[Applause] 9 12 10 28 2 23 this is deep State Radio hello I'm David rosov welcome again to the podcast uh as you know every so often when a really important book comes out we like to sit down with the author uh and talk about the book because we think uh it's one that you may want to get in this particular case um I'm delighted to say that the author we are sitting down with is our friend Max boot columnist for the Washington Post of the Council on Foreign Relations previously a best-selling author um how are you today Max I'm good just uh limbering up my vocal cords for the for the book launch always always a a trial of strength uh well we won't we won't uh uh test you too hard here I I hope um but uh the book is called um Reagan His Life and Legacy I have a copy sitting here on my desk um and uh it is a it is a masterpiece it is you know it is one of those uh books which deals with an exceptionally important subject that has been covered by by many many authors before and yet somehow in the time you know since you know this book has come out there seems to be an almost instant consensus that you've come up with a definitive biography of rbre um which must be gratifying to you since I think you started working this 11 years ago um but is is is very unusual now I'm going to attribute a chunk of it to the fact that you are brilliant and a great writer but but I I have to say I wonder to what extent one of the big advantages your book has is that we couldn't fully understand rean until now and that that many of the other books which haven't seen some of the the the political Fallout of the Reagan Era play out as we have during the Trump era um you you you couldn't see the whole picture and you've you've now timed this beautifully any anyway do do you think that's a a factor here oh absolutely I think you're you're you're you're dead right in fact I even write in the book that it wasn't until the 1980s Reagan's presidency that we got a fuller sense of the Eisenhower presidency which was 30 years earlier and I it usually takes like 30 40 years after some president leaves office to really get an appreciation of who they were what they achieved and what they failed to achieve and you know I think the I I certainly have the advantage of historical hindsight now and historical perspective that was denied to to earlier chronics and I think a lot of things about the Reagan presidency look quite different today than they did at the time or even immediately after I mean just to give you one example I mean think about what it is that Democrats were attacking Ronald Reagan for primarily in the 1980s the big attack was over the budget deficit which was Skyhigh record setting at the time but in hindsight seems pretty puny because you know our we've we've blown the roof off of our budget deficits in subsequent decades and yet the country has survived so the fact that we had these big budget deficits under Reagan while certainly a failure for Reagan who claimed he was going to balance the budget it's doesn't Loom quite so large historically but conversely what's striking is that there were almost no Democratic attacks on Reagan in the 1980s for his shameful neglect to the age pandemic I mean he didn't even talk about this horrible disease until 1987 even though tens of thousands of Americans were dying and again this was not an issue that Mondale or other Democrats were were hitting him over the head with in the 1980s but in hindsight it looks it looks you know shameful and inexcusable and these are things that you only really understand with the passage of time yeah I agree with everything you just said although I think we are frankly not even fully appreciating Eisenhower today um I I I think I think the the the more perspective we have on on Dwight Eisenhower the better his presidency looks but he was a giant for sure you know he he he certainly was but having said that um I I think the other factor that plays into this again setting aside the timing and also your skills and gifts as a writer is your own personal Journey um because you started out as you know a a a I don't what minimize it by using the the vernacular term but kind of Reagan Fanboy you know you were you were you absolutely you know thought that this guy was well no I understand and over time as you became aware of changes that took place in in the Republican party some of which were born in the Reagan Era uh you've changed your views so all of a sudden you're able to look at this with the twin perspectives of somebody who love Ronald Reagan and of somebody who is skeptical and that's important in an author um how how do you think that colored this oh I I I mean I think you're absolutely correct I mean I think the fact that I've left the Republican party I've become an independent I think that's been well it's been a wrenching process for me personally and I've lost a lot of friends and and and so forth and so on over the last decade I think it's been very good for me as a writer and a biographer uh because it does give me a distance to to be able to look at Reagan and I still you know retain some of my Boyhood affection for him but I'm also able to see him much more objectively than I once could when I was you know just a you know you know a Reagan fan growing up I'm able to see you know his that not only his achievements which were very real but also his his failures and his uh shortcomings which uh you know even though he's a very very different figure from Trump you can still see the passage of time and how he got from one to the other and you know I think that's there is some you know never Trump conservatives who want to paint Reagan and other earlier Republicans as being you know pure and innocent and and Angelic and saintly and you know utterly divorced from the Republican party and there's no question there's massive differences between you know the Reagan GOP and the Trump GOP but there are nevertheless continuities and similarities that you can point to and certainly nothing you know when you have when you look at the long sweep of History nothing happens in the vacuum there are reasons why you get from point A to point B and there's reasons why you know the Republican party has arrived at its current state and Ronald Reagan and earlier Republicans certainly uh contributed to to that Evolution even though they certainly didn't wind up where where Trump has wound up today I think one of the I I was just talking a friend of ours who's got a book coming out and he was struggling yesterday with the subtitle for the book uh I don't think people understand the degree of of of sweat and Agony that goes into figuring out I'm terrible I'm terrible with subtitles I'm I'm good with titles but I'm horrible with subtitles and this one was actually suggested by my editor well I got to tell you something you should send your editor a nice note or a gift because the subtitle for this book is perfect um the His Life and Legend right captures the fact that since Reay lived something has evolved um that is not a memory um but is is is is something distorted to suit certain political purposes and it is in fact a Legend um and so um you know it's it's it's it's it's a it's a very subtle way of saying you have to look at him um and try to pierce through that Legend and and you know I think one of the things that's great about the book is how much time you spend in the period before he he he entered politics before he entered the White House and you see what a what a conflicted um uh kind of non legendary figure he was you know I mean from struggles in his family to not super successful career in Hollywood towards batting being batted around like a pingpong ball from different political perspectives you know this was a guy kind of in search of himself for much of his life uh maybe till he met his second wife Nancy maybe maybe till he gave a speech at the 1964 convention in which it was clear you know he he sort of Hit the Zeitgeist in a particular way with a particular part of the party uh talk to me a little bit about how you view this this Evolution from a guy trying to fit in to a guy being at the center of a I I don't mean ideological Center but the the the center stage in American politics well this is one of the many Mysteries that that are hiding regarding Reagan kind of hiding in plain sight because you know he had this this this amazing Evolution from being this very Ardent New Deal Democrat huge fan of FDR uh as a young man in the 1930s and that basically remained the case up until the mid to late 1940s but by 1960s he emerges as what one newspaper of the time described as a right-wing Oracle he becomes very far to the right so you know what was it that moved Reagan from left to right in American politics and the account that he always gave doesn't make any sense because he always said I didn't desert my party my party deserted me now that may make make sense on the surface if he had become a Democrat around like 1972 and he could say like oh it was George MCG and it was those hippies that made me a Democrat but that's not when he became a Democrat be that's not when he became a republican rather he became a republican in the 1950s when the Democratic part was actually quite conservative led by Sam Raburn and Lynden Johnson in 1960 John F Kennedy ran to Richard Nixon's right on foreign policy so his explanation just does not add up you have to look elsewhere how did Reagan become this Conservative Republican and I think it starts during World War II and as a highly paid movie actor he was very unhappy about paying like 90% tax rates on his income but it really picks up steam in the late 40s when he became at the center of these political fights uh in Hollywood and he became convinced that there was a communist plot to take over Hollywood which I argue was largely imaginary but he was very convinced that it existed and he became complicit on the Hollywood Blacklist and in trying to you know root out uh uh so called Reds in Hollywood and then it really gained Pace in the 1950s when after the failure of his movie career he got a second wind as a spokesman for General Electric and host of its General Electric Theater he was you know the first host of a nationally televised show to become president and but one of the things that went with being a GE spokesman was eming the GE worldview and GE in the 1950s was a very conservative company whose Outlook was likened by one of its Executives to that of the John Burch Society from their perspective they s that you know prizing for uh right-wing ideology was an inoculation against unions and strikes which would hurt their bottom line and so and Reagan was always a very diligent employee very eager to please his bosses and so on these long CrossCountry train rides that he would take in the 50s from LA to New York to speak on behalf of GE because he was afraid of flying in those days he had a lot of time to read all this right-wing literature A lot of it very conspiratorial and far to the right that GE was was you know forcing down the throats of its Executives and he came to believe it and then came to repeat it in the speeches that he was giving on behalf of G so that was really the process of of of his ideological transformation it wasn't that the Democrats party changed that really didn't it was Ronald Reagan changed and and and went you know very far to the right by the early 60s yeah I you know naturally one of the things that you address and that you know you know can one can't help but look at things but through the lens of Our Moment is that there's a tendency to sort of say well how does Reagan compare to Trump how does Reagan tie to Trump how does Reagan set the stage for Trump and you know you talk about a variet of things in the context of the book The you know Reagan had a TV show Reagan you know comes from the Showbiz side of the equation um Reagan um uh you know had kind of a a a populist flare um that is akin to Trump's populist um uh flare um Reagan was not super into the business of governing Trump's not super into the business of governing but one thing strikes me is quite different and that is that um uh Reagan as as you as you just described seemed to be searching for ideological direction throughout his life I I think he made a lot of wrong choices I'm not super impressed with the intellectual quality of his his reasoning and arriving at the choices but at least he sought a grounding he sought Something to Believe In whereas I don't believe Trump believes in anything um I I I believe Trump's all about Trump and is all about you know his his personal well-being and and as super transactional with you know all of his political doings but but H how how first of all do you think that's right and secondly how you know when we think of Reagan as an ideological figure how deep does that go because just to sort of bump it into the next question as well one of the things you right about is that once he becomes the president he's pretty pragmatic and and he he sort of takes a step away from the ideology yeah that's actually kind of the central Paradox of Ronald Reagan is that he was both intensely theologic and also very pragmatic and in both ways he really differs from Trump I think as you very astutely pointed out because you know with Trump there is kind of a sense that it's all about him it's all about you know stroking his ego whereas Reagan I mean like anybody else who becomes president he certainly had an ego but it was much more firmly in check than than it is with Trump and he genu and Reagan genuinely believed in a lot of this ideology and and he read a lot which Trump certainly does not do and I mean a lot of the stuff that Reagan read was was kind of crazy and and and not factually grounded but he read and and and he convinced himself that it was true uh and he moved you know pretty far to the right by the early to mid 1960s you know he was warning that Medicare and Medicaid was going to lead to the destruction of freedom in America that Democrats were taking America down the road towards communism he opposed civil rights legislation so you know he sounded a lot like a John bur Society type uh right-wing extremist but you know people who thought that was the case were in for a big shock when he became governor of California in elected in 1966 and then elected president of the United States in 1980 because in both jobs he actually showed a huge pragmatic streak I mean his very first bill that he signed as governor of California was the biggest tax increase and spending increase in California State history to close a budget deficit and he subsequently signed the most liberal abortion law in the country and and a very tough gun control Bill and you know he cut deals with Democrats in Sacramento and later with Democrats in Washington you know he he worked with tip O'neal He uh you know in 1986 he signed an immigration bill that uh provided a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants and then of course the most amazing transformation of all this for for somebody like Ronald Reagan who really began his political career as a red hunter in Hollywood who was a staunch anti-communist but he ended his political career working very closely with M gorbachov the world's number one communist to end the Cold War peacefully and reform the Soviet Union so that's that's an transformation nobody could have anticipated and so you know I think what ultimately made Reagan a successful president is very different from what made him a successful politician I think a lot of what made him a successful politician at least initially was that he was able to to to please the the conservative base and he did that very skillfully but but that by doing that by winning the affection of conservatives that also gave him huge Running Room to turn against conservative Orthodoxy and to actually govern very pragmatically and and and much more effectively and he had that you know he had that kind of Running Room that presidents like George HW Bush or or or others uh who were viewed with suspicion on the right they didn't have that that leeway and Reagan did and and and he took full advantage of it to have a pretty successful uh two terms in office and I think you know one of the anomalies with with Trump is that he's just never was never able to make that switch between campaigning and governing there was no pragmatic Centrist mode with Trump I mean he was as extremist in office as he was on the and is on the campaign Trail um yeah well it seems like Trump is driven um by his own worst impulses all the time uh somehow it seems like Reagan had managed to suppress or hide his worst impulses and you talk about the fact that you know he had a pretty lousy record not just in terms of uh let say racism but in terms of the gay community and AIDS um uh and uh frankley didn't get along so great with his family he was you know he was not you know he comes across as this kind of affable guy but you know he was capable of being kind of a jerk but we didn't see it um you know do you attribute that to his skill the skill of his handlers uh the naive of the press all of the above it was really his skill in communicating he was you know the great communicator he was and he you know it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't all phony or artificial I mean he really was a very affable genial guy in public but you know people who were close to him as AIDS saw that that geniality that amiability really hid kind of a glacial Reserve that he actually was not close to anybody uh with the part you know except for Nancy and you know as as as Jim Baker said to me we we always knew we were hired hands that he could get rid of us tomorrow and not even notice that we were gone so that was you know that was an essential coldness and distance to him which I trace back to his childhood in Illinois where you know with his alcoholic shoe salesman father losing one job after another they kept moving from town to town and so Little Dutch Reagan didn't really get close to a lot of the other kids and he was actually kind of a dreamer and a reader and would sit alone by himself in the Attic uh and and that was basically him as an adult too I mean it's it's it's kind of a paradox because he was seemed so friendly and and and lovable to so many people and yet you know Stu Spencer who was his longtime political consultant told me that Reagan would have made a pretty good hermit because he didn't really need people he was just happy by himself you know watching banan or gunm smoke on TV reading National Review reading his books doing whatever he wanted to do he wasn't he wasn't driven to socialize he wasn't didn't really have a lot of close friends so you know that there there was a huge gap between who he was truly in her core and in in the way he presented himself but the way he presented himself was and it wasn't it wasn't I don't think it wasn't actively deceitful it was just kind of you know the skills that he learned growing up uh in very very effective and that's what you it was really his amiability that made his often Hardline message go S easy I mean this was something noticeable going back to the start of his career in 1964 when he was campaigning for Barry Goldwater and a lot of people who heard both Goldwater and Reagan speak said well you know Reagan says the same things but he sees that you know he sees the he says them in a much more pleasing and acceptable way I mean he his his personality was likened by journalists to soothing warm bathat and that's what that was an essential ingredient of his of his political success yeah I think another essential ingredient of his political success was that those Hired Hands included some very talented people and that uh that you know that was not really the case in Trump's case for example um but I I parts that I read with some interest just because they resonated with things I've done because in past books that I've written I ended up interviewing a lot of his National security team um you know and the whole gamut of people you know um uh including me and Schultz and alhag and and and Baker and and U carluchi and Powell and so forth and one of the things that came across to me was you know this kind of double-edged I don't know that's not the right word but this kind of double-sided quality of being detached um one was you know particularly later in his presidency they would say after five o'clock they wouldn't even talk to him um because he was kind of down for whatever the health reason was um but for most of the presidency he left a lot of the work and the decisions to them and to me when I look at for example the US Russia relationship under Reagan I see a lot of George Schulz who is an extremely gifted Diplomat and talented Secretary of State um and and and a willingness to sort of let him handle a lot a a lot of that or perhaps just that's just a a consequence of being a little bit disconnected how do you how do you see that was this a you know there was the Saturday Night Live bit of you know sort of rean you know being an idiot in public and then behind the scenes being a mastermind you know how how true was that in your in your book the way I would put it is that I think he was a great leader because he inspired people and he communicated but he was a very poor manager he was very hands-off as a manager and weirdly enough even when he was president of the United States he often acted as if he wasn't really in charge uh and you know on the occasions when he had to get rid of somebody you know he would write in his diary you know you know Jim James Watt or you know Dick Allen or whoever was doing a great job but then the media Lynch Mob got to them and I'm thinking like no it wasn't the media Lynch Mob you made the decision to hire and fire them it was your choice but then he acted like he had no choice and he really deferred a lot a lot to his advisers and so when he had good advisors he got good results and uh Jim Baker in his first term was quite possibly the most effective white house chief of staff ever and so and he was almost like a prime minister frankly and things ran you know there was a lot of infighting in the white house but things still ran pretty well then in the second term that he made a calamitous decision when Jim Baker and and treasury secretary Don rean got together and said hey wouldn't it be fun to swap jobs and they basically presented this as a fate ACC comple to Reagan and in a half an hour meeting he said oh sure go right ahead and then Don rean turned out to be a disastrous white house chief of staff uh whose presence made possible the Iran Contra affair the worst Scandal of the Reagan presidency but then after Iran Contra Nancy Reagan convinced the president to fire Don rean and then bring in Howard Baker to save the White House and so things ran better towards the end of the second term when it was you know Howard Baker and then Ken dubberstein as as white house chief of staff when you had replaced John poter with as as National Security adviser with first Frank carluchi then Coen pal then carluchi goes to become Secretary defense Schultz is secretary of state so by the end of the second term they had a very cohesive team and you're absolutely right I mean I talk to all those same people you talked to and what they told me was you know with with uh carluchi pal Schultz uh kind of the Heavy Hitters they would get together every morning and basically make the decisions and say like let's decide among ourselves so we don't have to kick these things up to the president because it's better if we don't but all of that said I I will say this and in favor of Reagan which is that it wasn't like he only got advice in one direction through throughout most of his presidency up until the end there were bitter battles between kind of the doctrinaire conservatives and the more pragmatic faction often represented in in the cabinet by the battles between Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger and Secretary of State George Schultz Schultz wanted to engage with the Soviet Union Weinberger thought it was all a commi plot and we just had to keep raising defense spending in indefinitely and it was ultimately Ronald Reagan's Choice with a little nudge from Nancy and and Mike dber and others to basically trust George Schultz over over cap Weinberg and I think that was greatly aided by the fact that when Reagan finally met gorbachov in Geneva in 1985 he established a personal rapport with him and decided this was a guy I can actually do business with and at that point Weinberger and the hardliners began to be sidelined and Reagan started working very actively with gorbachov which turned out to be a a phenomenally successful policy that's what really accounted for the end of the Cold War it wasn't Regan's defense buildup it wasn't so his his so so-called efforts to bring down the evil empire which didn't really exist it was really his his policy of cooperating with gorbachov and obviously a lot of that driven by pal by Schultz and others but at the end of the day raikan had to be on board and he was yeah although the whole thing was um less successful than it might have been in par because Reagan didn't understand some things notably Star Wars and which he believed and it was not a thing but uh but those two big passions were tax cuts and Star Wars and in both cases he was impervious to empirical evidence he just had faith that it would work yeah so look I could go on and on this first of all I could always go on and on to talk to you and secondly this is a very very um uh extensive fantastic brilliant book but it's it it really covers a lot so but I what I want to end with a a question about what is the the thing that I think a lot of readers will come to this which is to what extent is Ronald Reagan the father of Donald Trump um and and and you know I you know I write columns and I go and talk about this stuff and there are a few things that I find I regularly go back to and say this problem started then right one of them is um what I call the original big lie which is government is the problem uh which is a a thing that that Reagan managed to U uh sell um there are little behind the scenes things you know among the Reagan AIDS you didn't mention who is particularly odious in my book is the former CIA director Casey who became involved in a business that sort of got Rupert Murdoch in place in the United States and ultimately gave us uh the end of the fairness Doctrine ultimately gave us um Fox News and Trump and and and and so forth and I think that a lot traces back to the to the Reagan Era um I you know I think the the the the shift of in American politics to television personality presidents is is another thing that I sort of Trace back to that era and I could go on and on but I didn't write the book you did so my question is what what what are the what are the seeds of our current problems that you think are are are most directly traceable to to Reagan in that era well big picture I think it kind of goes back even before Reagan it really goes back to Goldwater in ' 64 when you had the conservative takeover of the Republican party and remember in ' 64 most republicans in Congress voted in favor of civil rights legislation but Barry Goldwater was opposed to it and so was Ronald Reagan that was really when the Republican party started moving very far to the right and what's happened is I think over the course of the Decades each generation of Republicans is further to the right than the previous generations such that Reagan was well to the right of Nixon and Ford and Trump in turn is well to the right of of Reagan but I think you can see how each generation keeps moving the party to the right and you can see you know a lot of the continuities you mentioned between uh Reagan and Trump as well as huge differences I mean I think there's no question that you know if if Reagan were alive today he would be denounced as a rhino like so many other previous Republic Republicans have been because he's so at odds with the magga Republican party but you can also see how his presidency helped to get us here and I think kind of the bottom line is that the irony or the irony really is that you know in 1980 when Reagan won reaganism was really taking the Republican party and the country to the right today if reaganism were to Prevail within the Republican party it would be taking the party to the left it would be taking the party back in a more Centrist Direction so that's you know that's how far to the right we've gone well that's you know a good place to end not only because it's true but also because it goes back to the earlier point about the legend Legends get abused by people um to serve their own interests and ultimately the the Ronald Reagan who the airport is named after is not really the Ronald Reagan who was president um the Ronald Reagan that you know um Mike Johnson refers to lovingly in the in the in the Congress wasn't really Ronald Reagan in the same way that John F Kennedy that we talk about today had almost nothing to do with real John F Kennedy um and you know because of that but because he is such a seminal figure uh it is essential to be able to go sit down and understand the truth and the way to do that is this book by Max Reagan His Life and Legend it is the best book on this most important subject right at a moment where we really need to understand it both because of what it means for Trump but also frankly I think this book's going to be a lot more important Max at 4 o'l in the morning on November 6 because Donald Trump's going to lose I hope and the Republican part is going to go now what now what now where do we go what has worked for us in the past and the first place they're going to go and look is Reagan because that was the the pillar of the party and they need to understand what was true about it and what wasn't um and so I I only see this book being more relevant I congratulate you magnificent work of scholarship magnificent work of literary achievement magnificent work of history um and uh all 11 years uh paid off big time so congratulations thank you very much David truly truly a pleasure and an honor to to be on with you and and to hear your kind words that truly means a lot to me thank you thank you and uh folks you know uh sometimes I say go get the book this case I really mean it go get the book uh you will not regret it and uh you know the next time we have an important book we'll be back with it and every day we've got so many podcast for you so come back for them but until then thank you Max thank you everybody byebye