Dr. Mendenhall good morning. Good morning and welcome to the montgomery lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society is founded on the freedoms that the separation of governmental powers is central to our constitution and that is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to tell say what the law is, not what it should be. The society seeks to promote both an awareness of these principles and to further their application through its activities. Now, you may notice i have an adam smith tie on today, and that is not because we have an economic historian coming to speak to us, but it is because adam smith was principally an educator. He was a professor and a private tutor, and he was beloved by his students. And marcus witcher, you is speaking to us today, is known as a very exuberant, enthusiastic educator. I first met marcus several years ago at an Institute Study conference, i spoke, and then he followed me. He later told me, and i mean years later, that he was so relieved that i went first, because i did not do such a good job, i made it so much easier for him to follow. [laughter] dr. Mendenhall i was an easy act to follow. He was very pleased by this. But marcus has spent the last five years writing this book on Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan has become a symbol. He has become an icon for conservatives. We have president ial primary debates within the Republican Party held at the Reagan Library. It is a de facto prerequisite for candidates to air their opinions to pay homage to Ronald Reagan. But, as marcus likes to point out, there is a disconnect between the way conservatives thought about Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, in his own time and space, and the way reagan has been mythologized, the way we think about reagan today, reagan the icon, reagan the simple. Symbol. Marcus and i were at a Philadelphia Society meeting once and we were at a reception, and don devine, who was head of the Civil Service in the Reagan Administration, made some comment about the Reagan Administration to marcus, and marcus came back and said actually, reagan did not cut domestic spending, and they got into this argument about how much reagan actually cut, and it was a funny moment, for those of you who have seen don devine on television, he is a very animated person and a very adamant person. Marcus is, as well, and it was a pretty robust argument in a very exciting want to be standing and a pretty exciting to be one standing next to. [laughter] dr. Mendenhall reagans image was, to a great degree, selfmade. He was very aware of his legacy and sought to frame narratives about his presidency. During his presidency, the cold war united conservatives in a sort of fusionist way. Some of you may recall the fusionist project as it was by frank maier. That United People as disparate as neoconservatives and evangelicals came together because of a common enemy, but after the cold war, we sort of lost that fusionism, so conservatives today exist in a fractured state. We have neoconservatives, those who celebrate american greatness, we have libertarians, classical liberals, we have paleo conservatives, we have localists, we have evangelicals, and in the current political climate, they are not as united as they were under the reagan presidency. And a lot of that has to do with the cold war. So here to talk to us today about the cold war, reagan conservatives, and the end of the cold war, is dr. Marcus witcher. Dr. Witcher is a scholar in residence in the History Department at the Arkansas Center for research and economics, otherwise known as a. C. R. E. He is also at the university of arkansas. He teaches in the History Department. In addition to being an engaging and enthusiastic speaker, he specializes in political, economic, and intellectual history from 1920 to the present. His focus is on modern american conservatism, and his manuscript, getting right with reagan, comes out this month, november 2019. He earned his bachelors in history at the university of Central Arkansas and received his phd from the university of alabama. This is when all of the auburn fans in the room boo. [laughter] boo. Dr. Mendenhall [laughs] dr. Witcher offers classes in modern American History, including courses on the cold war, the conservative movement, the american presidency, the history of economic thought, and u. S. Economic development. He is published in a wide variety of places, including the white house studies journal, and is coeditor of a threevolume anthology entitled public choice analysis of American Economic history. He is currently researching for his next book, titled fulfilling the reagan revolution clinton, gingrich, and the conservative 1990s. Please join me in welcoming dr. Witcher. [applause] dr. Witcher thanks. You did a great job. I dont know that i even need to speak. [laughs] dr. Witcher thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure to be here and to be talking to the montgomery chapter of the Federalist Society, a society that has done so much in reshaping the American History and such a large role in the conservative movement. It is a great pleasure for me to be here today. As dr. Mendenhall, as allen said, i will be talking about conservatism at the end of the cold war, and i want to start off by asking you to think about what do you think Ronald Reagan stood for . What defines Ronald Reagan for you . And i think for many many conservatives, what defines Ronald Reagan for them is an adherence to principle, unflinching adherence to principle, conservative principles specifically, that he never sort of deviated from. This conception of reagan really started to emerge around 2005, 2006, in the wake of sort of george w. Bushs dismal presidency, from the point of view of conservatives, where we became very disillusioned with george w. Bush. What i want to talk to you guys today about is i want to talk about how conservatives viewed reagan during the 1980s. Often times, they view him with frustration, contempt, anger, because not more was done to sort of achieve the conservative policy goals. I was really surprised when i was researching for my dissertation, because i went to steven haywards book, and he i found this nice little paragraph where he basically talked about all of these conservatives who were upset and frustrated with reagan, and then he went on and told the long sordid story about the reagan years, and i was like that is really fascinating, and i found that aside in several other books in my classes, and i took it to my dissertation advisors and they told me this sounds. Ike a fascinating topic explore this, and out of that research came the book reagan the struggle for true conservatism. We will talk about how conservatives view reagan today, and then we will look back in time and take a look at how conservatives viewed reagan during the 1980s. Like i said, oftentimes with frustration, and even contempt when it came to his cold war policy, and then we will talk a little bit about how reagan wanted to be remembered, and we will end off with me gesturing toward how conservatives began to construct the reagan legacy and later the reagan myth. I really, really love this quote by matt purple i wish i had written it but i did not, matt purple wrote it in the churchill we misremember, and i think it really grasps what i am trying to do in the book. Purple said, historical memory is like a great compactor, crushing nuances and flattening wrinkles until a person or event is made a perfect morsel for popular consumption. I think this has largely happened with Ronald Reagan today for conservatives. He is compacted down to a simple simplified version of himself, maybe a purist version of himself, and all of the nuances and the pragmatic policies of the 1980s have largely been forgotten. This is really personified by wwrd. This emerged in 2005. Ann coulter quipped, she said, you know, for christians, it is wwjd, but for conservatives, it is wwrd, what would reagan do . After this takes off in 2005, it really takes off in 2007 in the lead up to the 2008 election, sean hannity and the Heritage Foundation sort of partnered on this, wwrd, right . What would Ronald Reagan do today . Thats what we need. We need a candidate to do what reagan would do. You can go on amazon, you can buy a wwrd bracelet, you can buy yourself a tshirt, as you see up here, you can buy a Bumper Sticker to put on your car, you can buy a mouse pad like the one eft that says if we could resurrect him, we would reelect him, right, the idea of zombie reagan. But nonetheless, conservatives from around 2005 to 2016 or so began to reconstruct reagan as a conservative purist, and they began to sort of claim, and maybe even before, that Ronald Reagan won the cold war by sticking to his conservative principles, and that reagan, through his conservatism, gets the credit, ultimately, for the dissolution of the soviet empire and the end of the cold war. So today what we will do is go back in time and look at what conservatives were actually saying about reagans policy in the 1980s, and how that is quite different from what they claim today. So what does my manuscript do . Well, my manuscript details the complex and often tense relationship that existed between president reagan and conservatives, and it acknowledges the wide range of different perspectives on the right, and i think that is something unique to my book. I think other historians have done a good job with that, as well, but it is something i try to grapple with, all of the differences within the conservative movement. I dont think historians have done enough in understanding conservatism and all of its various iterations. It also questions whether or not the triumph of conservatism. I actually dont think this is true. I actually think the 1990s or were probably the triumph in the gingrich revolution. I think the Clinton Administration achieved many, many of the things, maybe not on purpose, maybe begrudgingly, but after looking at polls, but nonetheless, the Clinton Admini balanced budget, etc. It questions whether or not we should view the 1980s as a triumph of conservatism, but especially in light of the fact that many conservatives did not see it as a triumph of conservatism, at least in the 1980s. Finally, the interconnectedness of politics, memory, and misgivings among the american conservatives, and it tends to explain the creation of the regular legacy and the evolution of the legacy and the creation of reagan myth. So i got this slide here that tells you where the sources come from. I was lucky enough to visit a vast number of archives, including Ronald Reagans president ial library, which is a great place to do some research, for two weeks, fly out to california, right . It was excellent going out to simi valley, see the reagan papers, specifically the blackwell files. If anyone has any questions about the evidentiary basis and where the sources come from, we can return to it after the talk during the q a. Sort of as a primer, so everyone here is not upset with me. There are four schools of thought about what ended the cold war. Dominant, and that is Mikael Gorbachev, through his policies, deserves most of the credit for the end of the cold war, because inadvertently, he undermines the soviet system, undermined the communist party, and in doing so, destroy the fabric of the soviet union and its satellites, basically the control. The thread of coercion. That is probably the Largest School of thought within the historical profession. Within this school of thought, reagan is given very little credit for the end of the cold war. There is another school of thought that claims that Ronald Reagan actually prolongs the cold war. Not only did he not contribute to it, but he prolonged it, simply emboldening the his hardened rhetoric emboldened the hardliners within the soviet union and made it more difficult for someone like gorbachev to enact his reforms. The third school is the reagan victory school, forcing the soviet union into bankruptcy, because of their military buildup in the United States that put pressure on the soviets. They could not keep up, had to enact reforms that ultimately undid the soviet union. And finally, there is sort of this emerging this is the school i want to belong to that reagan and gorbachev worked together to set the foundation for a peaceful end of the cold war and the dissolution of the soviet empire. I think gorbachev deserves most of the credit, although he probably would not like to take it. He was an avowed socialist. His policiesately are what undid the soviet union, but i think reagan deserves a lot of credit for working with gorbachev to basically establish better relations to enable rich gorbachev to establish those reforms at home. I know i am speaking to a more conservative audience, so i am not either of the first two, so dont be too angry with me, right . [laughter] dr. Witcher lets go ahead and jump into the 1980s. So conservatives were frustrated with reagans Foreign Policy throughout the 1980s, but they were also really frustrated with other things reagan attempted to do in the Foreign Policy arena in the first two years of the Reagan Administration. Some were upset with sale of the advanced Airborne Warning and control system to saudi arabia. They thought this violated Israeli National security, and the israeli Prime Minister even came out and condemned reagan for this sale. This was reagans first Foreign Policy accomplishment, or legislative accomplishment when he was in office, and he basically stood up to the lobby and basically told the Prime Minister of israel, listen, i am the president of the United States. Other countries do not make our Foreign Policy. You can imagine how well that went over with neoconservatives when reagan made that type of comment. Also, on taiwan, reagan accepted chinas ninepoint plan for taiwan, which included reduce weapon sales from the United States, which were very wedded to taiwan, and still are, so in some ways, so many conservatives criticized reagan for being sort of soft on china here. Thirdly, reagan was criticized, specifically by neoconservatives, for his lack of public response to the imposition of martial law in poland, the crackdown on solidarity. Neoconservatives claim that reagan should have done more, he should have pushed back against the soviets with massive embargoes on technology and things like that, and they say essentially did nothing. We know there is a new book on sort of reagan and the cia in poland. We know reagan behindthescenes was very active in supporting distant groups within the eastern bloc, and he was doing quite a bit, actually. At least his administration was doing quite a bit. Conservatives at the time did not know that, because that was not public knowledge. They are criticizing him for that. Him are also criticizing because they thought they were electing him to pursue a more aggressive policy toward the soviet union, and they do not see that really materializing. They dont see that materializing. Lets get to some specific criticisms. In 1982, Norman Podhoretz writes a piece in the New York Times hes a major neoconservative figure, he writes this paper called the neoconservative anguish over reagans Foreign Policy, in which he pretty much systematically dismisses the idea that the president had any accomplishments in his first year and a half of his presidency. Podhoretz insisted that he did have not outlined a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish during the cold war. They have focused on the economy in the first year. Obviously when reagan comes into office, that is the number one concern, getting the economy back on track, and they get the tax cuts in 1981. They get some, to divines point, they get some spending cuts, initially, in the first year, but by and large, foreignpolicy conservatives, neoconservatives, hawks, feel one reagan is really focused economic matters and has not really defined a conservative foreignpolicy. The result, according to podhoretz, was a vacuum into which have come pouring all the old ideas and policies against which reagan himself has stood for so many years. He continued, but in the two first years of the Reagan Administration, reagan had followed a policy of helping the soviet union stabilize its empire rather than a strategy encouraging the breakup of that empire from within. His criticism was so piercing that reagan actually picked up the phone and gave him a call, and they had an extended conversation in which reagan tried to convince him he was not pursuing a policy of detente, the idea of a cooling of tensions with the soviet union that nixon and kissinger had outlined in the 1970s, widely criticized by conservatives, including president reagan. He is listening to the president , trying to justify what he had done up until this point, politely a couple of times, trying to get off the phone, finally says, thank you, mr. President , and podhoretz tries to get off the phone, and he writes in his memoir, he realized that is what he would call detente, even if it is not what the president himself would call detente. In 1982, the new right publishes of conservative digest in which they systematically criticized the president. They criticized him on social issues for not getting the School Prayer amendment passed. They criticized him for not getting it right to life amendment passed. You have social conservatives criticizing the president in this edition. You also have budget hawks criticism him because of the unbalanced budget, the budget deficit has been run up since 1982. You also have supplysiders who were mad at reagan, because he had raised taxes or was on the path to raise taxes, and you have Foreign Policy conservatives, who are the people we are going to focus on in the next slide, who are really criticizing reagan for not outlining a clear vision for his cold war foreignpolicy. The title of the magazine, has reagan deserted the conservatives . Me . Es the best of a play off of one of reagans films. Has reagan deserted the conservatives . Like i said, this magazine, or this edition of the magazine, this volume, it has criticisms from across the spectrum, right . If you were like, i do not really by your arguments, that conservatives had major problems with the Reagan Administration, i would somehow find this and i would just hand it to you, because it is that good of a source. It is that convincing, i think. Here are a few quotes from the magazine on Foreign Policy. General daniel graham, chairman of the coalition for peace and peace through strength, asserted that there was very little difference between reagans policy and carters policy. The former analyst for reagans arm control agency lamented, we have no strategy for the soviet threat. A general, who served on the Reagan Defense transition team, declared, i am not disappointed, i am disgusted, and when asked to rate the reagan out of 10, he said i give him a 2 out of 10. Midge decter, who i was able to had the great pleasure of emailing with just last week said reagan was pursuing the detent. Policy of th he would be leaving the opposition. I think if reagan were not in office now, hed be leading the opposition. He would be leading the opposition of his own party. There is a picture that has reagan sort of chastising, and then reagan is like ok, what did you want, and he says we would like to buy some grain, and reagan looks at him and says ok, would that be cash or credit . [laughter] this was the sort of criticism, that reagan was more about revitalizing the economy than he was about standing up to the soviet union and casting the cold war in moral terms. I think it is really important, in order to understand sort of where we are going to go in the next few slides, i think it is really important to understand what drove Ronald Reagan in terms of foreignpolicy. Ronald reagan was an adamant anticommunist. He has probably got the best anticommunist credentials in the soviet movement. He is an adamant anticommunist. He had credentials in the soviet he can quote from witness, he does so. He will recite the first page in, like, cabinet meetings, so he is deeply influenced by that, and going back to his time in hollywood, he is an adamant anticommunist. He believed they are socially and economically bankrupt, and eventually, right, socialism will collapse upon itself. And most of americans, most americans knew he was an anticommunist. That is something most people knew. Something a lot of people missed is that reagan was also a nuclear abolitionist. Despite being a cold warrior, an adamant cold warrior, he absolutely detested mutual destruction. He and Margaret Thatcher disagreed about this. Margaret thatcher held that mutually assured destruction avoided world war iii. Reagan thought it was a policy that held the American People and soviet people as hostages in this conflict. He thought it was fundamentally immoral, and he wanted to move toward a policy that would not alwayseeze weapons he proposed a Nuclear Freeze but eliminate Nuclear Weapons. And so these two things, right, his anticommunism and his nuclear abolitionism are going to come into conflict with one another when he is in office. He in his memoirs, in his autobiography, claimed these two things always work in tandem with one another. I think that is sort of Wishful Thinking, looking back. There are times when you how do you get to abolishing Nuclear Weapons . You probably have to work with soviets in one capacity or another if you are going to get there. He is going to run into problems because of this seemingly paradox of ideas. Conservatives do, in 1983, really begin to praise the president. 1983 is the year that conservatives feel that Ronald Reagan really comes into his own in terms of embracing a conservative foreignpolicy. That is of course the year that Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed star wars by the very critical press. So reagans vision was to create a Missile Shield so the United States would not be under the threat of nuclear war. He saw it as a means to abolish those weapons, because in reagans mind, he always tells gorbachev later on, i will share the technology with you, and gorbachev was like, who is this guy . He is going to share the technology with me. Reagan viewed it as a way to abolish Nuclear Weapons, but the soviets didnt see it that way. The soviets had this conception of reagan, rightfully, potentially so, that he was adamantly anticommunist, that he wanted to destroy the soviet system, and that he and his administration this is where they want to go off the rails Preemptive Nuclear strike in order to destroy the soviet union. In that context, the kgb and people in moscow viewed this very much as a means by which reagan can enact the policy they fear he wants to an act, which is a preemptive strike against the soviet union. It turns out to be extremely e coldilizing for the cour war. It is somewhat ironic that a time, 1983, the year that conservatives are most satisfied with reagans foreignpolicy is also the year that we dub in history the year of fear, because of how close the world came to nuclear conflict. Reagan also in 1983 deployed 108 pershing ii missiles to western europe in keeping with the promise of the Carter Administration to counter the ss20s that the soviets had deployed, and reagan is escalated his rhetoric in 1983. The 41stexample, annual convention of the National Association of evangelicals were reagan gets up before the crowd and says listen, you cannot be ambivalent about the cold war. You cannot join the Nuclear Freeze movement. You have to stand with us. This is a moral war. And he casts the soviet union as the evil empire, and he frames frames the cold war as a conflict between good and evil, right, good and evil. Stark, start rhetoric. 1983 is the year that conservatives feel like reagan is really embracing their vision for what foreignpolicy should be. Very competitive, take it to the soviets, but it had a major the destabilizing effect on superpower relations. The year of fear, right, that is what i called it. I called it the year of fear for several reasons, one of which is sdi, which presented a really real danger, at least in the mind of the soviet union, but also the shooting down of the korean airliner that strayed into soviet airspace, where it strayed for two hours. The soviets sent fighters because they thought it was an american spy plane initially, thinking i am not sure what they were thinking, because they had windows, there were lights, it looks like a commercial airliner, but nonetheless, the soviets ultimately shoot down the plane, and onboard, there were 269 passengers, including 63 americans, including congressmen, conservative congressmen, all die in the shooting down. In response to that, conservatives immediately conservative activists immediately hold a press conference denouncing the soviet union and calling on Ronald Reagan to enact an embargo on technology, to demand the release of prisoners from the soviet union who were imprisoned basically human rights activists who were imprisoned, and to embargo grain shipments to the soviet union immediately in response to this. Reagan is on vacation when this happens. He has to cut his vacation short, but he and secretary schultz talk about it on the phone, and he said, we have got to be careful. This could escalate very quickly. So once again, reagan comes forward, he denounces the soviet union, he calls them barbaric, it is probably the best way to denounce it is extraordinarily harsh, but it is not enough for conservatives. They said we did not elect a we elected a commander in chief. Reagan does really good at talking, but does not seem to be willing to really embrace what they think are his actual values and principles when it comes to Foreign Policy. Its going to really rattle reagan in conjunction with the soviet response to archer. Reagan could not understand how the soviets could be flying next to an american or korean airliner for two hours and never contact the United States. What if this had been Something Bigger . What they not have given us a call . Would it not have gone through a back channel . This is problematic. This can lead to major consequences if it was on a larger scale. On november 2, 1983, the United States and its nato allies conducted a military exercise with archer to test commandandcontrol procedures designed to entail the highest rankings of west german governments, Margaret Thatchers and reagan and thatcher were supposed to be part of it. They decided at the last minute that might trigger the soviets. They might get a little concerned. But nonetheless, they went through with it with the lower officials to run able archer. Even though it was not reagan and thatcher and cole involved, the kgb immediately says, this is it. This is the preemptive strike. This has got to be it. They activate code red. They are ready, they are on high alert. Nuclear war is coming. We have to be ready to launch. Of abledirection archer, there is this tension. Word about that gets back to reagan, because the United States has a double agent with the kgb in london. By the end of november, early december, reagan is getting this information to the soviet union is comprised of people who believe the United States is capable of a preemptive strike and that their commandandcontrol procedures in the soviet union are so poor per the kl007 incident that it might lead to nuclear annihilation. Reagan begins to question how hard he should push the soviets. Reagan was also influenced by abcs the day after, a made for tv movie which demonstrated what would happen in the case of a nuclear conflict. After he gets an advance copy from abc, and he watches it at camp david, and the president is amazingly influenced by film. It resonated with him in a way that all the briefing books wouldnt. That is not a knock on reagan. It is just if you gave him a briefing in film, he would understand it, hold onto it, and be able to repeat it later on. So, film seems to have had a major effect on how reagan vi viewed sort of how he understood things. The day after was significant in really giving him an idea of how things would look. Kl007 midst of the the midsthe mid of able archer getting back to him, he is also watching the day after. It left him greatly depressed and he was greatly aware of the need for the world to step back from the nuclear precipice. He was briefed on the United States nuclear war plan. He was like, can you take that away . President bush has to be sworn in. Hes briefed on the Nations Nuclear war plan. He recorded that it was a sobering experience. In his memoirs, he explained that the sequence of events tale those in the abc movie. All of those came together to resonate with reagan by the end of 1983 that his administration needed to take a different tone with the soviets. Not because they were wrong about calling the soviet empire the soviet union an evil empire, necessarily, but because of the results they wanted to achieve. The day able archer ended, reagan made his first Public Appeal for the total elimination of nuclear armaments. He made this directly. He says, i believe there can be only one policy for preserving our precious civilization in the modern age. And nuclear war can never be won. And must never be fought. I know i speak for everyone when i say that our dream will be that Nuclear Weapons are banished from the face of the earth. Pretty radical rhetoric. I wonder how conservatives wouldve responded if jimmy carter had said those things. I am not sure. In january of 1984, schulz and reagan over christmas break basically talked with one another and reagan said, put together a policy. We want to have a new policy. In january of 1984, the Reagan Administration shifts its public tone regarding the soviet union. During a press conference, reagan asserted that the two superpowers must establish a better working relationship marked by greater cooperation and understanding. And i think this is really important because if i take you guys back to that slide, right, at the beginning of the talk where i talked about the different groups of historiography. There is one group that said he did not play any role at all in the end of the cold war. This policy shift took place 15 months before gorbachev became secretary. Turning tois fault decides the best policy is to hope for mondale to win. Nonetheless, it is very evident to me that reagan in conjunction with secretary schulz, but reagan initiated this Public Policy shift in 1984. And so, once Mikhail Gorbachev is the general secretary, once he comes into power, thatcher famously tells Ronald Reagan, this is someone we can do business with. Mikhail gorbachev, the first soviet leader born after the october revolution. Mikhail gorbachev, the social reformer. Mikhail gorbachev, the man who when the soviet union has low economic numbers, massive cultural and social decline, afghanistan, a war in afghanistan raging, which the americans are making difficult on the soviets. He has to do some things about the condition of the soviet union. And so, his goal is to implement glasnost ands of perestroika to emphasize more consumer goods over military spending. In order to do that, hes got to have an easing of tensions with United States. He has to have an easing of tensions with the United States. Another thing pushing this direction is the decline of oil prices. Soviet union road the oil high in the 1970s but oil declined dramatically in the second half of the 1980s, forcing the soviet union to come to the table because of their loss of revenue. So, reagan and gorbachev decide to meet at geneva in 1985. Students, notl my a great deal was accomplished in geneva in terms of policy outcomes. There were no reductions or anything like that. What happened at geneva is that gorbachev and reagan got into the same room together and began to talk to one another and they developed a relationship with one another and they began to develop this relationship and this trust that would matter so much to the end of the cold war. As reagan said, right, we dont have these weapons because we hate one another. We have these weapons because we mistrust one another. If we have trust, maybe we can start to work toward some type of an agreement. But reagan leaves geneva, and the administration is hopeful. Schulz is hopeful that this went better than expected. Reagan got along with gorbachev. Sure, he probably told some soviet jokes which opted not appreciate. But by and large they got along. Gorbachev was always complaining about reagan making these soviet jokes that were offensive to them, right . The guy is an artifact, but he seems to be genuine when he talks about nuclear disarmament, so we should continue to work with him. And so, you know, there is this hopefulness in this administration that they will be able to come back at reykjavik in 1986 and maybe make a deal. Conservatives are also hearing this. And they are extraordinarily scared this might actually be the case. That reagan might give away sdi. He might bargain away the Strategic Defense Initiative in exchange for nuclear reduction. So, conservatives are writing the administration and publishing opeds. Criticizing the administration. Reagan has to have the grassroots leaders to the white house and the major conservatives in the senate and the house, he has them to the white house, he stands up in front of the group and he gives this eloquent speech about how gorbachev is a new type of leader and they can trust him. He is mr. Conservative. And he finishes. And theres silence. Hes not used to that. Not from the people who are supposed to be his most adamant supporters. When he leaves the room, there is a real disconnect between conservative activists and president reagan himself. He promises them that he will not bargain away sdi at reykjavik. So, when he shows up at reykjavik it goes swimmingly well. I mean, the two are talking about reagan at one point, quips, we can be back here in 10 years and we will destroy the last Nuclear Weapon together, right . Itll be just wonderful because all Nuclear Weapons would be gone. That is how optimistic reagan is that they will get Something Big at reykjavik. And they pretty much outlined a deal that would have been major reduction or complete reduction in intermediate weapons, but they break up. Each group goes out separately to regroup, talk it out, before they come back to the table to make a deal, and when they come back to the table, gorbachev says, i have one condition. Sdi must be limited to the laboratory for 10 years. If you will agree, mr. President , to limit sdi, we can sign this agreement today. Go out an announce it to the press. Reagan is furious. Reagan is absolutely furious. He feels betrayed. There were not supposed to be any conditions. So, reagan puts on his white coat, and he leaves. He walks out. And conservatives hail reagan for this achievement, for saying no, for sticking up for sdi, and conservative vision of the missile show and whatnot. The reality is i think that most people in the pentagon would have told president reagan and secretary schultz that sdi was probably more than ten years away from being out of the laboratory anyways. Im not convinced that walking away from the deal at reykjavik had any significant value, but it did for reagan. He promised conservatives he was not going to sell them out. He didnt sell them out. And conservatives cheer. They think this is great. We did not get an armscontrol agreement. We did not get rid of sdi. This is fine. So, reagan walks out of reykjavik. But, you know, the teams continue to talk. Secretary schultz continues to talk with his counterpart. They continue to negotiate. And, eventually, they agree to have another summit in washington, right . And in response to reports that the Reagan Administration is going to sign an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile treaty with the soviets, national review, william f buckley, runs an edition in edition titled reagans suicide pact in which they , criticized reagan and the inf treaty. It featured criticism from jack kemp, henry kissinger, and richard nixon. The treaty was not verifiable. Two, it left the soviets with a significant advantage. And they questioned whether or not the treaty was motivated by domestic political concerns. Does anybody know what im talking about . Everybody knows what im talking about. Irancontra. That president reagan was making this deal not because he believed in it but rather because he was so unpopular in that moment that his poll numbers were so far down that he was making this deal for political reasons. Nixon and kissinger, for their parts, by the way i believe to my knowledge, this is the first time nixon and kissinger had released a joint statement since watergate. They thought it was that important that they come out together and criticize president reagan for his naive Foreign Policy. They insisted that any west and western leader who indulges the soviets disingenuous fantasies of a Nuclear Free World courts unimaginable perils. They concluded that while the president probably wanted to be remembered as a peacemaker, reagan needed to remember that however he may be held in todays headlines the judgment of history would severely condemn a false peace. National review was not the only organization that was criticizing the treaty. The new right took out, under the leadership of howard phillips, the president of the conservative caucus, they took out a full page ad in conservative newspapers across the country. This has got to be my favorite source. This is my favorite source in the entire book, because it has a picture of Neville Chamberlain, got a picture of Ronald Reagan, got a picture of adolf hitler, and Mikhail Gorbachev. It says, appeasement is as unwise in 1988 as it was in 1938. Help defeat the reagangorbachev inf treaty. If a conservative called you Neville Chamberlain, that is the biggest insult you could be given, that you are Neville Chamberlain. You are going to sell out the world to hitler. This comparison of reagan to Neville Chamberlain is quite profound. Senate conservatives proposed hold amendments and modifications to torpedo the inf treaty. They are unsuccessful. Part of that was strategy. They were trying to show the president we might not be able to defeat you this time, but you better not go for any more reductions. We will adamantly oppose them. With the exception of george bush, every gop president ial hopeful opposed to the treaty. Many of them running to the right in 1988 of reagan. And jack kemp, our friend on the left with the football, because he is a former quarterback, blasted it at a speech at the Heritage Foundation, labeling reagans treaty a nuclear munich. Harsh rhetoric. Here are some wonderful quotes from our good friends on the new right, our social conservative friends. Howard phillips explained that Ronald Reagan is a very weak man with a strong wife and a strong staff and reagan was a useful idiot for soviet propaganda. Richard viguerie asserted that reagan is now aligned with his former adversaries. The democrats and the soviets. We feel alienated, abandoned, and rejected by the president. He called reagan an apologist for Mikael Gorbachev and exclaimed that this inf treaty is a splitting of the blankets. Conservatives will file for divorce and never reconcile again. Didnt turn out to be the case. Another activist labeled reagan a weakened president and not in a position to make moral judgments about gorbachev. So, conservative outrage, conservative criticism of the inf treaty was uniform and cross the ideological spectrum of reagans treaty. Ultimately, the inf treaty gets passed overwhelmingly in the senate and ultimately it reduces the sovietamerican stockpiles by 5 . Which does not sound like that much but this is the first time in the cold war that we reduced Nuclear Weapons. Major, major achievement, setting the United States and the soviet union on a path toward other treaties such as start. The inf treaty was one of his principal Foreign Policy achievements. I would say it is the foreignpolicy achievement. But in order to get that agreement with the soviet union he had to ignore his harshest critics, who were conservative. He had to ignore their complaints and go his own way. Gorbachev, schulz, and reagan credit inf and that treaty and the relationship that reagan built with gorbachev to enabling a peaceful end to the cold war. They said this was key for setting the stage for the end of the cold war. This is probably the best quote in the entire powerpoint, courtesy of george will. Writing near the end of president reagans second term, george will lamented how wrong reagan is about what is happening in moscow. Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the west, actual disarmament will follow, by elevating Wishful Thinking to the status of political philosophy. Will explained that december 8, the day the inf treaty was signed, will be remembered as the day the cold war was lost. That one didnt hold up very well, george. But, nonetheless, by the time reagan leaves office many conservatives are looking at for one another and they are saying, what did we achieve . We got tax cuts. But did we fundamentally change the trajectory of the United States . And many of them conclude, no, we didnt. We didnt succeed in this endeavor. Not only that, George H W Bush is about to be elected president. That is only going to further sort of frustrate them because many of them will be shown the door in the bush white house. So, there is this sort of belief that they have not really achieved what they had set out achieve. They hadnt transfer my country transformed the country the same way fdr had in the 1930s. Yount to pivot now and show i dont have a ton of time, but to show you how reagan wanted to frame his own legacy because it is also very different from what conservatives claim the reagan legacy should be today. Let us take a look. How did Ronald Reagan think about his own cold war foreignpolicy legacy . And what does that mean . In order to this part of the book, what i did is i went to the Reagan Library museum and look at the exhibits. Reagan actually worked with the archivists in order to create those, the museum exhibits. He actually wrote the text. A lot of it is taken from his diary, his memoirs. He played an active role in putting together the museum. I also draw from his autobiography, his public speeches at the time. Especially his public speeches at the time. Lets take a look at how reagan wanted to form his own cold war foreignpolicy legacy. So, in november 1990, reagan gives his brotherhood of man speech, which of course happens after the fall of the berlin wall, standing front of sections of the berlin wall. He credited the brave men and women on both sides of the iron curtain who devoted their lives and sometimes sacrifice them so that we might inhabit a World Without barriers. So, he gives credit for the people on the ground in Eastern Europe for rising up in resisting communism and oppression. He also gives credit to Margaret Thatcher and helmut kohl and the and Mikhail Gorbachev for their role in enabling human freedom to emerge. Reagan told his audience he was not sure whether or not gorbachev had listened to him when he said mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. He was not sure. But neither he nor the rulers of Eastern Europe could ignore the much louder chants of demonstrators in the streets of leipzig and dresden and in the churches and the schools and in the factories and on the farms, a once silent people found the voice and a battering ram to knock down walls, real and imagined. Because of them, the political map of europe has been rewritten. What about the museum . Well, if you go to the reagan museum, which i recommend, i have been there many a time, i think the museum is exceptional. When you go there, you come upon, if you get to these large foreignpolicy sections, once you get through it, there are these doors, as you can see from my amateurish photography. As you look through it, this big video playing of reagan and gorbachev and what they did to bring about an end to the cold war through peaceful negotiation. And there are exhibits all around. They talk about how did this end . Why did the cold war end . All of those exhibits emphasized reagan working with gorbachev. Reagan talking with gorbachev. Negotiating. Doing what they could to try to develop the trust that would ultimately lead to disarmament. And they knew and the new detente that would bring peace. By the way the iran contra exhibit is right here, conveniently located where you might miss it. I dont see it strategically, but you might just visit as you miss it as you are on way to see the pretty statue and film. Its a welldone exhibit. I am not criticizing the exhibit itself. It just happens to be right there were you might walk past it. So, reagan on the end of the cold war, right . President reagan never claim to have won the cold war. Reagan consistently gave credit to others, especially the people of Eastern Europe and the people of the soviet union, who ultimately demanded an end to the cold war status quo and who ultimately rejected communism. I dont want you guys to leave here and think and i did not think that reagan played an end a positive role in the end of the cold war. He contributed significantly to the end of the cold war. But the way in which he contributed is not the way to conservatives think he contributed to the end of the cold war. He does deserve credit for believing in the bankruptcy of the soviet system, right . Nationalistiring movements such as solidarity and for negotiating with gorbachev. I think reagan, like lincoln, should not be praised because of his adherence to principle but praised because he was willing to take new information, digest that information, and alter and strategically change how he wanted to address that situation based upon that new information. In short, i think he should be praised because he was a statesman. He wasnt rigidly ideological. He was a pragmatic conservative who took what he could get. If you can get 80 , take it. Get the other 20 later. Over the course of the 1990s , however, many conservatives began to claim that reagan had singlehandedly confronted the evil empire, demanded the berlin wall be torn down, and won the cold war. And, if you want to know more about conservatives constructed the reagan legacy and myth, buy the book, which is available for preorder on amazon. Com. Alright, with that, i will go ahead and take questions. Yes. Yes. Yes. Given what you have spoken reagans actual policy in the 1980s, how do conservative politics get back to that from the trump era now . Dr. Witcher the question was is the reagan years are different in terms of policy than what we see in the Trump Administration , especially on issues like you are talking about immigration and trade . Or nato. Dr. Witcher support of international organizations. Yes, how does the conservative movement get back there . It has to happen electorally. Somebody has to stand up and say no. We dont represent sort of antiimmigration or antiillegal immigration. We do not represent protectionism. That is not what conservatism is. I think that is happening. I recently attended a meeting of the Philadelphia Society and there is great debate over whether or not trumps tariffs are effective, whether or not trumps tariffs are a good policy to bring about the economic goals that he has. I think there are many conservatives who are still principally opposed to those things. I just think they need a standardbearer. You may not like this answer, but i think the best thing you could happen to the conservative lostent is if donald trump in 2020, if you believe in those principles. Four more years of a trump presidency, the Republican Party will move more in the direction of trumps vision. Key people will be appointed to state parties. If you are reagan style republican you will have to think long and hard about what you care about. Power or principles. Yes. Are you interested in stions going around [inaudible] dr. Witcher yeah, so, the question is how do i respond to people who lived it, who were in the Reagan Administration or who had been part of constructing the narrative . I have never spoken with dinesh de sousa. I have not had the pleasure. He is one of the key people in creating the narrative with his biography of reagan in the late 1990s. I havent had the pleasure of speaking with grover norquist. I requested an interview. I did not get it. But what i usually say to folks in the administration, because i have spoken to some folks in the administration, what they usually tell me is, yes, these people are out there. But they did not actually represent the grassroots. They didnt represent the people within the administration doing the hard work. We supported reagan. I think they are right about that. There is a disconnect between the people who were in power who recognized in order to get things done you had to work with the democratic house. Tip oneill, the speaker, you have to work with him. That means you will not get everything you want. I think they are right about that. There were significant achievements. Some of this is just disillusionment on the part of conservative activists and what not. I definitely do not want you to leave here today and think every single conservative in the United States between the 1980s was always angry with the Reagan Administration. The purpose is to push back against the absence of that criticism, right . To inform people about the absence of that criticism meant to try to reframe reagan and his legacy along the lines of what he actually did, rather than what we misremembered that he did. Yes. I was wondering [inaudible] unfairly. Sometimes i was wondering how you respond to conservatives [inaudible] something similar happened with the bush era. Comparatively, democrats of the time, it was the best ever. Have they lost control of that narrative . [inaudible] dr. Witcher yeah. So, the question is to what extent did conservatives create a myth of reagan because liberals, progressives basically created their own myths of reagan. I think that is part of it. The first generation of from historians is quite poor. And the first generation of scholarship from activists is poor. Reagan was right actor in chief, the nonothing president. That has all been deboned by the debunked by the work of anderson and skinner, were they published his own speeches that he wrote in his own hand up until he became president. He wrote all his own speeches and his own radio stuff. He was a thinking conservative. When i get into the sources and when you go to the reagan ranch, a lot of his books are there. You can pull those books down with permission and look inside some of them. You will notice, lee edwards is telling me, i have not found it, but i have always wanted to, reagan had a copy of the road to serfdom, and he had dogeared and underlined it, engaged with the text. They have tried to push back against these things. You are correct that the left have created this myth of reagan that is far worse than the reality. This view that reagan was elected because of dog whistling dixie and the racial backlash. Other stuff like that. I think that is part of it, but i think it was actually a conscious decision in 1996, if you read the book, a conscious decision after dole was defeated to try and sort of establish a common language and a common history and a common set of policy prescriptions in the wake of the cold war. So, as alan mentioned at the beginning, the cold war, anticommunism, held the conservative Movement Together up until 1991. But after 1991, what is holding a libertarian and a political a social conservative together . Theres not much. I think conservatives consciously used the reagan legacy and they did it really well to try and bring all of these disparate conservatives or people on the right broadly together into to keep them in the party, if you will. I think it was largely successful until around 2016. So. Do you have a question in the back still . Ill catch you up. Dr. Witcher sounds great. Thank you guys so much. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org]