Is Reagan Responsible for Trump? (w/ Max Boot) | The Michael Steele Podcast

Cold Open 1986 as president he signed an immigration bill that legalized millions of undocumented immigrants what Republicans today would call an amnesty Bill and of course his crowning achievement as president after a lifetime as an anti- staunch anti-communist he wound up spending his his second term as president working with the world's leading communist m g to re end the Cold War and reform the Soviet Union even at a time when a lot of conservatives said that he was being snookered that that g office taking him for a [Music] ride hey folks welcome to the Michael steel podcast it's always a pleasure when I have you in the house here at the podcast uh if you like our podcast of course you know what to do you're going to tell a friend and share it and give us a review on Apple podcast we love it when you do that check us out on Twitter uh uh steel podcast follow me at Michael Steel uh and of course this podcast is brought to you by the bull workk Network follow them on social media at buw workk online and I'm very proud to be a part of that so I'm excited today uh to have someone that I've admired and followed uh his work in his writing a long time uh Max boot uh he's a best-selling author historian and policy analyst uh he's a columnist for the Washington Post a global Affairs analyst for CNN uh and the Gan J Kirk Patrick senior fellow in National Security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations he is the author of The New York Times bestsellers The Road Not Taken Edward Lance Dale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam and his latest book Reagan His Life and Legend is out now we get into the book about the man who inspired me to become a republican what do you know we're going to talk about all of that right here with the Michael steel podcast right after to this hey everybody Welcome to Interview Begins the Michael steel podcast excited as always when you are spending a little bit of time with us it is uh fall Okay so we've got about a couple weeks left in summer but when you turn the corner in September for me it's fall and so I get in a whole different vibe everything looks um and feels different and that is all heightened this year because we're in a in an intense political environment so you have that uh you've got um you know weather being a little bit crazy you've got that but there are always some threads in in in life that you know you take a moment and you just want to take a step back and look and sort of assess and for me um that happened with a new book uh that is uh out and and really really kind of putting in space for us and contextualizing not just a period that we many of us remember in the 1970s and 80s uh and 90s with Ronald Reagan but even today so I'm excited to have Max boot on to talk about his new book Reagan His Life and Legend is out now Max it's such a pleasure to have you here to talk about this book um you know I was asked a question recently about What influence did President Ronald Reagan have on Michael Steele? uh why I became a Republican and the significance of Reagan in the context of trump and what I referenced was the Reagan 76 uh concession when he was asked uh by uh Gerald Ford to come up and say a few words at the end of that convention where there was a lot of tension and a lot of political and Reagan got up and I remember watching that as um a young 17-year-old um that summer who would turn 18 that October and vote that November for the first time just being ODed by how he handled defeat it it's a quality of leadership that I think a lot of people don't understand and a lot of people miss because we're so fixated on winning and it really struck me as a young man that if this person can stand in that space at that hour in that room and have that kind of Grace about what was happening to him personally despite how he may have felt personally but then have an eye towards the future and saw a place where this where he could play a role in moving the country still damn that was a guy I wanted to follow what what inspired you to What inspired Max Boot to write Reagan: Life And Legend? write um this book A book that it's incly enough um out today uh just just a I think a blazingly important um uh review by the New York Times noting the book is gripping it's a gripping new biography boots book enters a crowded field but stands out for its deep research Lucid pros and command of its subject broad political and social context in other words you hit a home run with this in that you really and in Reading in Reading what I what I received from your publisher I I just you you really do drill down and and so what what about this version of Reagan that you want us to know and why now well thank you very much for having me on Michael it's it's a pleasure to be on with you and like you I was made into a republican in part by Ronald Reagan in my case in the 1980s now of course you know I'm not a republican anymore I'm an independent so I'm not writing uh as as as a fan I'm writing as a serious historian trying to get the story right so that it's neither a hogra nor a hit job but really tells the story of Ronald Reagan with both his successes as well as his shortcomings and I was really aiming to produce the definitive biography so I was delighted today to see the New Yorker reviews saying that I had achieved that very ambition but that's you know that's really why I set out to do this to do this book more than a decade ago was because I felt like there were a lot of books about Reagan but not one that really nailed his place in history not one that presented a well balanced in-depth portrait of him and that's that's really what I've tried to achieve so that uh we can really understand uh Reagan and and and and even if a new generation that didn't know Reagan or wasn't aware of him personally can understand his significance and why he still generally ranked by historians as being a top 10 president yeah you know it's it's it's an important uh point to make because a lot of folks do not have that that that tissue connection to Reagan I mean you know time time does a a terrible thing um it it it it it can break those bonds that we once had uh and certainly as newer Generations come into into play that tissue becomes that connection becomes less and less which is why I think uh you referenced the New Yorker um again their their review of this book stated very clearly Reagan His Life and Legend aims to be the definitive biography and it succeeds um it's a thoughtful absorbing account um and it's a surprising one and and I think it's I think that's important in terms of trying to in this environment give folks um an appropriate frame of reference about a historic figure but also um reconnect that dot if you can or or those tissues for a lot of us who you know we're talking the 1970s for me the 1980s for you and and for many others when when they first kind watched Reagan and learned of him and experienced him bringing that alive for people is what you accomplish in this book in a real way and H how do you do that um with this Gap in time you know it's just you know I know you spent a lot of time reading a lot of stuff a lot of other stuff that was had been written about Reagan and and Reagan's own uh writings and letters and things like that at a certain point How Max Boot brings Ronald Reagan back to life in his book. you really get to know the man uh and how do you bring him back to life for uh this age well that's a great question and it really involved a lot of research and a lot of research into his personal papers his professional papers a lot of interviews with people who knew him and I was kind of Lucky with this book that I kind of hit a sweet spot in terms of research because we were far enough away from the Reagan presidency that a lot of the passions around him have cooled and so people are ready to talk about him more reflectively more dispassionately but there there were people who knew him very well who were still around when I was doing the research some of them are still around others have since passed away but I was you know able to talk to a lot of people who knew him that future generations of historians are not going to be able to reach and then at the same time I also benefited from huge new releases of documents at the Reagan library and so a lot of documents that you know journalists didn't have when they were covering him in the 80s we now have as historians and we can so I spent a lot of time in the very chilly reading room of the rean library in C Valley going through all this stuff but you know the other thing that kind of made it possible I think to try to bring him back alive for people who didn't know him was also looking at the at the popular culture context and that's something that I did throughout the book from you know his his early adult years during the Great Depression writing about you know song like brother can you spare a dime bringing home the the the misery and and and the terror of of the Great Depression you know up through the 60s and 70s and into the 80s and writing about the 1980s you know the the era where Madonna sang I'm A Material Girl to that kind of captures the ethos in some ways of the era so you know How Ronald Reagan helped shape American culture. connecting Reagan's story with the larger story of American culture because he was really shaped by that culture but he in turn also really shaped the culture and you can see it just like in something as simple as betrayals of the military because remember when Reagan was coming into office the military was portrayed as you know Psychopaths and deer hunter or yeah balls in movies like stripes or Private Benjamin and then a few years into the Reagan presidency those images had been transformed into Top Gun in Rambo uh in the hunt for October so a much more positive uh image of of the US military which is certainly wasn't all Reagan's doing but he contributed to it and he kind of led the way well that that's an important Point too because when I'm thinking back on it you're absolutely right I hadn't really connected that transitional Dot from the the the impact of the Vietnam War and the cia's bad behavior and a lot of the stuff that government was doing in the late 60s and 70s how Hollywood portrayed that and by the time you get to 8384 and the second uh in the second reelect that that narrative had begun to change about our military and a lot about our culture um it also started to reflect itself in some of the music and and and I think a lot of that had to do with how Reagan performed as president as much as what he was putting out in terms of specific policies in other words he more so than any other president probably since Roosevelt also culturally tapped into uh the American psyche and sort of move the country in a way and you know I'm putting a pin in that because I'm going to relate that to Donald Trump uh in in 2016 in a moment but he was able to do that in such a way that uh culturally moved the country politically moved the country as he was as he was talking about America as a shining City on the hill and that began to be reflected in how we saw ourselves and how we saw our institutions absolutely he really understood the performative aspect of the presidency in a way that Jimmy Carter for example absolutely did not and a lot of that really comes from Franklin Roosevelt who was Reagan's boyhood Idol uh in the 1930s or or Idol as a young man he he grew up as an art new dealer he really idolized FDR and he learned lessons from FDR about how to communicate I mean in the 1930s Reagan like much of the country was they were listening to Roosevelt on the Fireside Chats and Reagan was understanding that radio was a very good medium of political communication which he later used himself even as president he did these weekly radio talks which is pretty unusual in the 1980s and I think part of the reason he was doing that was because he understood from listening to FDR's radio talks how effective radio could be and of course Reagan was also a master of TV he was the first president to host a national television show before becoming president he was the host of General Electric Theater in the 1950s and again that's where he learned a lot of his communication abilities and in his Mastery of the medium of television and he was probably one of the two best TV performers as president alongside John F Kennedy he was a master of that Medium as well and so he really understood how to communicate his message now I will say he was a great leader and a great communicator he wasn't such a great manager he was not that good at running the nuts and bolts of the government and he uh he you know left a lot of that to his AIDS the fellas as he called them to do and so he got good results when he had good AIDS like Jim Baker and others in the first term the results were a little bit more mixed when like in the second term he had Don Regan who didn't know what he was doing as Chief of Staff so that became very problematic but he was so he had you know his weakness I would say was management but his strength was communicating and inspiring and that was really he understood that lay at the heart of being a president and that really transformed the national mood and changed our politics and and and won him this amazing re-election in 1984 which you can't imagine today anybody winning 49 out of 50 states yeah no I can't I can't imagine that happening anytime soon um I I love How small town life and Hollywood shaped Ronald Reagan's political career. the way you began uh his story and there's a lot I think a lot of people don't really appreciate what football and being a lifeguard meant to Reagan and how it actually shaped him as a as a young man um along with the work he did in Hollywood that sort of honed those skills uh that you were just referring to um but that aspect of his life his childhood his family talk a little bit about how that shaped him because again put a pen in that I think it it sort of shapes um we'll put it this way the personality of a president who is the titular head of of the party whether it's Republican or Democrat tends to sort of push that side of himself into into the body politic and we all kind of mimic feel and become a part of that that person's energy if you will um and and I'm curious how you saw those things those elements of his life shaping the kind of President he would become well you're right that that that was an incredibly important part of his life I mean I would pull back the camera a little bit further and just say that as I do in the book that he was really a product of the early 20th century small town Midwest which may surprise people because we tend to think of him as a Californian as a western as a cowboy figure but he actually grew up in these Norman Rockwell type small towns in in Illinois he was you know as I say in the book uh Main Street USA became uh you know an attraction in Disneyland but he lived in the actual Main Street USA right small towns like Tampico and Dixon uh with all of the you know kind of strengths and weaknesses of that time in place and there were certainly weaknesses including uh you know white Americans like Reagan were often overlooked what they what they africanamerican neighbors were suffering at that time but there was also kind of a resiliency a a a belief in America and a belief in themselves that really took Reagan far and I think those that resiliency and that belief in himself was really it grew by Leaps and Bounds when he was a lifeguard on the Rock River in Dixon Illinois throughout his high school and college Years where he literally saved 77 people from drowning and some people you know some cynics have said oh well that's an ex that must be an exaggeration that must not be true but I looked into it a lot of things that Reagan said about himself were exaggerations a lot of things were not true this is true he actually did say he actually did people so he was actually a HomeTown hero he was like a big man in a little town and he uh you know I think it taught him uh he enjoyed being of service to people he enjoyed uh you know doing something for other people saving them from drowning and he also quite frankly enjoyed the agulation that came with that he enjoyed the re that he that he gained from that and you know he had his ego was much more firmly in check than most politicians or most presidents but he had an ego to and he enjoyed the Applause that he got you know for life- saving feat just as he enjoyed the Applause that he received uh you know as a football player or as an actor which which he did in in both high school and in college and of course later on in Hollywood and all of that really shaped him and I think you know one of the things he learned as a as a as a football player uh you know at Dixon High School and at Eureka College was and he wasn't a great football player by the way he was not that athletically talented his brother moon was much more talented but Dutch Reagan as he then was called was a great team player he really worked hard he did what was expected of him he really listened to his coaches and those were uh you know those are not necessarily leadership traits but those are traits that allowed him eventually to become a leader because it was that ethos that allowed him to succeed in Hollywood where again he wasn't the most talented actor but he was pretty successful because he delivered what directors needed and then you know later on working for General Electric in the 1950s he really salvaged his career after his Hollywood career went South and again he delivered what the management of G wanted so he was very very good at at meeting ex or even exceeding expectations working hard he was very diligent and he learned his craft and eventually all that translated into his uh rise to political leadership in California and the country he found the fullness of of Life wherever he could it it seemed at least that's the feeling in in the way you've written about that early uh period of his life I was I How did football help Ronald Reagan reach his life goals? chuckled at one point and I highlighted it uh where you were talking about um early in the book about how foot football was such you were just referencing football was such an important part for him um and in particularly you wrote about uh you know the very first letter uh of his that Vibes written at age 11 in 1922 to an older girl who had moved to Wisconsin is filled mainly with Football news quote Dixon High School has played 10 games one3 tied one he wrote before noting that he was the drum major of the YMCA band and that he had 12 rabbits and I'm going to kill three and eat them is like it's funny because I've actually been watching you know this great show Friday Night Lights and he was actually living kind of that Friday night light lights world as a young man yeah I mean that's the that's the part of it it you know it is that that little bit for me is sort of it it is Americana is written with innocence yeah it's written by an 11y old so you can expect some of that but you can just knowing Reagan as we have come to know him and then reading something like that it it all kind of connected for me at least and made a lot of sense you know how how he how he saw the world um at one at once um very pragmatic um but at the same time you know there was this this aspirational aspect um about it as well because um you know as you go on to note that you know he he wanted to to go on and as you say here he even began to dream of going to college ass seemingly impossible goal for a young boy like him so that he could become a football star just like the fictional Frank merrywell at Yale so he he was able to and of course going up and playing new rockney and all of that later on in life for him was sort of like a completion of a goal I guess yeah no he was he was act I mean one of the interesting things about Reagan is again he often usually in fact hid his ambition right he he always talked about when he was running for office that it wasn't like he was seeking higher office it was the office was seeking him that people were just demanding that he run and he was just listening to the voice of the people some of that was was was a rude some of that was real but there's no question he had real ambition and you know it's amazing how far he got from being this this this offspring of this very impoverished family his father this alcoholic shoe salesman moving from one town to another and throughout Illinois uh his mother being very religious uh and very inspirational but often fighting with his father very troubled upbringing and yet he was able to go to college and his parents by the way left school after Elementary School they didn't even have a high school education but he wound up being able to go to college which was a tremendous achievement because you know today like a third of Americans or something like that go to college back then it was like one or two% it was a very slice of the population able to go to college and then even getting out of college at the How did Ronald Reagan rise in Hollywood and politics? height of the Great Depression in 1932 when the unemployment rate was like 20% he was dreaming of becoming an actor and he figured out how to make it happen because he understood that there were uh no film studios in Illinois but there were a lot of radio stations in the area he found a radio station in Davenport Iowa that would hire him and before long he was famous throughout the Midwest as the voice of the of the Cubs and the white socks he was calling games that were heard throughout the region and then you know one year when when the CBS were going for spring training to Catalina Island off the coast of California he went with them and then he snuck away from spring training to get a screen t a screen test at Warner Brothers and that you know within a few months in 1937 Warner Brothers hires him as an actor and all of a sudden this this poor boy from Dixon Illinois is rising to become a star in Hollywood I mean what an improbable only in America kind of story but he didn't stop there you know even when his his Hollywood career uh fizzled out after World War II he he found this new life on General Electric Theater and then transition by the 1960s into a life of politics and the very first race he ran was for governor of the nation's most popular state and he won that race by a million votes I mean that's that's a heck of a track record and and shows that he had this hidden drive this hidden ambition which he didn't run on a sleeve but it was there it was there uh and it would What made Ronald Reagan a Republican? manifest itself uh as you said in politics you mentioned already he was a new dealer you have the chapter the new dealer and he notes I was a child of the depression a Democrat by upbringing and very emotionally committed to FDR um and and two things what was the source of that commitment was it growing up in poverty seeing the poverty around him and then having this this this idea placed in front of the country um that Roosevelt had this new deal that he wanted to create for Middle America to put them back to work to to restore the economy so what made him a new dealer but then more importantly what made him a republican what and and how much of that did he bring into his republicanism because I've always made this you know having been a chairman uh and dealt with candidates um of all Stripes particularly with those who leave uh the Democratic party for example to become Republicans or even Republicans to go to the Democratic party your core is still still what it is right there there's some core things that animate your your vision of yourself in the world and your philosophy um and whether you're Elizabeth Warren or or um Hillary Clinton who were both Republicans in their youth um there aspects of that philosophy that still weaves itself in and so I'm thinking with Reagan the same How did Ronald Reagan's upbringing influence his political beliefs? was true particularly given that his level of um you know he says I was very emotionally committed to FDR you just don't walk away from that and leave that all over there well part of that was his family inheritance because his father was Irish American at a time when in the 1920s when the Republican party was associated with nativism and anti-catholic Prejudice whereas at least in the north the Democratic party was full of Catholics more liberal and so you know Catholic uh Irish Americans like Jack Reagan were drawn to the Democratic party and so was Little Dutch Reagan and then of course you know he saw the failure of of Herbert Hoover the coming of the Great Depression and then the way that Franklin Rosevelt worked to save the country and saved his father I mean his father actually was unemployed and found work uh in one of the New Deal relief agencies providing Aid to his neighbors in Dixon and so that made Reagan very emotionally connected uh to the New Deal and FDR and he really began to change in the 1940s I think initially What made Ronald Reagan change from a Democrat to a Republican? uh because as a highly paid Hollywood star he didn't like paying the high tax rates during World War II like 90% taxation but then it really I think it really happened after the war where he got caught up in some of the uh battles over communism in Hollywood he he became a supporter of The Blacklist and he was you know he thought that there was a communist conspiracy to take over Hollywood that he was resisting I think a lot of that was exaggerated but it made him a very staunch anti-communist and then in the 1950s he went to work for General Electric as I mentioned I really saved his career and General Electric at the time was a very right-wing company they actively crossed the really yeah for absolutely because for them spreading free market ideology was basically an inoculation against unionism and Strikes they this would help their self-interest by convincing by convincing their their Executives and employees that unions were part of this Global communist conspiracy and had to be resistant all So Reagan you know would would spend long hours on the train from California to New York going to speak for GE because he was afraid of flying in those days and so have a lot of time to read a lot of the right-wing literature that General Electric passed out uh to its Executives and so and he began you know he began to be converted uh he had already been a staunch anti-communist but in the 50s he was also converted to a free market L Fair uh ideology and economics and then it wasn't just this passive process of receiving this information he was also giving speeches all the time yeah and there is nothing like you know for uh digesting a worldview like having to speak about it and he was speaking about it all the time with these little index cards giving speeches on behalf of GE but they became increasingly political and so you know people speculate about oh did his wife Nancy or his father-in-law loyal Davis or somebody else that they convert him no not really I would say it was more he was already moving in that direction ction uh from the from the late 40s but it was really working for G that kind of completed his conversion uh such that by 1960 he was head of democrats for Nixon and the only reason he wasn't a republican was because Richard Nixon himself asked them not to Reg re-register because it was more powerful to have his support as a Democrat so basically between 45 and 1960 he moved from being you know a very staunch New Deal liberal to being a very staunch Conservative Republican it's Did Democratic political ideas change or did Ronald Reagan's? fast I would add one thing that you know I think he he created a mythology around his the why he changed parties because he's often said I didn't desert my party my party deserted me but when I looked at that that wasn't really true because the Democratic Party in the 1950s was actually pretty conservative it was led by Lyndon Johnson Sam Raburn in 1960 John F Kennedy actually Rand a Nixon's right on foreign policy so it wasn't the Democratic party going far to the left it was really this change within Ronald Reagan which you know took some work to to get that story out that's fascinating in in in in a lot of ways because there is mythology around this whole idea of the party leaving you but then there's also at least we can speak in the modern era and it's obviously to your point on an individual basis where parties do tend to change and by the time you got to the 60s you could see and you're right John F Kennedy sort of ran to the right on on foreign policy for example but then you also had a very different dimension and look at the social contract that the government has with the society and those things began to I would suspect eat a little bit more at people's philosophical Moorings uh than they had previously as you saw the sexual Revolution the Vietnam War certainly as a Catholic I can speak to the changes in the Catholic church at that time as a young alter boy trying to we're not saying Latin Mass anymore what are we what are we doing you know it's just you know all those was just too much well see you could it would be plausible if that's what made Reagan into a Conservative Republican if he were a decade younger and if he was making his conversion in the 1960s but he wasn't he was really converted fully to the right by the early 60s before all these changes that you're talking about actually happened and then he was the leader of the backlash against all that you know by by 1966 was running uh for governor of California on a platform of Law and Order and a platform of doing something about those damn hippies at Berkeley so he was he was kind of the middle class backlash against the changes that were sweeping the country in the 60s you framed it exactly how it Did Ronald Reagan lead the conservative revolution? is and that that makes a lot a lot of sense in terms of his his own personal Evolution but it also speaks to the mythology that we've kind of created about the man that some how you know all of that that he was he was in reaction to those things but he actually was sort of leading the Leading Edge of that Revolution that we thought he was reacting to he was already much more firm in fact one of the interesting things I found was people often associate the so-called southern strategy with Richard Nixon in 1968 when Republicans sought to appeal to to white Southerners particular take them away from the Democratic party on kind of a Law and Order platform and you know opposition to civil rights legislation and so forth and that's true but Reagan actually pioneered that basic strategy in 1966 two years before the 68 presidential election and used it to win a massive million Govern of California because this was right after the Watts Riots in ' 65 which alarmed a lot of you know white homeowners and this this was after protests were starting at Berkeley and so you know a lot of kind of white middle class Americans were horrified of what was going on and they wanted somebody to defend their values and that was basically the niche that Ronald Reagan filled okay so that is the perfect perfect spot to take a quick break and and move now to the rest of the story where it gets really interesting when you connect that dot to the Republican party that he would come to lead and what it would be come after he moved on the book Reagan His Life and Legend is out now the author Max boot is right here with us on the Michael steel podcast we're going to take a quick break when we come back we're going to we're going to move a little bit closer a little bit towards the end of the 20th century and into the 21st because it gets real interesting real fast we'll be right back folks right after this welcome back everybody to the Michael steel podcast having a great conversation with my buddy Max fot about his new book Reagan His Life and Legend it's out now you got to get a copy because it's yeah it's a book about Reagan but it's it's so much more that you begin to understand and contextualize um what's been happening today and how I mean just as we went to break Max you you make the Nugget about the you know the 68 race in the southern strategy and as someone who's given speeches on some of that uh had not appropriately connected that to the 66 California gubinatorial race with Ronald Reagan where that Law and Order aspect that southern white male approach uh was really kind of formed and created um and would would stand up um and be a part of what we would see happen with Reagan later on when he announces for president in Mississippi uh and and uh in in one of the darkest parts of Mississippi in terms of uh racial history um what in How Ronald Reagan helped shape the Republican party and what made him a successful leader? that regard then what is the difference between the the Reagan Republican party that he would take hold of and really shape having cut the deal with the Moral Majority on abortion and for the first time putting that plank that social plank in our more libertarian oriented uh platform um in the 1980 race uh and today's GOP for example which has cut cut a deal with Trump uh on things like tariffs and Putin well I think the essential Paradox of Ronald Reagan which really helps to understand why who he he was who he was and and why Trump is very different I think the the essential thing to focus on is the fact that there was a big difference between Reagan as the campaigner and Reagan as somebody who was in office as governor and as president as a campaigner he was often quite far to the right and he accused Democrats of marching America towards communism he claimed that Medicare and Medicaid and other social welfare legislation was going to lead to the complete loss of freedom in America he opposed civil rights legislation and you know he talked about welfare queens and Law and Order and as you referenced in 1980 he talked about states rights at in isoba County Fair in Mississippi just a few miles where civil rights workers had been slain in 1964 and so a lot of that convinced obviously uh conservatives in America the right in America that he was sort of the right man that he was their man that he that he shared their beliefs and he largely did but now here's the key here's the key turn when he was actually in office he showed that he was not just an ideologue he was also a pragmatist he was able to Pivot to the center and get things done and he had nothing but contempt for conservatives who go over the flag who go over the cliff with their flags flying and that's a quote from Reagan and he often said if I if I get 80% of what I want that's a victory I don't have to get 100% so he was able to compromise with Democrats in Sacramento and Washington and able to do things that if anybody else had done would horrify Republicans he signed for example the most liberal abortion law in the country as as governor of California he raised taxes and raised spending he he cuts he cuts taxes and spending in some ways but he also raised it in other ways he in 1986 as president he signed an immigration bill that legalized millions of undocumented immigrants what Republicans today would call an amnesty Bill and of course his crowning achievement as president after a lifetime as an anti- staunch anti communist he wound up spending his his second term as president working with the world's leading communist m g to re the Cold War and reform the Soviet Union even at a time when a lot of conservatives said that he was being snookered that that gorbachov was taking him for a ride but he was convinced that gorbachov was somebody he could do business with and he was right so at the end of the day what I would argue is what made Reagan a successful campaign or successful candidate was that he was able to Ator uh and express and embody conservative ideology but what made him a successful leader as both governor and as president was that he was able to transcend that ideology and I think that's really one you know Trump has so many shortcomings but that's a huge one because with Trump there's no real difference between him as the campaigner and him as the president he doesn't pivot to the center he doesn't make compromises and that's why I don't he's not going to go down as a successful president and Reagan is because he was able to be much more pragmatic it's really that streak of pragmatism which I think accounts for why he's rated as one of the top 10 presidents in our history do you think What made Ronald Reagan popular with Republicans and Democrats? that accounts for the the drag on the party in the sense that Reagan you had this you had this movement occur where Democrats moved towards Reagan you know you had Independence moved toward Reagan um and I remember um you know Reagan democrats uh playing a very prominent role then is is it that sense that ability to to to be pragmatic when it's required and and have people see that and trust that that aspect of your leadership which is clearly devoid in Trump uh which is why his his ceiling is 46% he you know he's not he's not really claiming more than that and a lot and a lot of that is really kind of sort of the entertainment value of Donald Trump as opposed to the real substantive you know Narrative of the man well I think a lot of it was the fact that Reagan was so pragmatic and so willing to compromise but I think also a lot of it was that he was willing to reach across the aisle and he had a very pleasing personality that was kind of a secret weapon in 1964 when Reagan as a as a former movie actor was Campa for Barry Goldwater and people would hear both Goldwater and Reagan speaking at the same events they would often Come Away saying gee I wish Reagan were the candidate rather than because Goldwater was this kind of fierce uncompromising take no prisoners conservative who was very Gruff and and kind of hard-edged whereas Reagan you know there was I I ran across a newspaper account in the 1960s that said the Reagan personality is like a soothing warm bathwater it was very pleasing he said many of the same things as Goldwater but he said them with a smile and a twinkle in his eye and a joke that made them go down much easier and so you know it was easy to hate Barry Goldwater or a lot of other kind of hard edged conservatives new Gingrich or others later on it was very hard to hate Ronald Reagan very few people you know actively hated Reagan especially if they met him because even if you disagreed with the guy he was so amiable so pleasant and he was also he didn't engage in kind of the slash and burn rhetoric uh against his political opponents that you so often heard in fact he almost never referred to his political opponents except as my friends or you know my friends on the other side of the aisle or something like that he didn't call them Vermin or engage in name calling or anything like that he understood that you know he was a former Democrat TR Republican so he understood that he had to appeal more than just to his core and that's why he was able to become so popular not only with Republicans but with Democrats what you How did Ronald Reagan interact with global leaders and how can we apply that to today? you referenced the Cold War in gof and uh was really intrigued in the section of the book where you talk about reic and and and and sort of the drama behind there and it is true what you said early at the beginning of our conversation about having access to more information that's now been opened and released you you sort of have a different you almost a different takeaway from some of that of that period where the sort of space Defense Initiative strategic uh SDI strategic I think it was strategic Defense Initiative Strategic Defense Initiative yeah um was was all was was actually one of those things that that um played a bigger role in in in than than I think we may realize in terms of how both sides looked at that relative to the the relationship with the Cold War what did that what did Reagan's relationship with gorbage Hoff uh demonstrate or say about the interactions between these two Le leaders relative to how we see a president Trump uh and a President Biden uh deal with uh global leaders today and and what are some of the things that we we should be learning from what Reagan did uh during his time well there's this prevalent myth myth that Ronald Reagan brought down the evil empire that with his defense spending and his support for you know Freedom Fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere he he destroyed the Soviet Union and what I found after doing my research is that's not really true I mean he did increase defense spending and he did confront the Soviet Union during his first term calling it The Evil Empire and so forth but that was not what ended the Cold War in fact that ratcheted up tensions uh with the Soviet Union to a dangerous level such that by 1984 even Ronald Reagan himself was pulling back and he he understood that the risk of nuclear war was real and he was talking about how much Soviets and Americans Ordinary People had in common but the problem and he really wanted to meet with the Soviet leader he really wanted to end the Cold War and to get rid of nuclear weapons but he didn't have a partner for Peace during his first term because you know all these old line uh Soviet leaders were in power and they one after another kept dying so there's nobody he could really talk to it was only really in 1985 when chernenko dies and mik gorbachov who's only in his mid-50s comes to power that the dynamic changes because gorbachov was a real Black Swan he was somebody who Rose to the the top of this dictatorship but lost faith in the dictatorship he really wanted to humanize the Soviet Union he wanted to end the arms race he thought that defense spending was wasteful he wanted to deliver a better quality of life for the people of the Soviet Union it was ultimately his radically reformist ideas that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union which wasn't intended but that was the result and it wasn't Ronald Reagan's pressure that led to to the collapse of the Soviet Union was really gorbachov's reforms and and the changes that they Unleashed but Reagan I think he deserves tremendous credit for this he understood that gorbachov is somebody he could work with that they met in 1985 for the first time at the Geneva Summit and that was really Reagan often said was the most important moment of his entire presenc he that was really the turning point when he because a lot of people were on the right including his own defense secretary Casper Weinberger very suspicious of gorbachov they just thought he was you know he was died in the W communist who was trying to Snooker us into disarming and then Reagan met with them talked with them and understood no he was not he was somebody different somebody that he could actually work with and So Reagan and gorbachov worked together to peacefully in the Cold War and Reagan helped gorbachov to peacefully reform the Soviet Union such that by 1987 they signed the first treaty to abolish an entire class of nuclear weapons the intermediate range nuclear treaty that was a a a tremendous achievement so I give Reagan a lot of credit for helping to end the Cold War peacefully but it wasn't for the thing that that a lot of people tried to give him credit for which was his confrontational approach it was in fact for his conciliatory approach with gorbachov and and being willing to work with them and I think there's a lesson here you know when we think about how to work with how to deal with China or other countries today A lot of people are suggesting oh we should take this Reagan confrontational approach well my concern is it's not going to work so well it could actually raise the risk of War it's only you know the way to really in in tensions with with is you need a partner for peace you don't have that right now right you don't have it who is a hardliner but if Xing ping is is is succeeded by somebody who's more a reformer in the gorbachov mode then you can actually make progress but right now just you know ratcheting up the tensions is not going to bring down China any more than it brought down the Soviet Union in the 1980s I thought this was interesting you you you call Reagan's How Ronald Reagan's assasination attempt was his finest hour. assassination attempt uh his finest Hour um why did you why why was that and and and quite honestly did Trump assassination attempt have a similar effect for him I'm still working no comparon of the two because you know maybe maybe Trump's ear was grazed by a bullet maybe not but Reagan was almost killed I mean he was very close to dying he was he was shot but even while he was facing the greatest adversity of his life he managed to keep his humor and the fact you know in the hospital he was joking with the doctors I hope you're all Republicans Nancy Reagan honey I forgot to duck that was really showing this kind of race under under pressure this kind of Courage Under Fire he was you know almost acting like one of these tough guy Warner Brothers Heroes of the 1930s but this wasn't a movie this was real life the pain was real he really was close to dying and yet he managed to keep his wits about him and to show tremendous resiliency under adversity and that that's why I call that chapter finest hour and I think it really mented his bond with the American people because they saw what kind of person he was and that's why so many people had this part of the reason so many people had this enduring affection for him because of the way he behaved during you know the greatest personal crisis of his What did President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II have in common? life I remember that uh so well I was uh graduating from Hopkins that year and uh that spring and that that when that event happened I mean because for me as a Catholic I mean it was a too where you had Reagan followed by the pope um and it it just and that in was would become a very interesting Alliance as well between Reagan and John Paul U Pope John Paul the first what what did you see in that in that combo uh in that combo meal that uh that a lot of us may have missed well I don't think it was it was a formal alliance per se between Pope John Paul II and Reagan I mean they were both anti-communists and I think they both had an impact of their anti-communism but it wasn't like that they were working so there's kind of a mythology that they work closely together to bring down communism and Poland I think that's from what I've seen in in in my research that's that's somewhat exaggerated before I let you What were the challenges when writing this book about Ronald Reagan? get I got a couple more um just just kind of around because like I said there's just so many aspects of this book that I think uh are really revealing about Reagan himself um there have been a lot of biographies I'm looking up here on my shelf I've got two shelves that are Reagan books and now I'm going to be adding yours to that um I'm looking at Dutch and and Reagan uh which one is that Reagan the and his journey his own journey and all of that um what what angle in Exploration did you want to take with this book um and I think you have an advantage that as you noted before that others didn't because now you could peel back the curtain a little bit more with additional information and insight but I suspect it was a little bit more than that Max that that brought you to uh to the point where you wanted to share this this Reagan story well no it's really I mean I wasn't I wasn't trying to promote any particular argument or storyline about Reagan I was just trying to understand Reagan and he he was not an easy guy to understand I mean he was always sort of hiding in plain sight and but you know everybody thought they knew him but in fact the people who were close to him often said that he was kind of an enigma to them you know he was somebody who was famously challenging for biographers like Edmund Morris or others who were really stumped by by Reagan because he had very little self-reflection and he didn't really want to look back on what he had done and so you kind of had to interpret it for him and that's and that's that's been my challenge in writing the book but I think you know I think I took that head on and and and and hope thought I certainly the reviews would suggest that I uh succeeded I mean it was it was a real challenge but it was really understanding I think one of our more inscrutable presidents and I think but it it was it was a you know a 10-year effort but it was it was ultimately rewarding did this book uh force you to Was Ronald Reagan part of the rot that has now eaten the Republican Party? examine the question was was Reagan part of the rot that uh that has now eaten the Republican party yeah absolutely I mean that's something I looked at and my conclusion is that you know no question Reagan and Trump are vastly different personalities and and vastly politics I mean Reagan was pro- free trade pro- NATO pro-immigration anti-russian expansion uh he he was very civil never engaged in name calling the differences you know add up very quickly and and the differences are much greater than the similarities but I think you can kind of wide angle camera view what you can see is that basically there was a turning point in the Republican party in 1964 when bar Goldwater became president that was the year when most republicans in Congress the vast majority supported civil rights legislation but Barry Goldwater did not he was the nominee of the party and Reagan was one of his most articulate spokesmen and so the party you know uh kind of rejected Centrist Centrist republicanism of the kind that Nelson Rockefeller embodied and it started to move farther to the right and I think what's basically happens since' 64 is that every generation of Republicans is further to the right than the previous one so that uh Reagan was further to the right than Nixon and Ford and Trump is way further to the right uh than Reagan and so like every generation looks back at the last one and says those guys are the Rhinos we're the real Republicans but if you look at what's been happening it's part of this continuous right right-wing drift since 1964 and Reagan was certainly part of that in the 1980s But the irony Michael is that in the 1980s when people talked about Reagan taking over the Republican party they were talking about a more conservative movement in America about taking the Republican Party in the country to the right but today in 2024 America if the Republican Party adopted reaganism it would be moving to the center it would be moving to the left it would still be conservative but it would be moving away from the right-wing Fringe and that's I think a big picture that's what's happened over the last 50 plus years it it it it has indeed and having been in the mi in the middle of a lot of that change over the years um it has been something for me to sort of reconcile uh with as well and you know I still question okay why the hell are you hanging out here on the front porch of this dilapidated building once known as the GOP you know I call I call myself a Motel 6 Republican someone's got to keep the lights on right um but bless you for doing that right I'm hey Max I'm just crazy bro I'm just crazy but you know I I would talk about Reagan when I gave speeches um um What's different about the GOP now compared to the days of Ronald Reagan? in my early days and even to this day uh I I would I talked about Reagan making it cool to be a Republican and he did because he absolutely did um and there wasn't there wasn't the differences were on on on the detail of policy or whether or not we're going to spend this much or that much today it's a very different feeling um the people who do not want to associate themselves with this once proud grand old party um because we by and large pretty much make it clear we just don't like you if you don't align with us um and that's not Reagan at all and and that's probably the most frustrating aspect among many things for me um as um as I look back on that young 17-year-old kid who who was sitting glued uh watching that convention speech on television in 1976 and deciding I can follow that guy I I want to join his party he believed in a big tent and he believed in the 11th commandment of Thou shalt not speak ill of fellow Republicans and both of those things have obviously Fallen by the wayside as with the Maga takeover Max boot uh he's written another good one folks uh he really has Reagan His Life and Legend it it is out now uh pick it up uh wherever you get your books Amazon Etc uh definitely check it out Max thank you for coming and uh sharing a lot of uh your work uh on this project with us and certainly writing this book in a way that you know someone like me can sort of get into it and and find himself again in in a lot of what um Reagan meant to me as a young man and and certainly you know why why I still believe in the in the in the hope of a Republican party in whatever form it takes in the future not quite sure what that is going to be yet but you you have written another good one my friend and I'm so glad you come and share it with us it was it was a pleasure to be on with you Michael you're one of my favorite people and this was truly a privilege to be to be on here with you thank you well thank you so much that means a lot folks you don't know I I followed Max boot from the very beginning and um you know he's up there with some of the great thinkers uh in the Republican party or not Ain so much Republican party but this this conservative uh sense of of of service and purpose and I just appreciate you man I really do and thank you folks feeling is mutual follow Max on Twitter X whatever the hell elon's calling it today at Max boot um be sure to pick up a copy of in his life and Legend is going to make a great birthday gift for all those birthdays between now and Christmas a Thanksgiving present yes I actually give gifts at Thanksgiving believe it or not and of course Christmas so they got many times to buy multiple copies of Max book Max's book so we appreciate that uh appreciate you joining me on the podcast please tell a friend about it share it give us a review on Apple podcast you can find me on Twitter at Michael steel and the Michael steel podcast on Twitter steel podcast love it when you uh do that and certainly always happy to be a part of the bull workk Network you can find them on social media at bwork online until next time because the next time we talk will be one step closer to fall uh we you know take care of yourself folks be safe out there and don't forget to register and vote register and vote two steps that's all you have to do it's all I'm going to ask you to do register and vote until next time take take care [Music]