Bipartisan group whose members can access many opportunities through their involvement with the institute including volunteering for programs and networking with special guests. If you are a student i would like to join, please contact us by emailing us or speaking with a student worker after the program. After the program, we will have some time for the audience to ask questions. If you have a question, please raise your hand and a student worker with a microphone will come to you. Please stand if you are able and ask one question. Have a loop Hearing Program as well as a limited number of listening devices. If you have questions about the loop system or if at any time you have difficulty hearing, please alert one of our Staff Members or student volunteers. Before we begin, i would like to remind you to please turn off your cell phones. Now, please join me in welcoming senior associate rector dr. Robert ballard. This evenings interview will be conducted by the associate director. Joining us tonight as an honored guest is ron marks. He has every spring 2020 fellow. He is a former Senior Analyst for the cia and intelligence expert and intelligence counsel to Senate Majority leaders le and trent lott. Would you stand please . This years president ial lecture series was created and developed by dr. Robert rowland. He is a professor of Communication Studies at the university of kansas. His areas of expertise are rhetorical criticism, argumentation and the public sphere. He presented the keynote on rhetoric at the reagan centennial celebration at usc and the Reagan Library. Nationaln numerous awards for his research. It is with pleasure i present him to you. I will say, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome dr. Robert rowland with a warm jayhawk welcome. [applause] it is a pleasure to be with you tonight. Thank you for being here. Started with our conversation. You study president reagan as a scholar for many decades. Take note ofirst Ronald Reagans oratorio roughly 36, 37 years ago. I had in to all of the stereotypes reagan was a farright ideologue and an actor. Then i did two studies. I looked at reagan. I was also a debate coach at the time. I looked at the Reagan Carter debate. There was a single debate of that cycle between the two of them. It had a format so good they have never used it ever again. [laughter] dr. Rowland in the second half, they had two rebuttals. You stated your case and the other side had a chance to state their case. Then you responded. I noticed immediately that reagan was much better in the rebuttals. He was always good, but he was much better in the rebuttals. Carter was terrible. I then counted the evidence usage. I counted refugee to arguments e i counted refutativ documents. Reagan was a mere actor. Except that i was an active College Debate coach at the time. I could not get my very good College Debaters scripted in rebuttals. It occurred to me the only possible explanation for this was that reagan was genuinely smart. [laughter] dr. Rowland it took me a while to accept that. Then i did another study looking at all his speeches in the 1982 midterm campaign. I had a graduate student who had been a great debater at ku. Together we looked at the speeches. They off they all sounded the same. I knew as president that reagan had many speechwriters. Wereught, the texts very different. How could they all sound the same . It occurred to me the only way they could all sound the same was that if reagan were personally involved in the speechwriting process. And then i thought, he has no only smart he is a good writer too. Since then, i spent a great deal of time with president reagans words. I had a colleague, a friend, who was at pepperdine who would go to the Reagan Library and go to the handwriting files. The handwriting files are the files from the speeches. They would have reagans handwriting on them. When you see them for the major speeches, it changes how you think about reagan. I have written a book about his speech at the palace of westminster on june 8 of 1982, a speech where he enunciated a theory of the cold war that people did not take seriously at that it but turned out called the way the cold war actually happened. He either edited or wrote more than half of it. He is a really good writer. He is an even better editor. When you see that again and again, it shapes your views. Lifelongzen, i am a i am ad democrat, lifelong liberal democrat, but i looked at the words on the page. He was just plain smart and a really great writer and an even better editor. Objectivity,of people do not like it. Maybe we should. That idea led me to totally change my views of Ronald Reagan. You are talking about him as a writer. What about as a communicator . What is the talent as a communicator come from . Two things. He had a gift for narrative. For expressing his vision of the American Dream. The American Dream is our most important system. Secular myth system. They are not false stories, they are most important stories. The most important story we tell as a political story in the United States is the American Dream, which is about the great heroes. It is about lincoln, madison, washington. More than that, it is about ordinary people who have lifted up the nation generation by generation as things have gotten better. We have also become more inclusive. We have had some glitches in the American Dream. Reagan had a gift for telling those kinds of stories. He was in some western. As an actor. Other actors wondered where he was. He was back in his dressing room rewriting his speech to make it better than the hollywood writers. It kind of tells you something, doesnt it . His other gift was empathy, a sense of the audience. He had a genuine understanding of the American People that flowed from he grew up really poor in the depression. His father was an alcoholic. He had a rough life. It was a life that led him to empathize with people. He just had a genuine gift for understanding the way people were reacting and expressing it through the American Dream. Can you talk about his speeches echo his appearance on the action his speeches . His appearance on the National Stage in the 19 60s. How did his message change . Dr. Rowland there is an eerie similarity here between reagan and obama. Reagan becomes famous as a political figure from one speech. He gave a speech for barry veryater in 1964 that was wellreceived received on national television. It is one of those moments where goldwater thought, that was great, but how do i speak now . Similarity is with the the eerie similarity is democratic04 convention when someone convinced john kerry to invite a state senator. He presented his keynote address. The Major Networks, which still had News Conference during the convention all the time then, the Major Networks did not cover obama. 18 minutes later on cnn, they were saying, there is a future president of the United States. The similarity is, one speech brought them to the national attention. Grown up come of age as an adult as an fdr democrat. He loved president roosevelt. Fdr in a way, you can hear in his words throughout his life. The optimistic vision of the American Dream. It sounded like president roosevelt was always present in reagan. When reagan married nancy, nancys father was a far right conservative. When reagan started giving speeches for ge and was on the i ame was really on not sure we would say it is the right wing of the movement today, but it was then. Then, reagan ran for governor of california in 1966 jane what became in 1966. What became clear to people who studied him as he became a pragmatist. He was a conservative, but he was a pragmatic conservative. He took efforts to restrict welfare. He thought there were people cheating, but he also took efforts to raise social programs for people he thought deserved social programs. He governed as a conservative but a pragmatic conservative. Frankly, that is pretty much how he governed as president. Of the leaders of the cato institute, which is a libertarian very far to the right wrote about the reagan revolution and summarized it after reagan was done as saying there was no reagan revolution. When reagan was on the radio, he played to the audience. When reagan was governor or president , he served the country. I say this you should take this as my real views because i never supported any of reagans policies except firing the air traffic controllers. I think he had no choice. Was as averned pragmatic conservative. It is funny how the stereotypes maintain. From my judgment, with his words and deeds, not the man many people remember. When he is delivering a speech, there are some stories you talked about, some very technical and logistical way he would deliver his speech. Dr. Rowland you are talking about the cards. This is early on when he is running for office. Becomesime he president , he has teleprompters. When he starts running for office, he was his own primary speechwriter. I have seen copies of the five by eight cards he would give his stump speeches off of. What they had were keywords. The stories that are told about reagan and his staff where that were that they were republican operatives of their time. They were in the bar at the hotel at night. People would ask, where is ronnie . Ronnie was up in his room working on the cards. He was getting his stump speech until it worked until the way i wanted he wanted it to. That is his sense of getting the words right. It is the ideas that are most important by getting the words about the idea right. The thing that is amazing about the delivery is that in order to deliver the speech, he need to be able to look at the cards to remind him where he was. That also allowed him to go off text if something happened and he could respond. He also needed to look at the audience. These are primitive contact lenses at the time. He had one for reading and one for distance. Somehow he could do that. I do not know how anybody could do that. People say he could do that because he was an actor. I am not sure those people have seen that many of his movies. [laughter] a. Rowland because he was much more effective political leader that he was an actor. As a let me just tell the story. The famous warner bros. Story that when he announced he was going to run for governor of california, one of the warner no, jimmy, no, no, stewart for governor. Ronald reagan for best friend. [laughter] dr. Rowland reagan had the last laugh because Jimmy Stewart was a much better movie actor, a much better movie actor. But Ronald Reagan has something to say. Ronald reagan did not need the script writers. He had something to say. After barack obama appears on the National Stage, when did you start hearing echoes of reagan . When did the wheels start turning and you felt there might be something . Dr. Rowland it is probably obamas first inaugural is the time i thought that. I should have thought of it after the Convention Speech because he is he has an unknown state senator. No one knows he has written this. The speech is so important in his life that when he was elected president 51 months later, think about that. 51 months. He is unknown. We thing rhetoric sometimes does not matter. It mattered then. He got the national attention. He wrote the audacity of hope and went on a book tour. It was the kind of book tour where he would sell out arenas and they would rent other rooms to have people listen to him and not even be there in his presence for a book like that. Reagan. He echoes of in the first inaugural, i remember listening and thinking, that is almost he is echoing reagan in that speech. That may mention, i have talked earlier about the importance of the American Dream. If i had to say one thing that dominates rhetoric over a very long time would be ownership of the American Dream because the American Dream is an optimistic narrative appeared in the worlds organist democracy optimistic narrative. In the world oldest democracy, if we work hard, we can build a better life for us and the next generation. It is also a narrative where we all get a say. So things are going to get better. You can c. L. Franklin roosevelt developed you can see how Franklin Roosevelt developed that. It is leonard silk writing in the New York Times where he famously said in this present crisis, government is the problem. Government is not the solution. People forget the introductory phrase. That reagan wrote seemed to be having a direct dialogue with Franklin Roosevelt. Later, 2009, peter baker in the New York Times wrote about obamas first inaugural, that he seemed to be in dialogue with president reagan. What we see is an arc of the American Dream that if it comes down to a single thing, it is whether there is more emphasis on individual initiative or whether there is a balance between individual initiative and a sense that when we fall down, when we cannot do things ourselves, that government ought to be there as a backdrop. We see that in fdr in the new deal and we see that in barack obama. Let me give you an example of this if i can of the pragmatic liberalism and pragmatic conservatism about government views. Quotation a a couple quotations and you tell me who they are from. Our government should work for us, not against us. And should help us, not hurt us. Got to be reagan. His 2008bama in Convention Speech accepting the democratic nomination. Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill, its power to expand freedom is unmatched. Defense of the market, obviously reagan. That is obama again. Here is another quotation. The role of the government to work with us, not over us. To stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it. Foster productivity, not stifle it. That is reagans first inaugural. Just a few paragraphs after the statement where he says in this present crisis, government is the problem, not the solution. Did reagan really think government was the problem for dealing with the soviets . That is not the way i remember it. I remember a buildup that was sending a message. I am not crazy. Obama is a pragmatic liberal. He wants a lot more government than reagan. Reagan is a pragmatic conservative. He thinks government is too big and he especially wants to reduce regulation, but they are both pragmatists. When you view it that way, their vision of government are not as different as people remember. Mentioned Ronald Reagan did a lot of his own writing. Where there any what kind of speechwriting support did they have . Did they have any particular individuals who might have been influential . Dr. Rowland well sure. Peter robinson was a great speechwriter for president reagan. Peggy noonan gets all of the credit. Peggy noonan does not come on board until 1986. She wrote the challenger address, which is a really wonderful speech. I think of the great speechwriters, Peter Robinson would be the one i would pick up. He wrote the Brandenburg Gate speech. Peter robinson has a story he tells that gives you an idea of the importance of the principles of the president. He talks about writing a speech for George H W Bush. He was going to give it in houston. Bush takeslane, h w the speech, which he has demanded to be on four by six cards. Pulls out the cards, throws out a bunch of them and reshovels what you have and that was the speech. I find this entirely credible because george w. Bush George H W Bush was a very good man. I have heard a lot of his speeches. They did seem to be composed in that fashion. [laughter] dr. Rowland if Peter Robinson were here or any of the great reagan speechwriters, what they would say is their method of writing a speech was to find out what reagan wanted to say, to go mineto the mother load to from things reagan had said before and that is how they put together his speeches because reagan was his own best speechwriter. I think you would say exactly the same thing is true about president obama. Im thinking now of the race speech. If you think about a difficult political situation, the race speech is about as difficult a campaign situation you could possibly be in. Talking about the most impossible issue to talk about. He had been given instructions. Draft. The speech david axelrod, it is his memoir have a story from, talks about how obama had stayed up until 2 00 or 3 00 in the morning and then he sends a draft to axelrod. Axelrod responds, this is why you should be president shared what obama had done is give the to a, have a speechwriter first draft and made it sound like him. If you remember that speech, that is the speech where he ends by telling the wonderful story of his Actual Campaign advisor, supporter ashley who had been in south carolina. Even as i tell the story, i will cry because it is so obama. Waspoint is that obama terrific at giving direction and then making the words his own. Was a little bit better at staying scripted. My criticism of obama was when he would be interviewed, you could see him thinking about the question and actually responding in real time. Unfortunately in our politics, that is not smart. Unfortunately, that is not smart. It tells you something about the mans mind. The challengerd speech. Can you give us examples from each president how they ha