Cspan kiron skinner, coeditor of reagan in his own hand, what do people get if they buy this book . Guest they see unvarnished Ronald Reagan, long before the presidency, writing, reading, thinking about every major issue facing the united states, and also drafting a strategy, quite surprisingly for many, to end the cold war peacefully without a major hegemonic war. Cspan can you remember the first time you ever heard of all this . Guest what do you mean, the Radio Broadcasts, his writing . Cspan the Radio Broadcasts, where youyou got yourself involved in it. Guest i was working in the Reagan Library. Id written nancy reagan, i believe it was in 1996; i wrote her aa letter about my research on the end of the cold war, and i said, im deeply fascinated by the american side of the story. Most of the research in the 1990s that i saw in the scholarly literature focused on the soviet side and on Eastern Europe and, you know, for good reasons. The revolutions were fascinating to people, and all of a sudden documents were opening up that scholars had never seen before. But i was interested on the american contribution. So i wrote her. Cspan what were you doing at the time . What werewhat were you. Guest i was a postdoc at ucla and i was a fellow at the Hoover Institution. And so i wrote her and said, im interested in the american side of the story. I dont think theres enough reporting on it, and id like to look at the president s private papers. i didnt know what would be there, but i thought there might be something to help me to unravel the american contribution. And so she granted me access to the papers and hundreds of archival boxes. Into the project i came upupon a few boxes, actually storage boxes, filled with hundreds, reallyliterally thousands of pieces of paper of reagans handwriting. And it took a while to figure out what it meant. Some of it was disorganized. Some of it was organized in file folders, but not all of it. And it was fascinating. It was. Cspan whwhere are you from originally . Wheres home . Guest i was born in chicago, but i grew up in the bay area, so i have to claim the bay area i moved there at age three, so i grew up near stanford. First San Francisco and then in a little town called redwood city, a few miles from stanfordi would claim that as my childhood home. Cspan and where did you get your undergraduate degree . Guest Spelman College in atlanta and. Cspan in what subject . Guest in Political Science. And my masters and phd from harvard. Cspan and where are you getting your interest in Political Science along the way . Where did it come from . Guest probably having parents that were civil rights activists in the 60s in the bay area. That was probably my initial interest. I saw their activism, and that was important. But also, i think i became interested in International Affairs at spelman, in particular for sfrom some courses that i took, and then harvard was a wonderful place to Study International relations. The end of the cold war story became important to me later on in my graduate career when i took a job, to the dismay of my dissertation adviser, to do the research for George Shultzs memoir andout at stanford. Cspan whywhy to the dismay . Guest oh, because it was such a huge project for somesomeone who was working on her own dissertation, to take on another project, andbut i thought it was a great opportunity. Cspan how did that happen . Guest in 1989, i moved out to california to work with condi rice, who was my outside reader on my thesis committee, partly, and also to be in the bay area, and she got a job in the bush at the first bush administration, and so i just happened to meet shultz one day and asked him if i could interview him for my research. And hed just left the reagan administration, and he was allowing students to interview him. And so he allowed me to interview him, and it led to me working for him to do the research for his memoir. Cspan now how did condi rice become yourwhat . Outside of what s. Guest my reader. Cspan harvard . Guest yeah, thean outside reader on the dissertation, but from another university. Cspan but from ucla. Guest no, at harvard. Cspan at harvard. Ok. Guest yeah. Shewe met just, i think, through the field. I met her at stanford and she would come to harvard and give talks, and so i thought she would be a good person toto work with. Cspan now are you political along the way . Do you have strong feelings about anything . Guest no, but the press has made a big deal of the fact that im a registered democrat and iyou know, ive done this book on reagan. But ive not really been actively involved in politics. When i was younger i had internships, one in washington for pete mccloskey, who was a republican, but the main reason i worked for him is that he was very supportive of a school i went to in east palo alto, an elementary and high school, and hehe offered me the job. So thats thethe reason. But ive never really been involved in politics at any serious level. Cspan now what was the George Shultz experience like . Guest oh, it was wonderful. And i think it really, in some ways, led to this book, because i became interested in the american side of the story, and the soviet side, but particularly the american side, because i got to see the end of the cold war from the Vantage Point of central decision makers, which scholars rarely do. I got to work with him very closely, got to read his files and interact with him as he drafted chapters. And so it was a wonderful experience to have. And it led me to have a great interest inin Ronald Reagan. Cspan i think what we ought to do, before we talk a lot more about it, is to play one of the many pieces that are in here. Before we doand itand youits on a cd that wyou brought with you. Guest right. Cspan basically, whats thethe meat of this book . What are people reading . Guest thethethe heart of the book includes Radio Broadcasts that reagan gave between 1975 and the end of 1979. After he stepped down as governorand youll remember this, i thinkat the end of 74, he went into private life, but not really. He wasnt in elective position but he worked very hard in the public space. He decided to give a radio broadcast to support himself. It was daily, five days a week, about three minutes a day. He gave over 1,000 in the late 1970s. He would stop them to campaign for the presidency in late 75 and 76. When he was defeated by gerald ford at the Republican Convention in 76 he turned back to the Radio Broadcasts and continued them until the fall of 79. He also had a newspaper column, which you may remember; first Copley News Services and later King Features syndicated those columns, and they were biweekly by the late 70s. The Radio Broadcasts were many of them were written by reagan. We found over 670 in his own handwriting in the archives. He couldhe probably wrote more. Thats what we found in the archives thatthey were saved. Cspan so when you opened that box up, those first boxes, thats what you were looking at. Guest thats whatthats what i saw. But then there were other things as well. Theres a section in the book titled other writings. It includes childhood writings, but interestingly, speeches, which constitconstitute strong policy documents on the economy, on Foreign Policy, during the presidency, before the presidency and during the 1980 president ial campaign. Some of thats in the book as well. Cspan by the way, i have one question. It doesyou didnt cover it in any of the intros or anything. Where are the tapes of the radio addresses . Guest thats a great question, and we have the tape here today. Theyre at the Hoover Institution archives. And this project could not have happened without both archives. The Radio Broadcasts, the handwritten versions, and all of the private papers are at the Reagan Library, although they are not controlled by the library. Theres not a deed of gift. They are controlled by the reagans. Theyre private papers that happen to be housed there. So thats one place where reagan material is. The second place is the Hoover Institution, which controls the tapes. It was able to get hold of the tapes. Harry oconnor was the producer of reagans Radio Broadcasts. In fact, he was in hollywood at the time, in the 70s, and suggested the Radio Broadcasts to reagan as his governorship was coming to an end. He gave those to the Hoover Institution, and the Hoover Institution, as a result partly, i think, of this book, has had the old crumbling tapes and Vinyl Records from the 70s converted to cd so that they will be preserved. Cspan so theyre all on cds now . Guest theyretheyre all on cds. Cspan how many of them are there . Guest oh, gosh, there are, you know, over a thousand. So theyre every. Cspan over a thousand Radio Broadcasts. Guest broadcasts, and theyve all been saved. And so thats ajust a great project. And i think itour book reallyitit works well with the Radio Broadcasts to see what he wrote. You see the original draft. The radiothe actual broadcasts are slightly different, if you read along, because that was a final version, and he might change a word or two. Cspan itit strikes me that if you hadnt asked for this, they would havewe wouldnt know this. Guest a lot of luck, serendipity, has gone into this project at every turn, and i can tell you, you know, some of these storiesmeeting the andersons, and they became crucial to theto the project, and. Cspan who are the andersons . Guest Martin Anderson and annelise anderson. They are economists at the Hoover Institution who worked with reagan in the 76 and 80 campaigns, very closely with him. Martin traveled with reagan on the plane, was a close adviser. And i saw his name quite often in the archives, and annelises as well. Theyre fellows at the Hoover Institution, and so since i was there, i could go to them and show them documents, and they helped me understand what i was seeing. And so that collaboration became central, because reaganas you notice, looking at the book, he covered everyalmost every issue facing the us, domestic and foreign abortion, africa, arms control, weapons systems, taxation, regulatory policy. He was doing this all by himself. But we as scholars, most of us focus narrowly on a single area that we specialize in. And so the andersons and i really needed each other for this story. They could do the domestic and economic, and i could focus more on the foreignpolicy side, and then we did joint parts together. So theres a lot of luck that happened at every turn with this book. Andand they also had the confidence of mrs. Reagan. Cspan but is it a surprise to you that if you hadnt asked mrs. Reagan to stoto get into this, that that box would have nevermaybe never been looked at for a long time . Guest thats the beginning of the story, if i had not asked for it, andbut thei think there are other things as well. Most scholars who look at big outcomes in world history, especially in tin the us context, tend to look at the diplomatic record, at the official diplomatic record, at government documents. Whats interesting about this book is that theres not one government document in the book these are all private writings, before the presidency or during the presidency, writings that did not make it to the official government channel as a government document. Cspan lets listen to this first one that you brought along with you. Guest ok. Cspan which one is it . Guest its called looking out a window, and it was broadcast in that least taped in january 1978. Its an important one. Its not a policy wonk document, as many of theof them are, but its important because it gives reagans philosophy about the American People, hishis great confidence in their judgment and who they are, and also the fact that he does not see himself as distant from the people. He sees himself as one of them and he identifies with their daily lives. Cspan as we do that i want to show the cover of this. Where is this picture, by the way, on the cover . Do you know where it was taken . Guest it was in an office somewhere or a study of his. It was ait was a study. And i think that is onei think its before thethe presidency. Cspan lets listen to it. This is how long, by the way . Guest theyre no more than three minutes. Cspan ok. excerpt from radio broadcast mr. Ronald reagan its nightfall in a strange town a long way from home. Im watching the lights come on from my hotel room window on the 35th floor. Ill be right back. Im afraid youre in for a little bit of philosophizing, if you dont mind. Some of these broadcasts i must draft while im out on the road traveling on what i call the mashedpotato circuit. A little while after i write them, for example, ill be speaking to a group of good people in a banquet hall. Right now, however, im looking down on a busy city at rush hour. The streets below are twin ribbons of sparkling red and white. Taillights on the cars moving away from my Vantage Point provide the red, and the headlights of those coming toward me the white. Its logical to assume all or most are homeward bound at the end of a days work. I wonder why some social engineer hasnt tried to get them to trade homes. The traffic is equally heavy in both directions, so if they all lived in the end of town where they worked theyd save a lot of travel time. But better forget i said that, and dont even think it, or some bureaucrat will try to do it. I wonder, though, about the people in those cars, who they are, what they do, what theyre thinking about as they head for the warmth of home and family. Come to think of it, ive met themoh, maybe not those particular individuals, but still, i feel i know them. Some social planners refer to them as the masses, which only proves they dont know them. Ive been privileged to meet people all over this land in the special kind of way you meet them when youre campaigning. They are not the masses or, as the elitists would have it, the common man. theyre very uncommon; individuals, each with his or her own hopes and dreams, plans and problems, and the kind of quiet courage that makes this whole country run better than just about any other place on earth. By now, thinking of their homecoming, im counting how many more hotel room windows ill be looking out of before im in the rushhour traffic heading home. And yes, im feeling a little envious of the people in those cars down below. It seems ive said a thousand goodbyes, each one harder than the one before. Someone very wise once wrote that if we were all told one day that the end was coming, that we were living our last day, every road, every street and all the telephone lines would be jammed with people trying to reach someone to whom we wanted simply to say, i love you. but why wait for such a final day and take the chance of not getting there in time . Speaking of time, ill have to stop now. Hello, operator. Id like to make a longdistance call. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. end of excerpt cspan what was your reaction the first time you heard that . Guest oh, it was emotional. Ive heard it maa few times now. Weve played it to audiences as weve discussed our book in the last couple of months, and its aits an emotional one, because you also see reareagan as ahis kind of emotional side. And its authentic reagan. Its just who he is and how he thought, and it just, i think, gives a lot of credibility to thethe book, because you see him writing as hes talking. You see him thinking, looking out of a window, thinking about, you know, the fact that he has to write these things. Hes really writing this as hes watching the cars, so i think its wonderful. Cspan now diddid you go into this project with a certain idea of who Ronald Reagan was . And have you changed your mind . Guest i didnt, and so i didnt go in with a certain view. I think had ihad i had a sfixed view of reagan, i dont know that i would have even asked for the papers. I was much more interested in the american side of the end of the cold war, and i knew from what id done in shultzs work that reagan was an important figure and that he wasnt just a puppet. But i wasnt really trying to prove that. I really wanted to understand what i saw as the strategy, on the one hand, of trying to evince an interest in mutual cooperation with the soviets, alwhile at the same time deploying military strength to make that happen. And that was the kind of puzzle that i was interested in. I learned a lot more about reagan in doing this book, but i never intended to be a reagan scholar, and i guess im well on my way to becoming one now. Cspan this book went to the bestseller list. Guest New York Times and to about five other bestseller lists as well wall street journal, washington post, Publishers Weekly. Itits still, i think, on Publishers Weekly now, and amazon. Cspan are you surprised . Guest yes, i am. And i didnt have the easiest time, the andersons and i, getting a contract for the book with a big publisher. I dont think most of them thought there was anything there to publish, just some old Radio Broadcasts by reagan. And so it took a while, and so this is a surprise. Cspan how did you do it . Guest hard work. Cspan well, first of all, its published by free press. Guest by the free press. Simon schuster is the parent company. A lot of hard work selling the book, selling the idea, believing in it, and really working with the documents and trying to present them in an interesting way. And i think what was most convincing to peopleand thats why i brought a copy of the actual yellow sheets, or a draft of it, so that you could show it. Cspan this is a legalsized yellow sheet thats. Guest he wrote most of them on yelon legal size, though some on letter size. Most of his speeches, hishis Radio Broadcasts, drafts of letters to people, that was hishishishis working copy what was convincing to editors eventually is the actual drafts, when they saw reagans writing, when they saw the range of issues that he thought about, when they saw the sources he was using, his notes in the margins, and the clarity of his thought. Thats what eventually got a book contract for us. Reagan sold the book. Cspan go back to 1996 again. You wrote mrs. Guest mrs. Reagan. Cspan . Reagan a letter. Have you met her, by the way . Guest only a couple of times. Ive met heri met her soon thereafter, andbut not many times, no. Cspan did you interview her . I mean, shes interviewed for the book. Guest she was interviewed. Martin anderson conducted that interview for the book. Andand that wasit was the great confirmation ofof what wed been finding in the archives. We thought it was important to interview those who were around reagan in the 70s, and so she was one of the most important people. Cspan so youre at the Reagan Library, simi valley; who brings the boxes to you . Hows that work . Guest the archivist. Have you ever been there . Cspan yes. Yeah. Guest ok. The archivist brings them out. And theyre private papers so theyretheyre handled a bit differently than the other papers at the library thatyou know, that are open to the public, butand i just would sit there and go through them. Cspan where were you located in the library . Guest at a table, just at a table in the archives, just like everyone else. Cspan do theydo they trust you with these . I mean, whats the attitude about having outsiders come in and look at them . Guest they really dont have outsiders coming to look at them. Theits restricted access, so Edmund Morris had access to those files, and then i was the first scholar that i know of to get access to thethe papers after him, and i donttheyre not open now. Theyretheyre still private. Cspan so he had access to these same Radio Broadcasts. Did he use them in his book . Guest i dont think so. He had access to most of the private papers that i know, but this was not something that was a big focus in his project, you know. Cspan so as youre first looking at these, and thawas itwhat year did you actually first look at them . Guest i cant remember. I know i got access in 96, but sometime inin the next year or so i saw them. Cspan what didwhat was the next thing you did thatthat furthered this project along . Guest well, i had to pause from my own work on the end of the cold war to figure out what to do with these, and i went to the andersons and we decided to join forces and produce this book, that it was so important. We all had Major Projects on our own that we were wwere working on, and we decided that this was such a special set of documents that we had to bring it to light. And i think, at least on my part, i was motivated by the fact that the assessment of reagan is so bad, but the paper trail seems so different, that it would be important to bring this material forward. And the andersonsi think they brought a special quality to the project because theyd worked with reagan. Theyd seen him write. But even they were surprised at the breadth and diversity of what he was writing. So we were both coming at this in somesomewhat different ways, but with jwe both recognized that we had something that would be important, not necessarnecessarily a bestseller, but important. Cspan theres a quote in here that you have fromi wrote it down; ive got to find it. Guest ok. Cspan . From bud mcfarland, who was one of his foreignpolicy advisers. Guest in the foreword that George Shultz wrote. Cspan yeah. Hethis is a quote from bud mcfarland he knows so little and accomplishes so much. Whats thewhats the origin of that sthat statement . Guest secretary shultz wrote the foreword toto this book, andandand that was wonderful for us, because he was by reagans side for six and a half years and for one of the most important events of the 20th century the beginning of the end of the cold war. And so, shultz wrote that himself andfrom a meetingthey came out of a white house meeting with reagan, andand i guess mcfarland was shaking his head andor was just surprised at how much reagan accomplishes. I think this book explains why theyre so much surprise, the fact that reagan was associated with big outcomes, like the end of the cold war. Reagan wrote privately and he never talked about it. He thought and he read privately and he didnt try to expose it. He never told people that hed done all of this work before the presidency. And if you look at some of the headnotes that we wrote, we tried to link things that reagan wrote about before the presidency to actual things he did as president , and sbut he never told people about it. He just felt that they either knew, they heard him on the radio, and he felt no reason, no need to brag or expose his intelligence. So i think it fueled the assessment that he didnt know very much. Cspan youyou quote nancy reagan in the introduction as saying, nobody thought that he ever read anything, either, but he was a voracious reader. I dont ever remember ronnie sitting and watching television i really dont. I just dont. When i picture those days, its him sitting behind that desk in the bedroom, working. Now the image that we had of him was always watching television. Guest right, and you see the cover of the book in a room, with justinwriting. Cspan but whatwhats missing in this thing, though . I mean, are you convinced that he did write all that, all these. Guest absolutely. When you read what he wrote in the margins and when you listen at what he said, itits really authentic reagan. And we interviewed so many peoplePeter Hannaford, those who were around him. Many ofofof your listeners wont know viewers wont know the names of these people, but they were with reagan all the time. And then many of the speechwriters during the presidency, they know this story; it just never came out. And one thing that Martin Anderson did in the interviews with nancy reagan and some of the others for the introductionat the end of the interviews he would say, who has asked you these questions . and for the most part, they would say, no ones ever asked us about this, about his writing life, about his thinking life, about his reading life. so so itsits not a surprise to those who know him. Cspan now, Edmund Morris foundand you have one or two of them in the backthe early writings when he was in high school. Guest right. Cspan . In a box out there, and then you found this. There were the letters that Doug Brinkley wrote about in the new yorker. Guest right. Cspan . To the lady, i think, in philadelphia or someplace like that. Guest it was ahisa fan that he corresponded with for decades. Cspan did you look at those, by the way . Guest some of those, but not too much. Theres also Nancy Reagans love letters book, which has become a bestseller, and then when you look at lou cannons biography of reagan and some others, people mention he wrote this speech, he wrote that speech. Theresyou know, there are anecdotes all over the place, but no one kind of put it together as a coherent story. Cspan do you know whether he has a personal diary . Guest well, during the presidency there was one. Ive not seen it, but Edmund Morris refers to it. And thatsitsbut ive not seen that. But i dont know if there was one before the presidency. Id love to see that if there was one. Cspan ok. Go back again toto how this all came together. You got together with Martin Anderson and his wife. Guest annelise. Cspan . Annelise anderson, and the three of youhow did you make the proposal to a publisher . Guest we had awe wrote a small proposal and we attached some ofcopies of some of the documents, and thats what initially we just sent out proposals, but that wasnt enough. They really had to see reagans writing, cause i dont know if everyone believed he was doing this work, and given the reputation that hes had, especially in the media and among scholars. So we sent some of the documents and we just kept pressing our case. Cspan how much of thismichael korda has been here, who is the big editor at simon schuster, and he was the guy that put together the book that Ronald Reagan wrote, or he didnt write it, but he told the story right here about how they would come to meetings, and Ronald Reagan didnt write it and other people wrote it for him. Do you think that had something to do with impacting people that he wasnt much of a writer . Guest i think so. What martin has said before, andand i think its aa good way of describing this bookthis is the first book by Ronald Reagan. We know that in earlier books that his name was attached to, like his oofficial biography and an earlier one, they were ghostwritten or cowritten. But this is really reagans writing. So it was never intended for publication. Its abut it ends up being a coherent body of work on policy issues in the late 1970s and some before and after. So it is unique. It is his first book. Cspan in the acknowledgments, you acknowledge three people i want to ask you about. Guest ok. Cspan . Somebody named Byron Skinner, somebody named Gloria Skinner and somebody named ruby skinner. Who are those people . Guest Byron Skinner is my father, and im somewhat of a namesake. Im kiron skinner. I was supposed to be a boy, and when i wasnt they made up a name that rhymed. Cspan how do you like that, by the way . Guest i think its fine. And so at least im not byronetta, which was another choice. I dont think id like that very much, though iive been told i have a cousin with that name. Cspan byronetta. Guest yes. He is a historian of american history, of afroamerican history. He got his phd at berkeley, but he spent most of his career in academic administration. And i think he wishes that hed done more as a writer, and hes really proud of this book. And he s. Cspan where is he now . Guest my parents are retired in Southern California, in victorville, and he spent much of his career in the Community College world. He was president of San Jose City college; at one point in the early 80s at university of maine at augusta. I believe he was the first black person to be president of a State University or a university in thatin maine. And then he ended his career at Compton College in Southern California. Cspan and who is Gloria Skinner . Guest my mother. And so i had somewhat of a stage mother whoshes also very proud of the book, but she encouraged me in not only academics but public speaking and drama and other activities. And. Cspan what didwhat was her career . Guest she sometimes was a homemaker; a lot of times she worked in child care, in that field, and thats what she did for most of her career. She ran a daycare center, a very successful one, that she started. Shes extremely independent, so she started her own business andandand that worked well for her. Cspan and you say they were both civil rights activists. Guest mmhmm. Cspan now did they have any problem with you getting close to Ronald Reagan on all this . Guest no, becausei think especially because they see this as a scholarly project, but then i think they wouldwouldnt mind what i would do if i was doing it from an informed standpoint. But i think theyre pleased with the scholarly nature and that its not a polemical book. And we worked really hard in our own writing, in both the introduction and what we wrote in the headnotes, not to goad the reader in one direction or another or try to make the case for reagan. Its not a Victory School piece at all. And so i think that they were pleased that it was done as an objective piece ofof work with real documents and evidence. And i think thats the key to why the book is working and its become a bestseller. Cspan whos ruby skinner . Guest she is my sister, and shes finishing up a surgery residency in the bay area right now, and shes going into the field of trauma surgery and moving to university of pennsylvania in a couple of months. Cspan any other siblings . Guest just the two of us. Thats it. Cspan theyou also say that you had strong support from someplace in new york called hamilton college. Guest hamiltoni taught there for a year, and it was a wonderful place. Thats actually where this all began. Ibyid left ucla as a postdoc and it was my first teaching job, and its a wonderful liberal arts college in upstate new york. And i started presenting my ideas to students there about reagan and carrying big archival boxes around and starting some of the research. Cspan you mean they saw the boxes . Guest they sawi couldnt bring the actual boxes but, you know, drafts of things or mainly typed scripts that, you know, were easy to take away and use forinin a more public setting. Cspan whats the reaction of the students when they see you working on this . Guest i now teach at Carnegie Mellon university in pittsburgh, and ive had great support from faculty and students. Theyve been supportive. They like it. They think its entertinteresting. Many dont like reagan. Theyre very surprised. But i think they appreciate the way in which the project was done, and i think thats important to me. Cspan and then you had support from the olin foundation. Guest yes. Cspan . Which, if i read correctly, is a conservative foundation. Guest it has that reputation, but it gives lots of money to scholars at harvard, at university of chicago, in all fields, in social science and in law and economics, so its very much a respected foundation among researchers. Cspan they support you in this . Is that. Guest they supported my faculty leave to complete this book. Cspan but then on the other side of its the council on foreign relations. Guest and the council on foreign relations, where i am a fellow. And les gelb brought me on there. Hes the president of it. Andand the councils been very supportive ofof what ive been doing this past year. And so there was no attempt to try to look balanced; its just the life that i really am leading. Cspan so atat what point in this process, from 96 until today, did this thing look like it was really going to take off . Guest we. Cspan whend you get the contract . Guest oh, god, it wasnt very long ago. We got the contract in the fall of 90thewe actually completed the contract in february of 2000 and turned the book in at thethe end of august of 2000, and then it came out a year later. Cspan so you worked on it for about three or four years without anybody saying theyre going to buy this. Guest right. The Hoover Institution press was going to publish it if we wanted to, and we, in fact, had a contract with hoover. It has an archival series, which is excellent, onon documents and books related to revolutions and thof the 20th century. But i thought it would be good to mogo with a publisher that could bring it to perhaps a wider audience and have wider distribution. And once it became a bestseller, that was aa good thing, because theywerethe book is in its fourth printing, although it was published on february 6th. Cspan now diddiddid this get widesfor those people whove never heard these broadcasts, did they get widespread listenership back in the 70s . Guest oh, it did. It was anon over 300 radio stations. And so i met harry oconnor, the producer and distributor, last week for the first time at the Reagan Library, andwhich was holding an event for the book. And he saidi think he said maybe 380 or 350, but i know at least 300 from the archives. So it was reaching reagan says thein the archives in a letterin several letters that between the radio broadcast and his newspaper column, which went to, at its height, i think, about 200 newspapers, he was reaching 20 million americans a week. Cspan do you get any sense of what impact this kind of a book will have on the legacy of Ronald Reagan . Guest i think it changes everything. And whats surprising is how fast thethe reassessment hashashas startedbegun. It really does change our understanding of reagan, because thethe idea, the notion that he didnt know very much, that he didnt do very much, that he was handled by advisers now means weve got to look at him differently, his mode of operation, and so it changes our understanding of him and, i think, also of the american presidency. And we can talk about that a little bit if you want to. Cspan yeah. How doeshow do you think it changes the american. Guest i think that whats interesting about this book is that its about the presidency, in a way, but there are very few documents from the president ial period. We look at the period of hisright before the presidency, that five years when ive watched television programs, specials on reagan, that said, oh, in the late 70s, he was at a Santa Barbara ranch chopping wood, relaxing. i think it makes itit suggests that we begin to look atat different periods to understand what a president will do andand follow his paper trail very closely. Most scholars have not looked at reagans activities when he was not in office. The ggubernatorial years have been mined and the presidency not hashasnt been completely mined, but theres work there. But this sheds light on the presidency in a period where reagan wasnt in office. We looked in much the way that social historians do in a kind of bottom up way. Were looking at the documents that are outoutside of the government channels that reagan wrote himself that are in his private possession, to understand him. And i think we get a sense of his mode of operation, how private he was, how contemplative he was, and we did that without focusing on the president ial year and the big events that happened. Cspan you get a sense that, in readingand i know you edited the Foreign Policy sectionthat he always wrote off of something. I mean, there werelike the rostow, eugene rostows. Guest right. Cspan . Speech. Explain that. I mean, you have as many as, i think, six different. Guest ii put those in there intentionally. Wewe really worked hard at presenting a sampling of the documents. As i mentioned to you, before we got started, that wewhat we present in this book is just a small portion of what we found in the archives. I mean, the book is 549 pages. We couldnt have done any more in one volume and kept readers going. But he wrote so much that we had to make decisions about whatwhat to print. And we printed basically we tried to find something from every year during the 70s, some early ones, some later ones, that covered all the topics he was writing about and interested in. That was our basic methodology. I included the rostow ones to just show how he could take a speech or a document or a piece of material and work with it andand and develop a story. And so he did on the Foreign Policy side. He would really rely on experts, and youll see a lot of that. He does on rostow on one case, but others as well. Hes mentioning them throughoutpaul nitze and others. So hes relying on them to help him make the case he wants to make. Cspan letlet me just bring out on that eugene rostow thing he was a liberal democrat, as he points out in this. Guest right. Cspan how often did you find him, say, taking somebody who was on the opposite side of him politically to prove his own point . Guest quite often. He went everywhere and he would use almost any source that he felt was credible, but that was helping him make his point. And so, you know, he joined the committee on present danger, which was led by neoconservative democrats in the late 1970s, and that they actually came to his camp, kampelman, Max Kampelman and others who then served in the reagan administration. So he washe. Cspan Max Kampelman was a good friend of Hubert Humphreys here in town. Guest soright. And so hisand so ive actually interviewed him in the past when i was just starting this project. Butso reagan would use sources from all over the place, and not just conservative sources. He does cite human events, as you notice in the book, and National Review andand those conservative publications, but other things as well, the economist, the los angeles times, of all things, but also government documents. And i think that was surprising for many whove seen the book who were even close to reagan. Hencs 68, National Security council 68, was a centerpiece document of containment for the us in the cold war, drafted by paul nitze and others at this policy planning staff in the state department to 1949 and 50 presented to president truman. It was declassified in 1975. Reagan devoted two Radio Broadcasts to nsc 68. And i actually went back and looked at that huge government document andto see what reagan was quoting, and he was quoting from all over that document, trying to talk about what rearmamentwhat mean in peace time and why it was important and what the soviet threat was like. Cspan do you get any sense of how he got it . Guest i did and i couldnt findi initially found a document to suggest that Richard Allen provided him with nsc 68, and i didnt cite that in the book. Ii couldnt find it asas we were finishing. We did this book very quickly ina year ago. And so i couldnt find the original letter from Richard Allen, so i refused to cite it without that. But Richard Allen provided him with it. Around 78, Richard Allen came on as a Foreign Policy adviser to reagan. So he did have more people helping him by the late 70s and giving him advice, but he put these things together in his own voice the way he wanted to. And some of the most important Radio Broadcasts were written in 75 right when he started rstarted them sa few months after he stepped down as governor, like the one titled peace in the philosophy section at the beginning of the book. This is reagan without advisers hes just mapping out his own philosophy, his own understanding of world politics, of democracy, of domestic life and thatthose were important ones and we put them in. Cspan where did he write them . And you said earlier thatusually on a legal yellow pad. Guest a lot of them, right. Cspan but where did he write them and how many did he do at a time . Guest he wrote about 15 at a time. He wouldevery three weeks, he would go into a taping studio in hollywood at harry oconnors outfit, and go through 15 of them so that that would last for three weeks. And he made a commitment, Peter Hannaford said, who helped reagan with all of these; he was crucial during these years to reagan. Peter hannaford said last week at the Reagan Library that reagan early on, he and boconnor said this, made a commitment to arrange his life around his taping schedule. So although he was giving 10 speeches a month around the country on behalf of conservative causes, he was always in the radio stathe studio to do the broadcasts. So he would write them on planes, at the ranch, in the back of cars, wherever he could write them. And i dont know if youd like to play the second one, but he describes how he writes them in his final radio broadcast in the fall of 1979, the very day that he announces hes going to run for the president of the united states. Cspan and this is alsoi mean, this is from the oconnor collection. Its at the hoover. Guest right. Its at the Hoover Institution thats now preserved on cd. Cspan yeah. Well, letslets run this one, ok . Guest ok. Mr. Reagan from radio broadcast for the last time, im cleaning up my desk with a few items you should hear. Ill be right back. Believe my, my friends, i speak to you today with mixed emotions and maybe its fitting that i make it the final desk cleaning day. The first item is, in my opinion, very serious for all of us and another indication of how far we are straying from the very basics of our system. The Mountain States Legal Foundation has filed a suit with the federal government claiming the Constitutional Rights of several states are being violated. When congress voted to extend the time for states to ratify the equal rights amendment, it refused to allow several states to change their position and rescind the approval they had given earlier. A few weeks ago, the Us Department of justice, which, above all, should be the defender of Constitutional Rights, filed a motion with the idaho court where the case is being heard. The motion was to disqualify the judge appointed to hear the case. Now hear this the Justice Department wants him disqualified because of his religion. He is a member of the mormon church. I leave it to you to imagine what such a precedent could do to our entire system of justice if judges can be either assigned or disqualified on the basis of religion. These next few items may make you laugh, but you will hurt a little, too. A former california superintendent of education, dr max rafferty, has uncovered a few items having to do with extremes in the battle of the sexes. The department of health, education and welfare has discovered that in one Public School system, more boys than girls were being spanked. If the School System doesnt want a Million Dollars in federal aid to be withheld, it will henceforth spank girls and boys in exactly equal numbers. In woonsocket, rhode island, the city council has ruled that from now on those metalcovered holes in our streets weve long called manholes will henceforth be known as person holes. And in missoula, montana, a peeping tom ordinance is now a peeping person law. Well, thats all the desk cleaning for today. And as i indicated when i began, its been my last such chore. This is my final commentary. Im going to miss these visits with all of you. Ive enjoyed every one. Even writing them has been a lot of fun. Ive scratched them out on a yellow tablet in airplanes, riding in cars, and at the ranch when the sun went down. Whenever ive told you about some misfortune befalling one of our fellow citizens, youve opened your hearts and your pocketbooks and gone to the rescue. I know you have because the individuals youve helped have written to let me know. Youve done a great deal to strengthen my faith in this land of ours and its people. You are the greatest. Sometime later today if you happen to catch me on television, you will understand why i can no longer bring you these commentaries. This is Ronald Reagan. And from the bottom of my heart, thanks for listening. Cspan do you know how old you were when those were around . Guest oh, i dont want to think about that. I was a ta teenager. Cspan did you ever hear them when you were that age . Guest no, not at all. I didnt hear them, didnt see the newspaper columns. Cspan what do think of whathe way he says things . Guest he has an incredible knack with words and language andand itsitshe just really draws you in to listen to him. And he has ahe has a great voice and itsimim impressed by how clear and powerful his voice sounded then, strong and. Cspan do you have any old friends at Spelman College who say, kiron, youre getting hooked on it. Youyoure getyoure getting used on this stuff . Guest i have notno one has said that to me, surprisingly. And a couple of people have asked similar questions, but i have not been asked that. But im not sure what you mean by used. cspan just, you know, that youformer democrat or a democrat at one time, a father and mother involved in the Civil Rights Movement andand often those people who have been involved in the civil rights activists dont like Ronald Reagan. Guest uhhuh. No, i havent had that really asas aas a focus ofof this project at all. I thought there might be some of that, but no ones really kind of focused on that point asas the center of what ive been doing. Cspan if he were running right now, could you vote for him . Guest sure. And if you look at what heshes saying andin thein thein the broadcasts, especially, for me, on the Foreign Policy side, the fact that heswas so committed to ending the cold war without having a Major Nuclear war and that he thought it was possible andat a time when the cold war was seen as status quo, andand the fact that he thought detente was not the way to get to mutual cooperation. It took a lot of strength and determination and bravery, actually, to make the set of arguments that he made, the way that he did, at that time in the 70s. He was going against his own party. You know, he does challenge jimmy carter quite a bit, president carter, in the broadcasts, but hes really also talking about the nixonkissinger grand design of detente, and he saw it as appeasement. Others said it, conservatives at the time, both democrats and republicans, ross dowe said it andand others, but reagan was unique in the way he put the pieces together. He kept saying, we want to have mutual cooperation with the soviet union and peace, but that means that that system has to fall apart, because itsits squashes freedom of every sort internally and its illegitimate as a result. If we make it clear to the American People we agree with what we thwhat i think is their preference to end the cold war from the strategy that we have to implement to make that happen, which is peace time rearmament. If we make it clear as leaders that were doing one thing to achieve the other, i think theyll support it. It cant happen through detente. when you look at the writing, the scholarly writing at that time and you look at the influence of kissinger and others who were much more on the side of detente, reagan just seems to be a really clear, dissident thinker about grants strategy in international relations. And so i could definitely support him on that, as well. Cspan this is not your section. Its domestic and Economic Policy and its september 21st, 1976. But ii wanted just to read out loud what he said, and i wonder whether you could do this today he said. Guest whats thewhichwhats the title of that one . Cspan the title is the hope of mankind. Guest oh, i read that one. Go ahead. Its great. Cspan well, actually, i want you to read it. Itheres no sense in me reading it. Justi just want you to read thatthis paragraph right here where i have underlined. Guest thatswell, youve underlined a lot. Ok. i love america because people accept me for what i am. They dont question my ancestry, my faithi just read this byactually, thethe other day and was quite movedmy faith, my political beliefs. When i want to move from one place to another, i dont have to ask permission. When i need a needle, i go to the nearest store and get one. I dont have to stand in line for hours to buy a piece of tough, fat meat. Even with inflation, i dont have to pay a days earnings for a small chicken. cspan dowas there ever a time, when you read thisthese Radio Broadcasts was you were going through your research, where you said, this is just off the mark. He missed it on this . Guest iin what way . Cspan in any way . In other words, hehehe. Guest yeah. Oh, sure. That one is ais a good statement. I think hes contrasting our free system with closed political systems and totalitarian regimes, clearly. Andbutandand iand i dont think he missed it; i think he really believed that personal freedom was so important, and ive had long discussions with annelise anderson about that cause sheshe really helped choose those documents. Andand we have aa copy of it there. But there areare ways that he missed the mark, andand we do say so at times. Wewe try to point out some contradictions in things that he said in the broadcast in the 70s and things that happened later in the presidency, and we provide examples of that. I give one where hehe talks about, in very negative terms, Us Ambassador to the un Andrew Youngs visit to southern africa, where he met with Samora Machel, the leader of mozambique. And he talked about, you know, this marxistoriented leader thatthat andrew young is meeting with, and then i put in the head note, but years later, as president , reagan had one of his most convivial meetings with a foreign leader with the meeting he had with Samora Machel in the white house, andjust to point out some things there. He didnt have everything right we say in the introduction of the book, he functioned as a oneman think tank. he did not oneman think tank. he did not have time to master the nuances of every foreign and domestic and defense issue that he wrote about, and very few political analysts or writers or pundits can predict the future and come out with a perfect record. On the section on southern africa, and south africa in particular, where he talks about apartheid, you know, he thought sanctions wouldnt work; he was making that argument very clearly in the 1970s; that it wouldnt work to get rid of apartheid. And he did say that, we find apartheid to be morally repugnant. but he didnt see the direction that the American People would go in the 1980s on that, so he didnt see the future inbetter thanthanthan most people whowho do this kind of work. But he did seem to understand the big game of the cold war story better than most. Cspan and what has happened to you since this has come about . And youre making all thethe tour and speeches and television appearances. Guest just my life is about the same. I have so Much Research and writing to do that nothing really has changed. Its great toto do television and radio programs and talk about the book, but its much more fun to do the work. So the andersons and i have aaanother book that were doing of reagans writing. As i mentioned to you, this is just so small a fraction of what we found. Wewere doing a followon book with the free press on reagans letters and correspondence before the presidency, decades before, right up to the campaign, during the campaign and throughout the presidency, during the white house years. And those are pri. Cspan where are you getting those . Guest again, theyre private papers that the reagans are giving us access to. Cspan is this how, i mean, it works . Since youve been successful with this, and they say, well, we want to take it further with you . Guest we prwe prreally presented that project because its such a naturalits a kind of a followon to this project, and it showsto me, its going to be, in some ways, more illuminating than this book because it shows reagan writing things that were, really, never intintended, in a way, to be broadcast. But theyretheyre not inconsistent with what he says publicly things on race, onon religion. Theres some letters where hes in debate with ministers and theologians about his understanding of scripture and his belief in intercessory prayer. So i think that the public will enjoy seeing this material. But. Cspan whats the timetable on that . Guest we have to have that booki think it will be out not this christmas, but the christmas after, 2002. Cspan and how are you twothree of you going about doing this . How do you Work Together . Guest we havent figured out how were going to divide up the labor for the next book, but, again, its diving into the archives and letting thereally, doing a bottomup story, letting the empirical record influence how we put the material together. Cspan the making of a movie starpage 433, des moines register. Where did you find this . 1937. Guest thats really martymarty andersons handiwork of being in touch with someone in los angeles, whowho collects reagan posters, who knew about these essays, really, that rreagan wrote, very long ones, not letters to the editor, but. Cspan irv leftofski. Guest i think thats who reagan. Cspan . Collector of movie posters. Guest thatsand so reagandand marty was in touch, and marty knew about these, and we got hold of them. And we couldnt print all of them, and we prprinted the first one. But reaganinterestingly, he was 26 years old, leaving iowa on his way driving to Southern California to begin his new life with his first movie contract and studio contract. And hes describinghe set this up, and he says hehe didnt get paid for it; set it up to write back sundayspecial sunday pieces for the newspaper on his new life. And it was a great piece of selfpromotion and wrote these early on. So we just thought we had to put one in the book to show what he was writing and thinking back then. And iyou can just envision him, if youif you read them, as this young man driving to Southern California, being stopped by police along the way, trying to get out of getting a ticket, meeting beautiful women once he gets there, having fun. And so it was justit was great to read it. Cspan now you put inthe last thing you put in, in this, is the letter that he wrote to the nation about his alzheimers disease. Guest right, which has been printed before, but we. Cspan yeah. Whatwhatwhat was the reason that you wanted to close out this with that letter . Guest because i thought itwe thought it was an interesting way to kind of punctuate what we had done, because we start in the other writings with some of his childhood writings, and then heres his last kind of public letter to the country as he moves into another phase of his life. And itit just was so clear and powerful and emotional in the way that the radio broadcast that we just listened to, looking out a window, was. It was consistent with his own emotions and hishis dreams for the country and his feelings, and we thought it just really showed him in a way that nothing else did at that time. And we wanted something from the postpresidency period, and that was the pthe perfect document. Cspan now how many pieces do you actually have in the book . Guest we have aroaround 270; 220 Radio Broadcasts and then, you know, a couple dozen others in thein thein the other swriting section of the book. The bulk of the book isis just 220 Radio Broadcasts. Cspan what if people want to see them all . Guest well, we have some news on that front. What we have done istheyre not all available, but all of the Radio Broadcasts that we present in the book have beenpreservation copies have been made of them, and they are now at the Reagan Library for scholars to look at and make use of. So the. Cspan to listen to or just to look at . Guest toto look at. Theyou know, the tapes are at the hoover. Cspan at hoover. Guest atat hoover. And. Cspan what about that part of it . Can people listen to them . Guest i dont think those are open yet, and i think that therell be some work to figure out what to do with thethe audio versions. But theit is, i think, very important that we have now a set of files at the Reagan Library that scholars can see that show material from his private papers, really some of the first material to be released to the public from those private boxes so you can see what we did. Cspan areare you ai dont know what worda heroine to the reaganites, the people that always thought he deserved better, now that youve done this . Do you find people getting very supportive of you now . Guest i think there are people who are very supportive of the book and veryand have thanked all of us for doing this book and said that they knew that there was more to reagan. And so i think that its natural that supporters of reagan would embrace this book. But whats interesting to me is that critics of reagan have embraced this book. If you look at the dozens and dozens of reviews that have been written, many in the, quote, unquote, liberal pressi mean, thethe New York Times has done two pieces, and it was serialized in the New York Times magazine, given front coverage in a book review in january, and its been in other papers as well. The subject of editorials all over the countryis that reagan critics are interested in the evidence and that theres a way in which, in this information age, real evidence still matters. Had he done this on a computer, it wouldnt have worked. We wouldnt have been able toto do this book with thethe kind of authenticity that weve been able to do it. But i think the fact that weve produced reagan in his own hand, with his own drafts, not trying to protect him in any way, clean up the materialsome people said, dont present drafts. Youll see the spelling errors and youhis strikeouts, things he didnt intend toto put on the air. You shouldnt do thathis notes in the margins. the fact that we did that, i think, has brought a lot of reagan critics into saying, no, we dont agree with his views on all of these issues, but the fact that he was working through them, that he was reading sources widely and thinking isis important to the way we understand the presidency. cspan what is your own personal lifes goal now . Guest oh, just to keep doing all the work that ive been doing; to do more work on the end of the cold war. I have a book im working on, with the university of michigan press, on the breakdown of detente in the 70s. Its the same time period as this bookmuch of this book. But now i think therell be a reagan todimension to it where there wasnt one before. But to keep doing my research, teaching. It hasnt changed my goals at all. Cspan anyany interest in getting into a government situation at some point and being involved in Foreign Policy . Guest not necessarily, maybe on ain doing some consulting, but not as a fulltime job. Theres just too much to do in the archives. Cspan our guest has been kiron skinner. She is a coeditor of reagan in his own hand the writings of Ronald Reagan that reveal his revolutionary vision for america. Thank you very much for joining us. Guest thank you. With the month left in 2012, many publications are putting together their yearend list of notable books. Booktv will feature several of these less focusing on nonfiction selections. These titles were included in time magazines top 10 nonfiction books