Reagan by Harper Brett

Author:Harper, Brett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography and Autobiography/Presidents and Heads of State
ISBN: 9781612308548
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2015-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

BUT IT DIDN’T stay buried long. On March 5, Reagan, along with members of his senior staff, returned from California, while Nancy stayed behind to watch Patti and tape an anti-drug episode of the television show, Diff’rent Strokes. Dolan’s draft had landed on the desk of Reagan aide David Gergen, who read it carefully. Gergen pulled Deputy National Security Adviser Robert “Bud” McFarlane out of a meeting with the president. “Bud, you’ve got to go over this,” he said. When the pages were returned to the speech writer for revisions, Dolan said, the “evil empire” section was crossed out in “a lot of green ink.” Dolan took a rare stand: “Let’s just let the president decide on this,” he said.

The speech was still intact when Reagan received it that evening. Throughout the next day, he marked the pages with revisions and scribbled additions in the margins. He added a section opposing distribution of birth control to underage girls without parental consent and crossed out a section about organized crime. After a passage about arms reductions, Reagan wrote that the Soviets “must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never abandon our belief in God.” When he was done, the Soviet Union was still an “evil empire.”

On March 7, the writers typed up the final draft of the speech. At the last minute, the president asked for a list of specific reasons for opposing a nuclear freeze, which he summarized on four index cards that were clipped to the pages of his address. “I would agree to a freeze if only we could freeze the Soviets’ global desires,” Reagan wrote. “A freeze at current levels of weapons would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major arms reductions which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve their objectives through the freeze. A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military buildup.”

As Reagan sat down for breakfast at the White House at 7:45 on the morning of March 8, 5,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators were gathering in a cold drizzle outside the U.S. Capitol. The demonstrators cheered an announcement later that morning that the House Foreign Affairs Committee had voted to send a nuclear freeze resolution to the House for approval. After a meeting with Congressional members, during which the president was briefed on what had become a civil war in El Salvador, Reagan boarded a helicopter for Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. It lifted off from the White House lawn at 10:13 a.m. Twenty-five minutes later, Reagan left on Air Force One for Orlando. The sun hung high in the cloudless sky as the president arrived shortly after noon. He stopped first at EPCOT Center, where he was treated to a program on American history and met with students in foreign-exchange programs.

Reagan’s speech to the NAE convention, at the Sheraton Twin Towers, was scheduled for 3:00 p.

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