[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 21 (Thursday, February 10, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E193-E194]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                HONORING PRESIDENT RONALD WILSON REAGAN

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 9, 2011

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, last Sunday, February 6, marked the 100th year 
of Ronald Reagan's birth. I've always admired President Reagan, and as 
a Member elected in 1980 when his name was at the top of the ticket, my 
coming to Congress was described by some as ``riding Mr. Reagan's 
coattails.''
  I have never considered that as a derogatory characterization. Just 
the opposite. I am grateful that I was serving in Congress during his 
Presidency and had a close-up view of his incredible influence not only 
in America, but on the world stage, especially in the area of human 
rights.
  As we reflect on Ronald Reagan's life and Presidency, I want to share 
a Wall Street Journal column by Peggy Noonan, a Reagan speechwriter who 
observed that ``being a good man helped him become a great one.''

              [From the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 3, 2011]

                          Ronald Reagan at 100


             Being a good man helped him become a great one

                           (By Peggy Noonan)

       Simi Valley, Calif.--At the Ronald Reagan Presidential 
     Library, in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountain Range 
     where old Hollywood directors shot Westerns, they will mark 
     Sunday's centenary of Reagan's birth with events and speeches 
     geared toward Monday's opening of a rethought and renovated 
     museum aimed at making his presidency more accessible to 
     scholars and vividly available to the public. Fifty percent 
     of the artifacts, officials note, have never been shown 
     before--essays and short stories Reagan wrote in high school 
     and college, the

[[Page E194]]

     suit he wore the day he was shot, the condolence book signed 
     by world leaders at his funeral. (Margaret Thatcher: ``Well 
     done, Thou good and faithful servant.'')
       Much recently has been written about who he was--a good man 
     who became a great president--but recent conversations about 
     Reagan have me pondering some things he was not.
       He wasn't, for instance, sentimental, though he's often 
     thought of that way. His nature was marked by a 
     characterological sweetness, and his impulse was to be kind 
     and generous. (His daughter Patti Davis captured this last 
     week in a beautifully remembered essay for Time.) But he 
     wasn't sentimental about people and events, or about history. 
     Underlying all was a deep and natural skepticism. That, in a 
     way, is why he was conservative. ``If men were angels.'' They 
     are not, so we must limit the governmental power they might 
     wield. But his skepticism didn't leave him down. It left him 
     laughing at the human condition, and at himself. Jim Baker, 
     his first and great chief of staff, and his friend, 
     remembered the other day the atmosphere of merriness around 
     Reagan, the constant flow of humor.
       But there was often a genial blackness to it, a mordant 
     edge. In a classic Reagan joke, a man says sympathetically to 
     his friend, ``I'm so sorry your wife ran away with the 
     gardener.'' The guy answers, ``It's OK, I was going to fire 
     him anyway.'' Or: As winter began, the young teacher sought 
     to impart to her third-graders the importance of dressing 
     warmly. She told the heart-rending story of her little 
     brother, a fun-loving boy who went out with his sled and 
     stayed out too long, caught a cold, then pneumonia, and days 
     later died. There was dead silence in the schoolroom as they 
     took it in. She knew she'd gotten through. Then a voice came 
     from the back: ``Where's the sled?''
       The biggest misunderstanding about Reagan's political life 
     is that he was inevitable. He was not. He had to fight for 
     every inch, he had to make it happen. What Billy Herndon said 
     of Abraham Lincoln was true of Reagan too: He had within him, 
     always, a ceaseless little engine of ambition. He was good at 
     not showing it, as was Lincoln, but it was there. He was 
     knowingly in the greatness game, at least from 1976, when he 
     tried to take down a sitting president of his own party.
       He was serious, and tough enough. Everyone who ever ran 
     against him misunderstood this. He was an actor, they 
     thought, a marshmallow. They'd flatten him. ``I'll wipe the 
     smile off his face.'' Nothing could wipe the smile off his 
     face. He was there to compete, he was aiming for the top. His 
     unconscious knew it. He told me as he worked on his farewell 
     address of a recurring dream he'd had through adulthood. He 
     was going to live in a mansion with big rooms,``high 
     ceilings, white walls.'' He would think to himself in the 
     dream that it was ``a house that was as available at a price 
     I could afford.'' He had the dream until he moved into the 
     White House and never had it again. ``Not once.''
       He ran for president four times and lost twice. His 1968 
     run was a flop--it was too early, as he later admitted, and 
     when it's too early, it never ends well. In 1976 he took on 
     an incumbent Republican president of his own party, and lost 
     primaries in New Hampshire, Florida, Illinois (where he'd 
     been born), Massachusetts and Vermont. It was hand-to-hand 
     combat all the way to the convention, where he lost to Gerald 
     Ford. People said he was finished. He roared back in 1980 
     only to lose Iowa and scramble back in New Hampshire while 
     reorganizing his campaign and firing his top staff. He won 
     the nomination and faced another incumbent president.
       In Reagan's candidacy the American people were being asked 
     to choose a former movie star (never had one as president) 
     who was divorced (ditto) and who looked like he might become 
     the most conservative president since Calvin Coolidge. To 
     vote for Reagan was not only to take a chance on an unusual 
     man with an unusual biography, but also to break with New 
     Deal-Great Society assumptions about the proper relationship 
     between the individual and the state. Americans did, in a 
     landslide--but only after Jimmy Carter's four years of 
     shattering failure.
       None of it was inevitable. The political lesson of Ronald 
     Reagan's life: Nothing is written.
       He didn't see himself as ``the great communicator.'' It was 
     so famous a moniker that he could do nothing but graciously 
     accept the compliment, but he well understood it was bestowed 
     in part by foes and in part to undercut the seriousness of 
     his philosophy: ``It's not what he says, it's how he says 
     it'' He answered in his farewell address: ``I never thought 
     it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: 
     it was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I 
     communicated great things.'' It wasn't his eloquence people 
     supported, it was his stands--opposition to the too-big 
     state, to its intrusions and demands, to Soviet communism. 
     Voters weren't charmed, they were convinced.
       His most underestimated political achievement? In the 
     spring of 1981 the Professional Air Traffic Controllers 
     Organization called an illegal strike. It was early in 
     Reagan's presidency. He'd been a union president. He didn't 
     want to come across as an antiunion Republican. And Patco had 
     been one of the few unions to support him in 1980. But the 
     strike was illegal. He would not accept it. He gave them a 
     grace period, two days, to come back. If they didn't, they'd 
     be fired. They didn't believe him. Most didn't come back. So 
     he fired them. It broke the union. Federal workers got the 
     system back up. The Soviet Union, and others, were watching. 
     They thought: This guy means business. It had deeply positive 
     implications for U.S. foreign policy. But here's the thing: 
     Reagan didn't know that would happen, didn't know the bounty 
     he'd reap. He was just trying to do what was right.
       The least understood facet of Reagan's nuclear policies? He 
     hated the rise of nuclear weapons, abhorred the long-accepted 
     policy of mutually assured destruction. That's where the 
     Strategic Defense Initiative came from, his desire to protect 
     millions from potential annihilation. The genius of his 
     program: When developed, America would share it with the 
     Soviet Union. We'd share it with everybody. All would be 
     protected from. doomsday.
       The Soviets opposed this; the Rejkavik summit broke up over 
     it, and in the end the Soviets' arms spending helped bankrupt 
     them and hasten their fall. Years later I would see Mikhail 
     Gorbachev, who became Reagan's friend. He was still grumpy 
     about Reagan's speeches. ``Ron--he loved show business!'' Mr. 
     Gorbachev blustered. The losses of those years must have 
     still rankled, and understandably. It's one thing to be 
     outmaneuvered by a clever man, but to be outfoxed by a good 
     one--oh, that would grate.

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