[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 78 (Monday, June 7, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6486-S6488]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO FORMER PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, this week we mourn the passing of Ronald
Wilson Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. My wife Karyn
and I, and indeed the entire Senate family, extend our deepest
sympathies to his beloved Nancy and the entire Reagan family. More than
15 years have passed since Ronald Reagan gave his final cheerful salute
as President of the United States. He left the Oval Office with the
highest approval rating since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Ronald Reagan had restored our confidence and our optimism in what it
meant to be an American. The countless tributes and recollections of
the past few days have brought forth a flood of memories, not only of
his extraordinary leadership but of his truly exceptional character. We
remember Ronald Reagan and love him as we did the day he left the
highest post in the land. We feel a strong personal and unbreakable
connection with our 40th President.
Some attribute Ronald Reagan's ability to connect with the American
people to his abilities as an actor. No politician was better or more
comfortable around the camera. When he looked into the lens, he was
looking directly into the eyes of the American people. His timing was
flawless, and he had a soft touch that could disarm even his most
stubborn political opponents.
After being wounded by an assassin's bullet as he lay on a hospital
gurney drifting towards unconsciousness, Ronald Reagan quipped to his
beloved Nancy:
Honey, I forgot to duck.
So many stories like this remind us that Ronald Reagan was a man of
remarkable courage, coupled with boundless good humor. There was more
to him than what he said and how he said it, as there was more to
Abraham Lincoln than his stirring speeches, and more to Franklin
Roosevelt than his fireside chats. Ronald Reagan believed in what he
said, and that conviction came through. He believed there is good and
evil in the world and that America stands for the good. He believed we
must protect freedom wherever it may be threatened and plant its seeds
wherever freedom may take root. He believed democracy to be not the
privilege of a fortunate few but the rightful and ordained destiny for
all mankind.
At the 1992 Republican convention in Houston, TX, he expounded on
these beliefs, telling the American people:
Whether we come from poverty or wealth, whether we are
Afro-American or Irish-American, Christian or Jewish, from
big cities or small towns, we are all equal in the eyes of
God. But as Americans, that is not enough; we must be equal
in the eyes of each other.
There was one thing--second only to the Almighty--in which he had
more faith than all else, and that was the American people. We trusted
Ronald Reagan, we respected Ronald Reagan, we loved Ronald Reagan,
because he trusted, respected, and loved each and every one of us.
This week we will bear witness to a rare and extraordinary tribute to
one of our greatest leaders. Half-masted flags will snap in the wind.
Cannons will pound the air with salutes. And a horse-drawn caisson will
solemnly pull the flag-draped casket of Ronald Wilson Reagan up to the
Hill of our Capital City.
Americans will line up by the thousands to pause at his side, bow
their heads, and pay their final respects. Hundreds of leaders will
gather at the National Cathedral to show their deep appreciation of a
grateful Nation and a grateful world, and on Friday, when President
Reagan is laid to rest, each of us will give a moment of our day to
remember a man who gave us his very best.
All of this is right and fitting. This is how we honor the lives of
great leaders whom we love. But our tribute to Ronald Reagan must be
more than a passing historical moment. Although we say goodbye to the
man, we must never say goodbye to his values. Let this week reaffirm
the goodness of our Nation. Let it reaffirm our faith in freedom. Let
it reaffirm democracy as the destiny of all mankind. And let our fond
memories, our deep affection and regard for Ronald Wilson Reagan
reaffirm that we believe, above all, in ourselves as Americans.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Alexander). The Senator from North
Carolina is recognized.
Mrs. DOLE. Mr. President, this past weekend we lost one of Americans
greatest leaders, Ronald Reagan. I had the privilege of serving under
President Reagan's strong, principled leadership for 7 years--2 years
in his White House as assistant to the President, or public liaison,
and almost 5 years as his Secretary of Transportation.
Greatness in a President is marked by the ability to chart and
implement a new course, a better course, and by his level of decency
and integrity. Ronald Reagan knew why he wanted to be President. He
came to office with the clearest of vision, a passion for achieving his
goals and in conveying them with an eloquence almost unsurpassed.
Ronald Reagan made all of us, the American people, believe in
ourselves again. He literally changed the world. Despite conventional
wisdom, he determined that communism had to be defeated, not tolerated.
He rejected the Iron Curtain, rejected the status quo, and his legacy
to the world is freedom. His strength of character and bedrock belief
in right and wrong ended the cold war, and his leadership unshackled
the yoke of tyranny for millions upon millions of people who had known
only oppression.
I will always remember his remarkable rapport with the American
people and what a true gentleman he was. During my time on his White
House staff, I brought scores and scores of people, organizations, and
groups into the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, the Roosevelt Room, and
he treated every person with courtesy and respect. Occasionally, there
would be some who had a difference of view with him on some issue or
another, and they were going to give him a piece of their mind. Well,
they came into his presence and you could almost see that anger just
fading away. He would express his views, he would address their
concerns, and then he might sit back and tell them a story or two--
perhaps a humorous one--and maybe pass jellybeans around. They would be
ready to climb any hill for Ronald Reagan. When the President would
explain his position, obviously, he did it in a very eloquent manner.
What a remarkable person his wife Nancy is. What a tremendous
partner. She was his best friend, his confidant, his trusted, beloved
spouse. She deserves great credit for his accomplishments and hers.
When I left the Cabinet, a farewell function was planned, and we
talked about the fact that it would be nice to invite to that farewell
party people who would not otherwise be able to meet the President of
the United States. He readily agreed.
I can remember one young woman from Arkansas. She was a part of the
Make a Wish group. She had a terminal illness and her great desire was
to meet President Ronald Reagan. I can still see her there in the White
House and the compassionate way in which he greeted her and talked with
her.
There was a young man named Tommy, from my hometown of Salisbury, NC,
who was in a wheelchair; he had to wear a helmet most of the time
because if he were to fall, it would be very severe. His mother and his
uncle very tenderly brought him to Washington to carry out his wish to
meet the great Ronald Reagan, President of the United States. Once
again, to watch the President and his compassion as he talked with
Tommy is something I will remember forever.
One of the things that will really be an inspiration to me for the
rest of my life is a conversation I had with the
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President when the two of us were alone. We were waiting in the holding
room for him to give a speech. You don't often find yourself alone with
the President of the United States. On this particular day, we were
waiting for a speech and I said: Mr. President, I just cannot resist. I
have to ask you how in the world, when you have the weight of the world
on your shoulders, are you able to be so gracious, so thoughtful, and
so kind? I never see you flustered or frustrated. How do you do it with
such weight on your shoulders?
He kind of leaned back, and he loved to tell a story and to
reminisce. He said: Well, Elizabeth, when I was Governor of California,
it seemed like every day yet another disaster would be placed on my
desk, and I had the urge to hand it to someone behind me to help me.
One day I realized I was looking in the wrong direction; I looked up
instead of back. I am still looking up. I don't think I could go 1 more
day in this office if I didn't know that I could ask God's help and it
would be given.
There is no doubt in my mind that President Reagan was welcomed into
the gates of Heaven with open arms and with the words: Well done, good
and faithful servant. Well done, indeed.
God bless President Ronald Reagan and his family, and God bless this
great land of the free, America.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, a few years ago when Ronald Reagan was
President of the United States, he attended one of the many press
dinners which are held. I think it was the gridiron dinner. I think it
is well known that maybe 90 percent of the press corps in Washington
had a different point of view on issues than President Reagan did, but
they liked him anyway, and they respected him and he had fun with them,
just as they did with him.
I remember on that evening he strode into the gridiron dinner looking
like a million dollars, smiling big. The press rose, smiling back,
applauding. He stood in front of them until it subsided, and then he
said to his adversaries in the media: Thank you very much. I know how
hard it is to clap with your fingers crossed. And they laughed, and
they had a wonderful time with President Reagan.
The first thing we think about, those of us who had any opportunity
to get to know him--a great many of us--was that Ronald Reagan was a
very friendly man. He was a congenial person, an easy person to know,
the kind of person you want to spend a lot of time with, if you had the
opportunity, and that what you saw in private was what everyone else
saw in public.
Howard Baker, the former majority leader of the Senate when Ronald
Reagan was President, got to know him especially well, and then in
1987, President Reagan invited former Senator Baker to come to be his
Chief of Staff, which he was for nearly 2 years.
I remember Senator Baker telling me that, to his surprise, when his 9
a.m. meetings came every morning with President Reagan, he discovered
that Mr. Reagan had a funny little story to tell to Senator Baker, his
Chief of Staff. What surprised Senator Baker even more was President
Reagan expected Senator Baker to have a funny little story to tell
back. So for that whole 2 years, virtually every morning at 9 a.m. when
the President of the United States and the Chief of Staff of the White
House met, they swapped funny little stories. It is very reassuring to
me that two men who have maybe the two biggest jobs in the world were
comfortable enough with themselves, each other, and their
responsibilities to begin the day in that sort of easy way. That is the
part of Ronald Reagan we think more about.
Another part of Ronald Reagan which I think is often overlooked is
that he was a man of big ideas. I would say intellectual, although I
guess there is a little difference between being devoted to ideals and
being intellectual but not much difference.
Unlike most people who are candidates for President of the United
States, Ronald Reagan wrote many of his own speeches. When he had a few
minutes, he would sit in the back of a campaign airplane and make notes
on cards in the shorthand that he had. His former aide, Marty Anderson,
has written a book about that and told that, to a great extent, Ronald
Reagan's words were his own words, ideas he expressed or ideas he
gathered himself and ideas he had thought through and wanted to
promulgate.
Maybe that is partly why he seemed so comfortable with himself when
he finally entered public life. He came to it late in life. He was age
55 when he became Governor of California, so by then he knew what he
thought, and he had a sense of purpose, and he knew what he wanted to
do.
I got an idea of that kind of big thinking when I went to see
President Reagan in my second year as Governor--third year, I guess it
was, his first year as President in 1981. I talked to him about a big
swap which I thought would help our country.
I suggested: Mr. President, why doesn't the Federal Government take
over all of Medicaid and let the State and local governments take over
all responsibility for kindergarten through 12th grade? That would make
it clear, I said, where the responsibility lies. You cannot fix schools
from Washington, and it would make more efficient our health care
system if we did things that way. He liked the idea. It fit his
unconventional brand of thinking. He advocated it. It was a little too
revolutionary for most people in Washington in the early 1980s.
He had the same sort of unconventional attitude toward national
defense policy. Many people overlooked the fact that Ronald Reagan did
not just want us to have as many nuclear weapons as the Soviet empire
did, he wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons. He saw them as wrong, as
bad, and he wanted a world without nuclear weapons. Instead of mutual
assured destruction, which was the doctrine at the time, he built up
our strength so we could begin to reduce nuclear weapons and then
unilaterally begin to do it before the Soviets did, hoping they would
then follow. We can see the results.
At the time, some people said Ronald Reagan was naive to think we
could transfer power from Washington, from an arrogant empire, at home
or naive to think we could face down an evil empire abroad, and
especially naive to think our policy should be based upon getting rid
of nuclear weapons. It turned out Ronald Reagan saw further than most
of those critics did.
Perhaps his most famous speech, not my favorite speech--my favorite
speech is the one we heard a lot about this weekend, 20 years ago at
Normandy, which moved the whole world to tears and reminded Americans
why we are Americans and what we fought for--but his most famous speech
may be the one in 1987 at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin where he said:
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Earlier this year, I visited Berlin with John Kornblum who at the
time was U.S. minister and deputy commandant in the American sector of
West Berlin where tanks challenged tanks and white crosses marked grave
sites of those who were killed trying to escape over the wall from East
Berlin. Mr. Kornblum talked about the development of that speech that
Ronald Reagan gave that day. Those words, or the thought, ``tear down
this wall,'' went into the speech at an early stage. Some fought to
keep it in. Many fought to take it out. Those who had thought Ronald
Reagan was wrong to say the Soviet Union was an evil empire were not
anxious for him to say:
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Some suggested that President Reagan try his hand at German as
President Kennedy had in a memorable speech at the Berlin Wall in the
early 1960s. Some suggested that the speech should not be made at the
Brandenburg Gate. That was too provocative, Mr. Kornblum remembers. But
the speech was made at the Brandenburg Gate, and Mr. Reagan did keep
his words in that speech. He did make his point, and his point was
clear:
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
For those of us who had a chance to see the new countries of Eastern
Europe and their enthusiasm for freedom
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and for a free market system, we can see the legacy of Ronald Reagan
and his unconventional thinking.
So I think it is important for us to remember that this genial
President was a man of ideas, of all the Presidents I have worked with,
as much a man of ideas as any one of those Presidents.
Ronald Reagan also taught us something about leadership. I recall in
1980 when he and Mrs. Reagan visited the Tennessee Governor's mansion
during the Presidential campaign. I had not known him very well. He had
served as Governor. He was several years older. He was from the West.
It was really my first chance to meet him.
After 1 hour or an hour and a half of breakfast with him the next
morning, I remember going away thinking this man has a better concept
of the Presidency than anyone I have ever been privileged to meet.
Ronald Reagan understood what George Reedy said in his book, ``The
Twilight of the Presidency,'' is the definition of Presidential
leadership: No. 1, see an urgent need; No. 2, develop a strategy to
meet the need; and, No. 3, persuade at least half the people that you
are right.
Ronald Reagan was as good as anyone at persuading at least half the
people that he was right. He taught that and he also taught us the
importance of proceeding from principles.
Sometimes we are described in Washington these days as being too
ideological, too uncompromising, too partisan. President Reagan was a
principled man. He operated from principles in all of his decisions,
insofar as I knew. He advocated his principles as far as he could take
them, but he recognized that the great decisions that we make here are
often conflicts between principles on which all of us agree. It might
be equal opportunity versus the rule of law. And once we have argued
our principle and the solution, and strategy has been taken as far as
it could go, if we get, as he said 75, 80, or 85 percent of what we
advocated, well, then that is a pretty good job.
So he was very successful because he argued from principles. He
argued strenuously. He was good at persuading at least half the people
he was right. Then he was willing to accept a conclusion because most
of our politics is about the conflict of principles.
There is another lesson that he taught us, and that was to respect
the military. Now, that seems unnecessary to say in the year 2004 where
we have a volunteer military that is better than any military we have
ever had in our history; when we have witnessed the thousands of acts
of courage, charity, kindness, and ingenuity in Iraq and Afghanistan
recently; when the men and women of our National Guard and Reserves are
also being called up. We have a lot of respect for our military.
In 1980, we were showing a lot less respect for the men and women of
our military. I remember riding with President Reagan in a car in
Knoxville during the 1980 campaign. As we pulled out of the airport by
the National Guard unit, there were a number of the soldiers waving at
him, understanding and sensing that he respected them. He turned to me
and said something like this: I wish we could think of some way to
honor these men and women more. He said: We used to do that in the
movies in the 1930s and 1940s. We would make movies honoring men and
women in the military and that is how we showed our respect for them.
Well, he did find a way to honor them during his Presidency in the
1980s, and by the time he left at the end of that decade there was no
question but that the American people remembered to honor the men and
women in the military.
There is one other aspect of President Reagan's leadership that I
would like to mention, which is probably the most important aspect of
the American character, and that is the belief that anything is
possible. The idea that we uniquely believe in this country, and people
all around the world think we are a little odd for believing it, is
that no matter where you come from, no matter what race you are, no
matter what color your skin, if you come here and work hard, anything
is possible.
That is why we subscribe to ideals such as all men are created equal,
even though we know achieving that goal will always be a work in
progress and we may never reach it. That is why we say we will pay any
price, bear any burden, as President Kennedy said, to defend peace,
even though we know that is a work in progress and we may never reach
it.
That is why we say more recently we want to leave no child behind
when it comes to learning to read. We know that is a work in progress
and we may not reach it, but that is our goal.
We Americans say that anything is possible, and nothing symbolizes
that more than the American Presidency. And no President has symbolized
that more in the last century than Ronald Reagan. He has reminded us of
what it means to be an American. He lifted our spirits, he made us
proud, he strengthened our character, and he taught us a great many
lessons.
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