You Talk Good, Mr. President

If you want people to trust you, talk to them, and talk to them good. Ronald Reagan, as a former movie actor, knew full well that the key is communication, earning himself the nickname “The Great Communicator.” Interestingly, Reagan, hailed as one of America’s best-loved presidents, took on the White House equipped not with outstanding political experience, but with storytelling experience. Some people suggest that Ronald Reagan was not one of our smartest presidents, and, in fact, he did not have one of the top IQ scores, especially compared to presidents such as Eisenhower, Clinton, or Wilson. Perhaps Reagan wasn’t as book smart as some of his predecessors, yet he was certainly one of our wisest and cleverest presidents, because he knew how to play his strengths and how to be honest with the country he was running.

Known as a highly committed conservative, Reagan’s politics broke the stride of the moderates that had served for the last several years. His plans, which came to be known as Supply Side economics, were to raise taxes in order to promote economic growth. Surprising many left-wingers, Reagan seized on issues that Democrats had long regarded as their own, including the issues of economic growth and personal consumption, but taking a different strategy to achieving it. He proposed to lower taxes immensely. Some people scoffed at this idea, predicting that it bring an economic heart attack rather than expansion. For the first couple of years after these policies were adhered to, there was a sharp economic downturn. Thankfully, things were merely getting worse before they got better. In 1983, the U.S. economy experienced a dramatic rebound, producing 17 million new jobs and causing inflation to drop about ten percent, landing at about two percent. Although these policies later proved controversial because the large expenses that were built up by the government, including huge expenses for the military, it is certain that Reagan got the U.S. out of a deep economic slump and that the military expenses surely had a lasting effect for America in regards to the Soviet Union.

 One thing that Reagan had in common with his all of the presidents from the thirty years prior to his presidency was that he was strongly anti-communist, stating that, “The Soviet Union is an Evil Empire, and Soviet communism is the focus of evil in the modern world.” Unlike Johnson, Nixon, Kennedy, and Eisenhower, though, he sought different methods to defeat communism. When talking about America and specifically the Republican Party Reagan said, “All of a sudden, Republicans were not defenders of the status quo, but creators of the future. They were looking at tomorrow with all the single-mindedness of an inventor.” The words from Reagan’s own mouth also apply well to himself. Reagan’s approach against communism was far more aggressive than his predecessors in this sense: Reagan was not always on the defensive, attempting to “roll back” communism—containment. Instead he focused mainly on challenging the Soviet Union with the U.S.’s military buildup, whose budget increased nearly thirty percent in four years. Yet, for all these expenses, it was not Johnson, Nixon, Kennedy, or Eisenhower who saw the end of the Cold War in their White House years, but Ronald Reagan, who achieved it at the tail end of his second term.

One advantage Reagan had was that, as America’s oldest president he had acquired a different kind of wisdom. Just as he knew his strengths, Reagan knew what he could not do. He understood that he could not, and should not, run the country single handedly, kinging every area independently. He learned to delegate, a skill completely underrated and regarded as an incompetent man’s safety blanket. Some people thought because of this that Reagan was only posing and wasn’t really in charge. They thought he really had no clue what was going on. However, I feel that his ability to delegate was Reagan’s greatest asset, which dovetailed perfectly with one of his major priorities which was to reduce the governmental regulation structure. Reagan himself said frankly, “Government is the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

In everything he did, Reagan brought hope to America, spreading his message, “It’s morning in America.” In this, he was very similar to FDR, who was one of his heroes as a child, yet Reagan was far more honest than FDR. People trusted Reagan, and they still do. Even in his professional life he hid little and openly laughed at himself and the government. He didn’t take himself too seriously, commenting once, when talking about his C-average grades, “But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.” People also trusted Reagan because he wasn’t afraid of America or what they could do to him, and most importantly he had faith in the American people. He believed that the American people were good, full of brilliant ideas that could change the way America was run.