.

I started out as a Democrat
and I became a Republican.

I didn't leave my party, my
party left me. They all say that.
That's why Reagan resonates.

In 1964, John Kennedy has
been assassinated, bringing
Lyndon Johnson in as President.

Barry Goldwater's running
for President representing

a Republican party that wants
to roll back the New Deal.

I can say to you quite frankly

that conservatism is the way of the
future. Conservatism today is not
the conservatism we have known.

Today's conservatives make no
apologies for its principles.

In the 1960s in California,
there were a number of wealthy

conservative Republicans who had
become very involved in politics.

They had supported
Barry Goldwater's campaign.

They were businessmen
and their prime interest was to
get government

off the backs of their business,
lower taxes, less regulation
so they could make more money.

These men began to collect
around Ronald Reagan
during the Goldwater campaign.

The Goldwater
campaign was a shambles.

There was never anything
effectively done in the campaign
until Reagan gave that speech.

Thank you and good evening.

Ronald Reagan agrees to
speak on behalf of Goldwater

and these wealthy men
buy television time so he can
do so nationally.

I've been permitted to
choose my own words and discuss

my own ideas regarding the choice
that we face in the next few weeks.

And Reagan gives the speech,
what we Reaganites,
if you talk about "the speech"

everybody knows what you're talking
about. It's that 1964 speech.

We're at war with the most dangerous
enemy that has ever faced mankind

in his long climb
from the swamp to the stars.

Reagan had been holding the speech
for years and years.

And this was Reagan's moment.

It's been said if we lose that
war, in so doing lose this way of
freedom of ours, history will record

with the greatest astonishment that
those who had the most to lose did
the least to prevent its happening.

Reagan performed so brilliantly
when he made that speech
that it had the ironic effect

of making him seem presidential
rather more than Barry Goldwater.

You and I have a rendezvous
with destiny.

The so-called "Time for
Choosing" speech in 1964 had
two basic elements to it.

One was this ferocious
anti-communism.

The other part was a
strong attack on the welfare state.

This was the beginning of
the culture wars.

You had a conservative
working-class element that
didn't like what it was seeing

and, from the ashes of
the failed Goldwater campaign,
Reagan became their voice.

I saw him make a speech
in 1964 for Goldwater.

I said, there's the man that
should be running for President.

I like the way he takes
a firm stand on things and the way
he goes about it.

He's the same type of
feeling with the people that
John Kennedy had, I think.

He's the hope of America.

A lot of the things he said

were the same things that
Barry Goldwater was saying.

When Reagan said it,
it was much more palatable.

You and I have the courage to say
to our enemies, there is a price

we will not pay, there is a point
beyond which they must not advance.

At that point, I think a lot
of people in California,

monied interests, the kind
of people that back politicians,

took a look at him
and said, you know...

this guy's got something here.

We can do something with him.

Thank you very much.

APPLAUSE

As of now,
I am a candidate seeking the
Republican nomination for Governor.

No candidate is more instantly
and better-known, and that
is his greatest asset.

But he is known as an actor
and that is his greatest liability.

How do you react
when people describe you as a
politician of the TV era?

Well, I think there are some things
you can learn in show business
that work pretty good.

And one thing we've always known
is that when you look in that camera
in close-up,

you better be telling the truth.

Or that camera will reveal it.

So what's this empty nonsense about
Ronald Reagan being just an actor?

I've watched Ronald work
his entire adult life
preparing for public service.

Ronald Reagan,
speaking to the issues with
his common sense answers.

When he entered politics,
the country was in turmoil.

# When I look out of my window.

# Many sights to see... #

At that time, there was
this growing feeling the '60s

are going to be different
from any decade we've ever had.

The '60s, in many important ways,
exploded.

The country was deeply divided
over race, the Vietnam War.

It was hippies and drugs
and free love and the Pill.

And my father was right
on the front lines of that
giant culture shift

that was the '60s, where suddenly
you're questioning authority.

His generation, not that
big on questioning authority.

I don't think that taking to the
streets and rioting and disorder has
ever solved anything, or ever will.

His advance really caused
a white working-class
backlash among many voters.

And Ronald Reagan caught this
wave, and he rode it all
the way to Sacramento.

# Must be the season
of the wind... #

I now declare you to be
duly installed as Governor of
the state of California.

As Governor,
he wants to get tougher in Vietnam.

The way that he got elected was
by looking out on the country
at the anti-war protest,

the counter-culture, and basically
making that into a political issue.

I was picketed a few days ago in
California by some youngsters that

had signs that said
"Make love not war".

Trouble is they didn't look like
they were capable of doing either.

LAUGHTER

This fella had a haircut
like Tarzan, he walked like Jane,
and smelt like Cheetah.

When he becomes governor, not only
are the kids of California,

the students on the UC campuses
fomenting rebellion
and questioning authority,

within his own family
that was starting to happen.

And like a lot of parents,
you know, they don't know what to
make of this.

Three rock'n'roll bands were
in the gymnasium playing
simultaneously during the dance.

And all doing the dance,
movies were shown on two screens at
the opposite ends of the gymnasium.

These movies were the only
lights in the gym proper.

They consisted of colour sequences
that gave the appearance
of different coloured liquid.

He's the authority and young people
who he thinks of as just kids
are basically saying "fuck you".

Reagan responded to protest
really in basically one way,

you know,
obey the rules or get out.

I'm sick and tired of
the argument about whether

some effort to enforce law and order
is going to escalate anything at all.

Plain truth of the matter is this
has to stop and it has to stop
the day before yesterday.

And it's going to be stopped
whatever it takes.

He was ultimately willing to
send the National Guard

down to the campuses to crack down
on demonstrators.

I would like to propose that the
issue is that on the campuses you
who are adults,

you who are entrusted with those
young people and their
guidance have a responsibility

to make it plain to them from the
very beginning that you yourselves

do not tolerate the kind of conduct
that has led to the burning

of Wheeler Hall, that has led to
two murders on the campus of UCLA.

You've created an atmosphere
where no-one wants to listen.

You are a liar.

Now don't you talk about
political speeches, don't you make
a political speech of that kind.

You know, it's funny,
because we think of Reagan as being
the sunny optimist,

but the Ronald Reagan of the
mid-1960s was often an angry man.

And voters responded well to that.

With other politicians
in these cultural war issues,
you always get the feeling

this was just politics,
a way to get elected.

Reagan believed,
Reagan was the real deal.

He did seem to think
politics was this kind of
populist contest

between average hard-working
everyday Americans

and this obnoxious, eastern
liberal elite. And it worked.

He wasn't in the governorship
two years and some national people

started talking to
him about running for President.

I've called this press conference to
announce that I am a candidate
for the presidency.

I'm here tonight to
announce my intention to seek

the Republican nomination for
President of the US.

People have forgotten
that Reagan ran for
President three times.

It took my father
some time to get to the presidency.

He loses the nomination in '68,
he doesn't even really make a dent.

And then he's the gallant
loser in '76, but still a loser.

He didn't just sort of wander
into the presidency because
he got a casting call.

He'd been preparing
for for quite some time.

Interestingly, a lot of people at
the time saw Ronald Reagan
as this unthinkable extremist.

Every one of these losses is
followed by confident predictions

from people
that Reagan is finished.

But Reagan himself
doesn't buy into any of this.

A troubled and afflicted mankind
looks to us, pleading for us to
keep our rendezvous with destiny.

That we will become
that shining city on a hill.

My name's Andrew Bejsowitz. I
served in the US Army for 23 years.

I served in Vietnam,
served in Germany, served
briefly in the Persian Gulf.

I was a soldier when Reagan
was the Commander-in-Chief.

He was my Commander-in-Chief.

# What the world needs now... #

In the 1970s, the mood
of the country under
Jimmy Carter was one of despair.

American morale was at a
real low point. Good evening.

I've spoken to you on many
occasions about national concerns.

The energy crisis,
reorganising the government,

our nation's economy
and issues of war.

The economy's in the tank. We're
in the middle of an energy crisis.

The oil crisis had produced
skyrocketing gas prices.

We were all standing
on lines at gas stations.

The Soviets had invaded
Afghanistan.

The Iranians had taken
the American hostages.

The hostage crisis just went
on and on and on. Interminable.

It looked like America had lost
its clout on the world stage.

It is a moral
and a spiritual crisis.

As a soldier, to my mind, he was
a failed President trying to pass
off the country's problems on us.

I need your help.

It's very detrimental
to our country.

I think the other nations and stuff
like that now they look down on us.

And then comes Ronald Reagan.

The major issue of this campaign
is the direct political,
personal and moral responsibility

of Democratic Party leadership
for this unprecedented
calamity which has befallen us.

The Carter years really prepared
people for someone like Ronald
Reagan to come on the stage.

Are you better off

than you were four years ago?

Is it easier for you to go
and buy things in the stores
than it was four years ago?

Ronald Reagan set the standard
for being able to summon up

feelings that resonated
with the American people.

Back in 1976, Mr Carter said,
trust me.

And a lot of people did.

Carter, in retrospect,
I always think of grey.

I don't know if his suits were
always grey... He just seems grey.

And here's Ronald Reagan,
the exact opposite of that.

A recession is when your
neighbour loses his job.

A depression is when you lose yours.

And recovery
is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

It's about personality,
a lot of it, and just how you're
coming across.

My father just blew them
out of the water that way.

The 1980 presidential election
was certainly one of the major
turning points in American history

because you had in Ronald Reagan a
man that many in Washington saw
as so extreme...

On behalf of more than 30 million
evangelical Christians...

Ronald Reagan believes
the fundamentalist
Christian vote is crucial.

Thank you very much.

I happen to believe
that when you interrupt a pregnancy,

you are taking a human life.

THEY CHANT

One of the big concerns
about him was that he would be seen
as unfair in economic policies...

What are you going to do?

What are you going to do for us?

I'm trying to tell you.
.. And as a reckless cowboy
in his foreign policies.

We don't really care
whether they like us or not,
we want to be respected.

We campaigned on a platform

of peace through strength.

We were going to rebuild
America's military,

which we thought had
deteriorated significantly under
the administration of Jimmy Carter.

When Reagan appeared
on the national political scene,

the army in which
I had served in Vietnam was
in enormous disarray, demoralised.

To those of us within the
officer corps, he was the saviour.

Do you really think
Iranian terrorists

would have taken Americans hostage
if Ronald Reagan were President?

Do you really think the Russians
would have invaded Afghanistan

if Ronald Reagan was president?

Do you really think
third-rate military dictators

would laugh at America
and burn our flag in contempt
if Ronald Reagan were President?

One of his favourite quotes
from Tom Paine was,

"We have it in our power
to start the world all over again. "

MUSIC: "Once In A Lifetime"
by Talking Heads

It's time to move forward again.

It's time for America to take
freedom's next step. That was Reagan.

We have it in our power
to begin the world over again.

# And you may find yourself
Living in a shotgun shack... #

Ronald Reagan's a stylish
campaign and he offered a new
hope to the Republican Party.

The extent of the network
coverage is unparalleled on
television history.

Reagan's campaign
meetings are expensively
stage-managed spectaculars.

Yes, I would very much like to
go to Washington...

This is a man whose time has come.

.. How did I get here?

# Letting the days go by

# Letting the water
hold me down... #

I want people to come out of
the churches and change America.

The next President, Ronald Reagan.
NBC News now makes its projection...

a Reagan Republican landslide.
# Same as it ever was... #

The time is now, my fellow
Americans, to recapture our destiny.

Together, let us make
this a new beginning.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

This portion of inauguration
day is sponsored by Comtrex,
the multi-symptom cold reliever.

And by the General Foods family of
fine products, pleasing you and
your family for over 50 years.

Just an hour and 56 minutes
from now, Ronald Reagan,
former sports announcer,

announcer, former movie actor,
former union president,

the only divorced man ever to
take the oath of office as
President of the United States

and the oldest, he'll hear
those stirring refrains of Hail
To The Chief for the first time.

I, Ronald Reagan,
do solemnly swear...

That I will faithfully execute
the Office of President
of the United States...

That I will faithfully execute
the office of President...
Good evening.

41 minutes after Ronald Reagan was
sworn in as the 40th President,

the American hostages in
Iran began their flight to freedom.

We should remind our viewers that
first of all, this is coming live
and direct from Algiers, Algeria.

When Reagan was giving
his inaugural speech,

there was a kind of split
screen moment in American history.

As Ronald Reagan took
the Oath of Office, the
hostages were to fly out of Tehran.

.. So help me God.

Reagan's inauguration really set
the tone for his presidency, of this
president who had good fortune.

Some 30 minutes ago,
the planes bearing our prisoners

Ieft Iranian airspace and are now...

I guess now I can go back to
California, can't I?

LAUGHTER

He had done nothing to bring
about the release of these hostages.

That was negotiated in the waning
days of the Jimmy Carter
administration

and yet,
these events established a mood.

Reagan's presidency
really created this idea

that if you improve the nation's
mood, you're improving the nation.

We can all drink to this one.

To all of us, together,
doing what we all know we can do

to make this country
what it should be, what it can be,
what it always has been.

You know, when he came into office,
everybody thought,

we've got this guy, this
shoot-from -the-hip cowboy actor

and they sure found
out differently, didn't they?

It is time us to realise that
we are too great a nation
to limit ourselves to small dreams.

When Reagan came into office,

he said we've got to revive the
economy, we've got to raise

the spirits of the American people

and we have to
rebuild the American military

to stand up to the
Soviet Union and negotiate
from a position of strength.

MUSIC: "Eye Of The Tiger"
by Survivor

Ronald Reagan became President
at a time when the Soviet Union

was on the march on
every continent.

Remember that Reagan
was an anti-communist first

and a politician second.

Reagan pushes forward this view
that the Soviet Union

is this evil empire that must be
confronted very aggressively.

Remember, we had a Democratic
House of Representatives
we had to deal with

so some of the things that he
wanted to do we couldn't get done.

He was on the razor's edge of
danger in terms of public opinion.

Reagan decided he was
going to put dealing with the
Soviets on the back-burner,

that his presidency
wouldn't succeed if he didn't
do something about the economy

in his first year in office.

GUNSHOTS

There was an attempt on President
Reagan's life in March,
shortly after we took power.

I've just reported that
the President was not hit.

This was a defining
event of his early presidency.

He WAS wounded.
My God! The President was hit!

For a few hours, people didn't know
if Reagan would live or die.

The surgeon said that his last remark
before he underwent anaesthesia

was he wanted to make sure that
all of them were Republicans.

They said that today,
everyone is a Republican.

The assassination attempt
on President Reagan

was a major factor in his
becoming a popular president.

Not just because he survived,
but how he handled it.

He took shots that could
have killed him

and survived it
with grace and elan.

The way the public followed
that closely, to see if the
President was going to survive,

created the bond between Reagan
and the American people
that was never really broken.

MUSIC: "Eye Of The Tiger"
by Survivor

The President of the United States!

I'd like to say a few words

to express to all of you,
on behalf of Nancy and myself,

our appreciation for your
messages and flowers

and most of all, your prayers.

Not only for me, but for those
others who fell beside me.

APPLAUSE

As you can imagine,
after an event like that,
his popularity surged.

Democrats and Republicans
fell over themselves last night.

He was not politically weakened,
he was strengthened.

RAUCOUS APPLAUSE

Thank you.

I have come to speak to you tonight
about our economic recovery programme

and why I believe it's essential that
the Congress approve this package.

The sympathy for Reagan...
That's the key.

..was so great. And he used that.

He was very clever. He used it
and they went right to work

and the next thing, they had
given him all the stuff he wanted.

Thanks to some very fine people,
my health is much-improved.

I'd like to say that with regard
to the health of the economy.

There was a strategy.

Less regulation, lower tax rates,
get inflation under control.

You do those things,
you may have a short-term problem,

but in the longer term,
you'll have a strategy that works.

People forget the fact that
when we came into power,

the top marginal tax rate was 70%.

It's time to create new jobs,
to build and rebuild industry,

to give the American people
room to do what they do best.

Reagan-nomics was
the essence of the first term.

The easy part of it is,
let the market be free,

Iet the people who own
the businesses do whatever they want,

cut their taxes,
give incentives to produce more.

The problem is that,
generally speaking,

when you cut taxes dramatically,
obviously,

the amount of money going
into federal coffers is reduced.

The federal government has
to cut spending or
they'll run a huge deficit.

The Reagan people came up with
a theory that you could cut taxes

and this would boost the economy
so much that you could actually

increase proceeds at the same time
and it would all work out.

George Bush called it
"voodoo economics".

Voodoo economics.

That's how candidate
George Bush described candidate
Ronald Reagan's policy

during the 1980
presidential primaries.

What I'm saying is that this type of
what I call voodoo economic policy,

it just isn't going to work.

Last night, Vice President Bush
was asked about that
and corrected the record.

Well, what I said back then,
it's very hard to find...

Actually, let me start over.

One, I didn't say it.

Nobody, every network has looked
for it and none can find it.

It was never said.

There was a fundamental falsehood
at the core of Reagan-nomics.

This was the famous
Laffer curve proposed
by a economist Arthur Laffer.

Reagan-nomics, literally,
as far as I'm concerned,

it is the provision of incentives
to the marketplace

to allow the economy
to perform its functions properly.

Dr Laffer, would you draw
your curve for me and
explain how it works? Sure.

In a very simple sense,
if you tax people who work,

and you pay people who don't work,

don't be surprised if you find
a lot of people not working.

Hello, is that so complicated?

The Laffer Curve was presented
as an intellectual support

for the idea that reducing taxes
would produce more revenue.

If you tax rich people
and give the money to poor people,

you're going to have lots and lots
of poor people and no rich people.

That was, I think,
considered by most people

a pretty extreme interpretation
of what would happen.

Ronald Reagan gave us a prototype.

Low-taxes, less regulation,
limited spending, that's the model.

He created an economic miracle.

It's clear that recovery
is strengthening and spreading
throughout the economy

And as Al Jolson would have said,
you ain't seen nothing yet.

You can't be fair in your historical
evaluation of Ronald Reagan

if you don't look at the
terrible damage his economic
policies did to this country.

Many people say that Ronald Reagan
made America strong,

that America had
been greatly weakened

in the 1960s and 1970s and Reagan

helped to rebuild American prestige,
its economic power

and put it back on the path
to growth.

But the real benefits,
and also the tremendous costs,

really only became
clear more recently.

The essence of Reagan-nomics
was a massive transfer of wealth

towards the rich
and away from the poor.

The Reagan administration,

by cutting taxes overwhelmingly for
the wealthiest and the corporations,

set in motion, arguably, the greatest
government-led transfer of wealth

in history and in the direction
of the top 2% of the country.

Ronald Reagan did cut taxes
and the US began

to have a series of dangerous
and increasing budget deficits.

This week, America became a
debtor nation for the first time
since the First World War.

Unemployment, at 9%.
America is struggling through
the worst recession...

Reagan-nomics is based on
this notion of trickle-down economics

that cutting taxes for the wealthiest
Americans benefits everybody.

Trickle-down economics is,
if you feed the horse enough oats,

the sparrow will survive
on the highway.

If you make rich people
rich enough, they'll put
crumbs to their servants.

The truth is
that's not what happens.

Although they do get
jobs and they do expand,

by lowering tax rates,
you're bringing people
into the labour force

and you create a lot of new wealth.

And you make the poor rich,
isn't that the dream?

Reagan's policies were very good
for relatively wealthy people.

The people at the top do well
and benefits trickle down.

There's a hint in that
term "trickle, "
it isn't flood-down economics,

it's trickle-down. You don't get
a lot coming down to the middle class

and to people below that
and that is the key theme
of the past 30 years,

which should be laid at
Ronald Reagan's door -
middle class got squeezed.

The Republican Party
under Ronald Reagan

became identified with
family values, small-town values,

when, in fact, there policies did
more to enrich the financial class

on either coast
than mainstream America.

We're going down
the main street of Dixon.

This was once a very
prosperous farming community,

it also had a vibrant manufacturing
sector in town.

You get the sense,
when you drive here,

that the time when places like this
matter than this country has passed.

What I found about the people
of Dixon is that they really are

emblematic of the heartland
of this country.

They believe that Ronald Reagan was
on their side,

but if you look at the real impact
of his policies,

it's hard to conclude that
Ronald Reagan was on their side.

ALL CHANT: Out the door in '84.

Out the door in '84.
Out the door in '84.

People need work.
He's not addressing our needs.

I've got 200 members who have
lost their jobs in my local union.

I don't think Ronald Reagan is
interested in the working people.

Is he interested in Dixon?
He's not interested in
any working people anywhere.

The business community
got whatever they wanted

from the Reagan administration
and meanwhile,

the business community's great enemy,
organised labour, got its ass kicked.

The union representing those
who man America's air traffic contro
facilities called a strike.

Let me make one thing plain.

If they do not report for work
within 48 hours,

they have forfeited their jobs
and will be terminated.

It's ironic, of course,
since Reagan was himself
at one time a union leader,

but the effect that his
administration had

on organised labour
was devastating.

They said it and they meant it.
The administration warned that

if the air controllers
didn't go back to work by today,
they would be fired.

This was the signal
to corporate management that it
was open season on labour.

Look at what he did with
the air traffic controllers,
he fired them.

If you look at union activity
as a share of the labour force,
it dropped like a stone.

The main idea that Ronald Reagan had
was that the government was bad.

Too much government got in
the way of private business

and he wanted to step back from that.

Ronald Reagan changed America,
above all, through deregulation.

I put a freeze on pending
regulations

and set up a task force
under Vice President Bush

to review regulations with
an eye towards getting
rid of as many as possible.

Reagan made deregulation
a good thing, a political virtue,

he made regulation seem like
a bad thing that only socialists do.

So Reagan really stood for,
"let the private sector take over,

"let the market decide"
and that's a message

that has really resonated with many
people over the past 20, 25 years.

Reagan-nomics was sold
as less government.

In other words,
less spending and less taxes,

but there is a fundamental
deception about that

because there was only less spending
in certain areas.

I'm sure there's one department

you've been waiting for me to
mention, the Department of Defence.

It's the only department in our
entire programme that will

actually be increased over
the present budgeted figure.

The cuts were only in relation
to social spending,

education, welfare, food stamps,
that sort of thing,

enormous increases
in military spending.

He told the Secretary of Defence

to order what was needed
and not to worry about the Budget.

Pentagon spending would reach
$34 million per hour.

I think one of the single
accomplishments of Reagan

was that he restored America's pride
and confidence in itself

and in its ability to project
power responsibly across
continents and across oceans.

There's a bear in the woods.

For some people,
the bear is easy to see.

Others don't see it at all.

Some people say that
the bear is tame.

Others say it's vicious
and dangerous.

Since no-one can really be sure
who's right,

isn't it smart
to be as strong as the bear?

If there is a bear?

Our foreign policy must
be rooted in realism,
not naivete or self-delusion.

A recognition of what
the Soviet empire is about

is the starting-point.

Ronald Reagan changed,
first, the Republican Party,

then the country and then the world.

Reagan believed that the Cold War

was a contest between freedom
and un-freedom.

The embodiment of Reagan's strong
anti-communism is in two speeches -

one the famous evil empire speech...

To ignore the facts of history
and the aggressive
impulses of an evil empire...

And another one he makes
at Westminster in England.

The march of freedom and democracy

which will leave Marxism-Leninism
on the ash heap of history...

It was very clear that
Reagan didn't want to settle
with the Soviet Union.

He wanted to defeat it.

Remember that American strategy
during the Cold War,

dating back to the Eisenhower
administration in the 1950s,

was basically a long stalemate.

No-one's going
to engage in nuclear war.

It seems that the Cold War
is permanent.

Reagan's view is that the Cold War
isn't permanent, that it can end.

How does the Cold War end?
We win, they lose.

For two years
after Reagan came into office,

the US had virtually no relations
at all with the Soviet Union.

People began to get very scared.

A nuclear freeze movement
took off like wildfire.

The big question
about that whole era

was who was right about the true
nature of the Soviet Union.

There were some people
in the CIA back in the '70s

who were seeing signs
of the Soviets in decline.

They were having economic problems,
falling way behind in terms

of technology, in terms
of where the West was going.

But the Reagan side, embodied
by him, is a different one.

Since 1970, the Soviet Union
has invested $300 billion more

in its military forces than we have.

Notwithstanding our economic straits,

to allow this imbalance to continue
is a threat to our national security.

The best form of defence spending
is always wasted.

Whenever you find yourself in
a situation where you have to use

your military hardware prowess,
that's a clear sign
you didn't spend enough.

Reagan, Star Wars and all that,

the whole purpose of that was
so that we wouldn't have to use it.

This strategy of deterrence
has not changed. It still works.

But what it takes to maintain
deterrence has changed.

I have approved a research programme
to find, if we can, a security shield

that will destroy nuclear missiles
before they reach their target.

They called it Star Wars.
He thought there could be the
construction of a missile shield,

that laser beams that
could shoot incoming nuclear
missiles out of the sky.

His idea might have come
from a movie

he was involved in the
1940s called Murder In The Air.

It seems the spy ring has
designs on the greatest war weapon

ever invented, which is the
exclusive property of Uncle Sam.

What is it? The inertia projector.

It wouldn't kill people,
it would destroy weapons.

It wouldn't militarise space,
it would help demilitarise
the arsenals of Earth.

It not only makes the United States
invincible in war,

but in so doing promises
to be the greatest force for
world peace ever discovered.

Reagan was certainly a believer
in American military power.

At the same time,
he's very reluctant to send
troops into harm's way.

He only used military force
three times, people forget.

The first was putting
the marines in Lebanon

into the middle of the Lebanese
civil war.

Early this morning at
the Marine headquarters in Beirut,

more than 2,000lbs
of explosives...

And we lost 241 marines
in a terrorist explosion.

Next was Grenada.

Grenada, we were told,
was a friendly island
paradise for tourism.

Well, it wasn't.
It was a Soviet-Cuban colony

being readied as a military
bastion to export terror
and undermine democracy.

And the third time,
he attacked Gadaffi's Libya,

when they blew up
a discotheque in Berlin.

He was not a manic interventionist.

But he saw the United States
challenged by what was indeed

a worldwide, communist conspiracy,
which had as its great objective

defeating Western civilisation
in the United States

and changing the world
in its own image.

At that time, many Americans were
concerned about the United States

getting involved in a war
with the Soviet Union.

But Reagan felt that pretty much
anything was justified

in order to win the Cold War.

The world has changed.

Today our national security can
be threatened in faraway places.

What the Reagan administration did,
in a new sub rosa way,

was to secretly support a lot of
very violent movements

who were resisting
the Soviet menace.

To run these operations
independently

and then to lie to Congress
and to lie to the American people.

In the hills of Afghanistan,
in Angola, in Kampuchea,

in Central America,
freedom movements arise
and assert themselves.

They're doing so on almost
every continent populated by man.

People are always more complicated
than the images that grow up

around them, the mythology
that grows up around them.

My father was both smarter
and better than many people
on the left think he was,

and less the giant that many people
on the right think he was.

My fellow Americans,
I have thought long and often

about how to explain to you what
I intended to accomplish,

but I respect you too much
to make excuses.

The fact of the matter is,

there is nothing I can say
that will make the situation right.

I was stubborn in my pursuit
of a policy that went astray.

On October 5th, 1986, an antiquated
US cargo plane was shot down

over southern Nicaragua
by a surface-to-air missile.

That date, when that plane
got shot down, broke open not

just the fuselage of the plane,

but all the interconnections
of the whole covert enterprise.

We're at the National
Security Archive with a huge
collection of documents,

some of them drafted by the CIA,
some drafted in the White House.

It's important to focus
on the Iran-Contra scandal

because it is the biggest
window we have into the
way Ronald Reagan thought.

Within hours of that
plane being shot down,

George Bush's office received
a telephone call

from a resupply operative stating
that the plane was missing,

and the CIA station chief
in neighbouring Costa Rica

sent a coded message
to Washington warning that

"the situation requires we do
necessary damage control. "

The sole surviving crew member,
Eugene Hasenfus,
was beyond US control.

When Eugene Hasenfus was shot down
by the Sandinistas,

it was the beginning of the end
of the Iran-Contra affair

and the beginning
of public awareness

of what the scandal was.

Before long, his Nicaraguan
captors had placed him in
front of television cameras

to tell the world the story
of the US government

covert arms resupply
operation for the Contras.

My name is Gene Hasenfus.
I come from Marinette Wisconsin.

The government of Nicaragua has shot
down an American-manned aircraft...

The wreckage of an American
cargo plane...

How they treating you?
My treatment here is fine.

Interrogations? Long ones?

No, not long, just every day
a little bit here and there.

What is it they're after?

They want to know who
I work for and why.

OK, so do we. Good luck.

My name is Robert Parry.

I was the first reporter to
write about the mysterious activities

of the marine officer in the Reagan
White House named Oliver North

who was operating in an
unusual way in Central America.

After the Hasenfus plane
was shot down,

there is an immediate effort
to cover it up.

Is there US involvement in this
flight over Nicaragua?

I'm glad you asked. Absolutely none.

This man is not working for
the United States government.

Clearly there were
connections to the flight.

Hasenfus provides a great
deal of information

about how this operation
was being supported by,

not only the CIA, but Vice-President
George HW Bush's office.

On that day in October,
in the debris in the jungle,

peeked up some inconvenient truths
about what was going on.

In the debris are little pieces of
paper, business cards, flight logs.

The Sandinistas, newspaper reporters
looked at that stuff

and found the business cards
of retired CIA agents,

retired generals,
contractors for the US government,

the people who had the aid
contracts from the State Department

to deliver aid to refugees.

Looks like the very same planes were
also moving arms to the Contras.

The connections
were like a spider web.

From the beginning
of the Reagan years,

they had this huge concern
about Central America.

Because they saw the Soviet Union
as trying to create a beach-head

inside places like Nicaragua,
El Salvador and Guatemala.

So the Reagan administration
organised a group
called the Contras.

The CIA under Reagan helps fund it,
going into Nicaragua,

carrying out a number of atrocities
against the Nicaraguan people.

The United States put itself
in a position of supporting
a ruthless group.

The Reagan presentation
of the Contras was as heroes,
freedom fighters.

They are the moral equal
of our founding fathers.

We cannot turn away from them.

Viva Reagan! Viva Reagan!

That was obviously not true.

The Contras were assassinating
people, obviously corrupt.

They were violating human rights.

So Congress cut off the aid.

Congress voted two laws that put
the lid on aid to the Contras.

It said no more aid to the Contras.

The top officials of the Reagan
administration get together with
the President of the White House.

"Congress is cutting off aid! "

We have the transcript
of what they said to each other.

The list of who's there
is everybody at the top.

The President, Vice-President, head
of the CIA, Secretary of Defence,
Secretary of State, Chief of Staff.

Ronald Reagan says, "We're going
to go raise money for the Contras, "

but the top advisers tell
him this is illegal.

It is an impeachable offence.

But Reagan says, "I don't care. "

He ends the meeting with
a wonderful quote.

Reagan says, "If such a story
gets out, we will all be hanging

"by our thumbs in front of the White
House until we find out who did it. "

What the Reagan administration
came up with was a way

to get around the power of the
purse-strings held by Congress.

It said to itself, let's use
other sources of funding
for our covert operations.

One source, private donors.

Second source,
go to foreign countries.

And finally, and trickiest of all,
let's use the proceeds

of one covert operation to support
another covert operation.

At that point, while we had
inclinations about Oliver North's

role in Nicaragua, I wasn't aware
that he was sending weapons to Iran.

That comes out in November
of '86 when a Lebanese newspaper
first writes that story.

This is when the Contra side
intersects with the Iran side.

A number of American hostages
had been taken by Islamic
extremists in Lebanon.

Ronald Reagan had been
most adamant against
negotiations with terrorists.

Let me make it plain to the assassins
in Beirut and their accomplices

that America will never make
concessions to terrorists.

But when he met those families
of the people being held in Lebanon,

he reacted to them and said,
"I'll do whatever it takes
to get these people out. "

Everybody, sit down.

These hostages in Lebanon
gnawed at him.

And people came to him in

his National Security Council

and said, "We have information that
leads us to believe

"that we can have a change
in our relationship with Iran
if we sell them some arms.

"And by the way, Mr President,
we'll also get our hostages back. "

We think the most effective work
is behind the scenes...

"But it's against our
policy to sell them arms.

"It's against our policy
to trade for hostages. "

This is a page out of the diary
of the Secretary of Defence

under Ronald Reagan,
Caspar Weinberger.

He took notes every day and
then hid them from the investigators

when the Iran-Contra scandal broke.

Only years later, did we find out
what he had written down.

What he had written down
was the direct words of
the President, Ronald Reagan.

When the top people in
the US government looked
the President in the eye

over a table at
the White House and said,

"Mr President,
we ship these arms to Iran,

"trading for the hostages,
that breaks the law.

"It's illegal. It's a felony,"

The President says, "I can deal with
charges of criminality, but I can't
deal with the American people.

"Big, strong President Reagan -
I'm going to do everything I could
to get those hostages out. "

Whether it was the right thing
or the wrong thing to do,

it was motivated in his mind,
I am quite sure, by that sense of,
"I am a lifeguard.

"It is my job to get these
people back. They are
Americans, they are my people. "

We are a nation of laws. If the
President can break the law, then we
are not a nation of laws any more.

The charge has been
made that the United States

has shipped weapons to Iran
as ransom payment for the release of
American hostages in Lebanon, that

the United States undercut its allies
and secretly violated American policy
against trafficking with terrorists.

Those charges are utterly false.

We did not - repeat, did not -
trade weapons or anything else
for hostages.

As it happened, when the first arms
deliveries were made, the middleman

had overcharged the Iranians
for what the missiles were worth.

So there was a huge surplus.

Oliver North
looked at that surplus and said,

"Nobody can account for that money.

"What if we use that surplus
to help resupply the Contras? "

Hold it. Did you make a mistake
in sending arms to Tehran, sir?

No, and I'm not taking
any more questions.

In the fall of 1986,
Iran and Contra came together

when the President comes down to the
White House briefing room and says,
"Oops, there has been a little

"mixing of funds between these
arms arrangements, which were not
really to trade for hostages!

"And to take care of the Contras,
which wasn't really illegal,

"but I'll let
Ed Meese tell you about it. "

Certain monies, which were received
in the transaction

between representatives of Israel
and representatives of Iran

were taken

and made available to the forces
in Central America,

which are opposing
the Sandinista government there.

There are incredible documents where
in meetings with Schultz
and Weinberger and others, as part

of the cover-up, the President says,
"We never traded arms for hostages, "

and Schultz says,
"Excuse me, Mr President,

"we did. "

It was a devastating charge.

That was the one time in Reagan's
presidency when I thought that he
seemed not to have his footing.

A few months ago I
told the American people
I did not trade arms for hostages.

My heart and my best intentions
still tell me that's true.

The facts and the evidence
tell me it is not.

That was the most difficult period
of his presidency and my guess is,
of his entire political career.

The charge went to his integrity.

How could all of
this be taking place?

Millions and millions of dollars,
without you having known about it.

Andrea, I don't believe...

I was aware that there are
private groups and private
individuals in this country.

I don't believe it
was counter to our law.

Iran Contra was the first real crack
in Reagan's image.

Up until that point, the coverage
he was getting was really adulatory.

In your heart,
do you feel you were right or wrong
in selling arms to Iran?

We had quite a debate. It was true
that two of our Cabinet members were
very much on the other side.

It turned out they were right
because, as I say, it
did deteriorate.

How could this man, who
was such a great leader,

trade arms for hostages to fund
off the books foreign policy?

This is clearly illegal.

90% of the American people
believed that was wrong.

90% of American people
don't agree on anything.

It was clear that the White House,
under Ronald Reagan, had
systematically gone about

thwarting the will of Congress
in raising funds that Congress
said shouldn't be raised.

Going into the conventional
hearings, when it became
clear the President of the

United States could be impeached.
The President's advisers
try to figure out how we can spin

this so they refocused all of
our intention on to the one part

of the Iran Contra operations
that they can prove President Reagan

wasn't specifically briefed on -
Oliver North and the diversion of
funds from Iran to the Contras.

I don't think it was wrong.

I think it was a neat idea.

Oliver North, later in his
trial said, and this sums it up,
the diversion was a diversion.

Congress met three months
and fizzled out.

It's his responsibility. Whether he
knew or didn't know, whether he was

gullible or naive or maligned,
it's still his responsibility.

Now what should happen when
you make a mistake is this.

You take your knocks, you learn
your lessons and then you move on.

That's the healthiest way
to deal with the problem.

What Ronald Reagan did
was to pervert the US constitution.

It happened on his watch.
It's his responsibility.

He's my father and I love him.

We all defend him.

I'm not going to sell him out
or down the river
or anything like that.

At the same time, he was the
President of the United States.

As the President of the United
States you are accountable -

you have to be held accountable -
even by your own family,
by your own son.

I'm Edmund Morris and I spent
14 years researching and writing

a life of Reagan
with his co-operation.

How did you your thing
with Mr Morris work?

Did he just
ask if he could do that or what?

I think somebody does this.

This is the official biography, so...

Is there some committee that
decides on it? It must be.

The difficulty about figuring Reagan
out was he was not introspective.

Therefore, to try to interview this
guy, who was so incurious about
himself, was very unrewarding.

He would tend to take refuge
behind anecdotes and jokes.

You heard I'm sure that I like
to tell an anecdote or two.

When I tried to probe him about
fundamental things, his religious
beliefs, his feelings about

women and children, I just got this
echoing sound that I was talking
into a large, rather cool cave.

There was a kind of wall
between Reagan and everybody else.

Nancy Reagan herself said Reagan
never got very close to anybody.

That he didn't let others get close
to him. He had great capacity for
exuding affection.

The American people, when
they were addressed by him,
would feel this benign warmth

but when you were alone with him,
he became surprisingly ordinary.

You don't hear this much any more
but Reagan's critics,

certainly back in the '80s
and even in the 1990s,

would describe
him as an amiable dunce.

Somebody who
floated through eight years in the
presidency and was mostly clueless.

That's clearly wrong.

I think it was a role he played.

I think he was a canny guy who knew
how to change when the
situation changed.

Well, I hope I've answered your
questions as best I could,
given the very little I know.

There was a Saturday night skit
that really captured him, where
he's this jovial, amiable fellow.

Ho, ho, ho!

Well, you're that good a sales lady,
maybe I could use you
up on Capitol Hill.

Then you get serious with a
bom, bom, bom, bom. Bye-bye.

Deadly serious in substance.
Back to work!

LAUGHTER

That's the fundamental paradox
of Ronald Reagan because it's both
Saturday Night Live portraits.

That ambling, fumbling kind of
guy, who's basically reading a
script that his staff give him,

and the guy, when the door
closes, picks up the phone
and orders missile parts.

Banks will be opening in Zurich
right about now. He's both.

If he knew him personally,
he was a really gentle sort of soul.

Spent a lot of time thinking,
spent a lot of time in his own head
but there are some odd disconnects.

# When you were young... #

AIDS, for instance.

His administration
did respond too slowly.

DEMONSTRATORS: Stop AIDS now!

Tens of thousands of people
were dying and millions
were becoming infected.

Mr Reagan would not say the word
AIDS for the first seven years
of his entire administration.

It wasn't until my mother and I

began to talk to him about
this and kind of clue him in

that there's something really big

happening out there and it's going
to start affecting your friends.

# But only love can break... #

Just what is wrong with Rock Hudson?

Tonight, the 59-year-old actor
remains in a Paris hospital...

Now, Rock Hudson, somebody he knows,
somebody he admired, a fellow actor,
is dead. If you can personalise

something from my father.
If you can put a face to it,
that really captivates him.

As soon as the individual becomes
the group and becomes abstract,
then not quite so much.

Particularly when you are seeing
people as a class - the poor.

There are 33 million Americans
who live below the poverty line -

that is 7 million more than
when Mr Reagan was first elected.

I think he was vulnerable to the
idea that poor people are somehow
poor because it's their fault.

The homeless who are homeless,
you might say, by choice.

Hard to figure, really.

I've never quite
figured that one out.

Remember that his father and brother
were put to work by the Roosevelt
administration during the Depression

in a way that saved their
family financially.

So you want to say
gee, these programmes

you see as socialistic now kept your
family's head above water

so was it
good then but not good now?

There are multiple truths about
Reagan but on the subjects that
Reagan really cared about -

individual hostages, maybe those
freedom fighters in Nicaragua,

taxes, nuclear
weapons, those big things, he pushed.

He cared about.

# Hast du etwas Zeit fur mich

# Dann singe ich ein Lied fur dich

# Von 99 Luftballons

# Auf ihrem weg zum Horizont

# Denkst du vielleicht g'rad an mich

# Dann singe ich ein Lied fur dich

# Von 99 Luftballons

# Und das sowas von sowas kommt... #

Because of Reagan's bellicose
foreign-policy and in particular

the nuclear sabre rattling with the
Soviet Union,

we came very, very close
to a nuclear war in the 1980s.

Reagan's rhetoric on nuclear weapons
begins to change in early 1984.

He is preparing to run
for re-election, there are

political reasons to do it, but it
begins to take on a life of its own.

We must and will engage
the Soviets in a dialogue as
seriously constructive as possible.

I see him there turning
the corner rhetorically.

All the evil empire talk
went away and Reagan starts
talking about peace.

As I've said before, my
dream is to see the day

when nuclear weapons will be
banished from the face of the Earth.

During Reagan's first term,
there was a series of three old
presidents in the Soviet Union,

Brezhnev, Chernenko and Andropov,

all of whom died in short order.

Then along came Gorbachev.

Mikhail Gorbachev was a reformer.

Ronald Reagan believed that
Gorbachev was someone he
could do business with.

Reagan proceeds
into diplomacy with Gorbachev,

into summits with Gorbachev and arms
control agreements with Gorbachev.

"This is the beginning of our work, "
says Mr Gorbachev.

Gorbachev ultimately says that
he is willing to consider

dramatically reducing,
or even giving up nuclear weapons.

All of this is conditional on
the US agreeing to limit,

or give up Star Wars,
the Strategic Defence Initiative.

And Reagan is not willing to do this.

Though we've put
on the table the most far-reaching

arms control proposal in history,
the General Secretary rejected it.

They've come this close
to agreeing to abolish nuclear
weapons in 20 years, this close.

Even though the agreements were
never consummated that was a major
achievement, a strong step.

The Cold War was going to end
but it ended the way it did

with a whimper, not with a bang,
in part because Reagan had the wit

to respond to gestures
that Gorbachev was making.

GORBACHEV SPEAKS RUSSIAN

TRANSLATOR: Do you recognise
President Reagan?

GORBACHEV SPEAKS RUSSIAN

CAMERAS WHIR

APPLAUSE

In the spring of 1987, as a
speechwriter for President Reagan,
I was assigned a big speech.

At one point I put...

"Herr Gorbachev, machen Sie dieses
Tor auf. "

My boss said,

"Peter, when you're working for

"the President of the US,
give him those big lines in English. "

Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I come to Berlin,

as so many of my countrymen have
come before.

This city, of all cities,
knows the dream of freedom.

It's amazing when he started this
journey,

that I and my father, that we
would be in Berlin, in this place,
the Checkpoint Charlie Museum,

where in 1982 my father jumped over
the white line and then jumped back

because he didn't believe
there should be borders.

When Ronald Reagan gave that speech,
hard as it is to believe today,
he was getting a lot of criticism

from American conservatives
saying that by talking to Gorbachev
and by having these summit meetings,

Iike the Reykjavik summit,
that he was an appeaser on the
scale of Neville Chamberlain.

And yet that speech has
become the centrepiece of

the conservative legend of how
Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.

He was the one to make sure they were
able to finally become free.

Basically, he said, "Mr Gorbachev,
tear down this wall. "
Two years later the wall came down,

when, of course, the reality of
how the Cold War ended is much
more complicated than that.

To me it's the core of how much
of what people know about Ronald
Reagan today is mythological.

If people would listen to where I
stand on the issues

I think they
will find out this is a false image

that is being created, or
they are attempting to create,

with regards to me.

That seems to be the modern dialogue
in politics, not to dispute you on

what you honestly believe but to
create a false image,

to invest you
with beliefs that aren't yours.

Ronald Reagan said we're going to
have such a strong military we'll out
compete the Soviets, and he did.

He said we are going to have such
strong families
that the values of Americans

will shine as an example for the
entire world to see, and he did that.

Yes, a giant
mythology has developed.

What we believe in is what
Ronald Reagan believes in.

Developed by people who want
to control the direction
of national affairs.

Who is your favourite
Republican President?

Ronald Reagan. Easy one.

Grover Norquist and his allies are
myth-makers.

They are trying to finish
a revolution

they feel Reagan started.

Reagan of course. Of course.
He's a name that's worth invoking.

I remember when Ronald Reagan...

They want to impute to him
qualities he didn't possess.

Profound wisdom, deep religiosity,
love of all human beings. Reagan was
much more muted than that.

The GOP's Purity Test,
the draft resolution written
as a tribute to President Reagan

but frankly even he wouldn't meet
all these qualifications -

he raised taxes,
he grew the deficit...

There's a long list of things people
say Ronald Reagan did

that in some cases
are just the exact opposite.

His name is invoked, for example, to
back up the current anti-immigration
policies of Republicans

and in fact, Reagan created amnesty
for 2. 6 million illegal immigrants.

I believe in the idea of amnesty.

I can't tell you the number of
candidates I have seen he said their
reasons for getting into government

was they wanted to reduce the size
of government like Ronald Reagan
did. People don't realise that

the size of the government grew
under Ronald Reagan, the number
of federal employees grew.

Ronald Reagan's legacy is
complicated.

By trying
to understand the complexities

of Reagan and his presidency

instead of the mythological
version of Ronald Reagan

it gives us some better ideas

about how to move
forward as a country.

Ronald Reagan as an idea,

as an ideology,

as an intellectual tradition

is very powerful.

And sadly, particularly in regard to
the financial sector, very dangerous.

Uncle Sam is feeling the
pinch of a failing economy.

The federal budget deficit
will be more than a
trillion dollars next year.

The reason, for example, why we
continue to struggle with our

budget deficits is because
Ronald Reagan legitimised them.

If you think having uncontrolled
deficits is OK, or even a good idea,

or even something we put over
on the rest of the world, then
perhaps you feel good about Reagan.

But the evidence consistently around
the world is if you run
a big budget deficit,

it catches up with you,
it does not matter how good you
make people feel about your country,

whether you talk grandly on
the international stage.

At the end of the day,
can you pay your bills?

I've been asked
if I have any regrets. Well, I do.

The deficit is one.

Reagan was flesh, he was not marble.

He was an impressive, successful
President for the most part,
but he was not a god.

To turn him into a marble idol, to
have his name inscribed on airports,

monuments and all of the 50 states
and on $50-bills is turning him

into an icon for the convenience
of the modern conservative movement.

In 1980, I voted for Ronald Reagan
because I was a serving soldier

and Ronald Reagan was the guy
who was going to redress the
ills of the United States military.

I voted for him again in 1984
because he seemed to be
making good on that promise.

I think he was the
most skilful politician of our time.

What I would say retrospect is that
I cast my vote

without having a proper appreciation
of the issues of the moment.

We've given the American
people back their spirit

and I think we're in a
position once again to heed
the words of Thomas Paine...

"We have it in our power

"to begin the world over again. "

That was Reagan, that's what Reagan
had on offer in the 1970s and 1980s.

Which basically says that...

Well, circumstance doesn't matter.

The accumulation of history
over the previous century
or two centuries doesn't matter.

We can choose anything we want
and it will be ours.

It's nonsense.

We can't start the
world all over again.

Next Tuesday is election day.
Next Tuesday all of you will go
to the polls and make a decision.

My bottom line judgment of
Jimmy Carter really doesn't
depart from the conventional wisdom,

that I think he was a
failure as a president.

That said, there was a moment
when he, however briefly,

grasped a central truth
about the American predicament.

It's clear

that the true problems of our nation

are much deeper than gasoline lines,
or energy shortages, deeper even

than inflation, or recession.

The problems we face
are not out there.

The problems we face are in here.

We have committed ourselves
to the pursuit of freedom

where our definition of
freedom is simply false.

We have convinced ourselves that
through the piling up of material
goods, indulging the appetites of

a consumer society,

that by going down
that road, we will best be able to
find life, liberty and happiness.

Carter argued our dependence on
oil was central to this and it would

Iead us down the path toward
interventionism and conflict.

Ronald Reagan said,
"You don't have to sacrifice,
you don't have to make do.

"You don't have to get by with less.

"There's plenty of oil.

"There's an infinite supply,
trust me. "

In his final letter to the
American people, Dad wrote...

"I now begin the journey that will
lead me into the sunset of my life. "

Dementia came on him very suddenly.

At a birthday party of Reagan's
he stood up and gave us a speech,
"In the dark days of 1983, when

"I was president of the US, there
was only one leader of the Western
world who stood with me as

"a bulwark against the threat of
international communism.

"That was my good friend
Maggie Thatcher. "

So we all stood up and applauded.

And then Reagan says,
"In the dark days of 1983... "

And he went through exactly the same
speech again.

We learned, as too many other
families have learned,
of the terrible pain

and loneliness that must be endured
as each day brings another reminder
of this very long goodbye.

Less than a year later he wrote that
extremely poignant letter
to the American people

telling them that he was suffering
from Alzheimer's, that he was, in
effect, retiring from public life.

And then the stories and the
poignant little episodes
began to proliferate.

And one of the saddest
was when he came home one lunchtime
with something clutched in his hand.

Nancy noticed that his hand was wet.

She said Ronnie,
"What are you holding? "

She pried his fingers open
and inside

was a little model, a little
ceramic model of the White House

that had been sitting in
the fish tank in his office

and he'd stuck his hand in there and
plucked this little White House out
and brought it home.

She said what are you doing with
that in your hand and he said,

"I don't know but it's
something to do with me. "

History will record
his worth as a leader.

We here have long since
measured his worth as a man.

Those of us who knew him well
will have no trouble
imagining his paradise.

Golden fields will spread beneath
the blue dome of a western sky.

Live oaks will shadow
the rolling hillsides

and some place,
flowing from years long past,

a river will wind towards the sea.

He will let the river
carry him over the shining stones,

he will rest
in the shade of the trees.

Our cares are no longer his.

We meet him now only in memory.

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