Wall. This is about an hour and 15 minutes. Good morning, welcome. Im delighted you chose to join us for this the 10th annual Ronald Reagan symposium here at Regent University in virginia beach, virginia, on this cold late winter morning. My name is eric patterson. I serve as the dean of the school of government. I would like to introduce to you one of our senior leaders. To kick off this conference. He is a distinct scholar in academic. He has served as the dean of our college of arts and sciences. He is the author, editor of five books and he currently serves as the executive Vice President for academic affairs. Help me in welcoming to the podium, dr. Morano. Dr. Morano good morning. On behalf of the board of trustees i want to welcome you to the 10th annual Ronald Reagan symposium. This symposium brings together thought leaders to discuss issues around the theme derived from president reagans political career. This years theme the challenges of fostering global freedom, connects to the universitys mission and the distinctives of the Robertson School of government. Individual liberty representative democracy, and constitutional government. More importantly, this symposium should lead us to think about the grander theme of statesmanship as embodied in one of americas great president s, Ronald Reagan. Political issues, and go. Come and go. Statement should lives on in the minds of people long after its fitted its physical embodiments has ceased to exist. The Ronald Reagan symposium hosted by the Robertson School of government is a testament to that fact. Thank you for attending this important event, and thank you dean patterson for your leadership in helping us never to forget the gipper. Thank you. [applause] dean patterson we will hear from three headless and then there will be a questionandanswer time to follow that and then a break. Ill moderate this panel and i would like to introduce to you each of the three panelists first. Then one by one they will come to the podium. Allow me to introduce the first one to you. The honorable baxtion. A intervening editor of the National Interest in a former speechwriter for three u. S. President s including service as president Ronald Reagans director of speechwriting. Reagan also in nominated him to a term on the National Council of humanities. His publications have appeared in numerous venues, including the american enterprise, and the New York Times. Our second guest is dr. Greg shirley. Known for two books on Ronald Reagan. Mr. Shirley is the first reagan scholar at eureka college, a principal at shirley and banister public affairs, and a former decorated contract agent with the cia. Welcome. Our third member is Kathleen Casey mcfarland, fox new sNational Security allergist pitch she held National Security posts and then it in, and reagan administrations. She has worked as an aide to henry kissinger, as a senior speechwriter to Caspar Weinberger and later as Principal Deputy assistant secretary of defense and as a pentagon spokesperson. In 1985, she received the defense departments highest award given to a civilian for her work in the administration. She is a much soughtafter speaker and writer for her insightful commentary on international affairs. Ladies and gentlemen come to speak now is the honorable arum baxion. Hon. Baxion good morning. Im very happy to be here in virginia for this occasion because i have a personal reason for remembering the westminster address that president reagan gave. I was director of speechwriting at the time, and i was there in london. But something happened shortly after the speech where iw was walking. Passed a shop that had all these model soldiers in the window. One caught my eye. A single figure. I bought it. And i still have it. In fact i have it right here. It turned out it was a figure of a member of baylors virginia continental light to grooms. Light dragoons. Years later when someone traced the family tree, i discovered that my great, great, great great, and i forget maybe there is one more grandfather had been a baylors dragoon. So this a homecoming for me to virginia. At the same time, as it is a commemoration for Ronald Reagans westminster address where i excellently bought my great great great great grandfather. [laughter] the whole point of the westminster address was that it was a defining moment. Speeches come and go and you could arbitrarily assemble a list of any of a number of speeches. But westminster was a sort of the keystone in speeches that reagan gave amongst many others that defined the cold war, defined how we felt on the issues, the president behind things. And that stepbystep led to the end of that cold war, at any rate, and the collapse of communism, which very few people thought was going to happen. How did he do it . How important were the words . I will concentrate on the speeches because that is what i did. First of all, i will tell you what he did not do. That is what other people sometimes do wrong when they are trying to exert American Leadership globally. While it was working on my remarks for today, i happened to also be reviewing two books that made me think more about what i had to say and reminded me. The first was a book about Woodrow Wilson. The chief foreignpolicy adviser. As i read the book and wrote the review, some thoughts occurred to me which helped explain why Woodrow Wilson failed and why Ronald Reagan did not. I will just read a short exce rpt. When it comes to present, the brightest are not the best. There are three other qualities that matter as much or more. The president ial greatness of men like washington, lincoln, fdr, and Ronald Reagan was do at least as much to these qualities as it was to raw intellect. And then there was Woodrow Wilson, a brilliant scholar with high ideals but temperamentally and judgmentally incapable of sustained successful leadership at the president ial level. Wilson was a prime example of the selfproclaimed progressive who loves humanity in the abstract but is not really like people very much. His conceit, his conviction that he was always the smartest guy in the room and that his particular version of a presbyterian god had chosen him as the unique messenger in fact is one thing to recognize god. Woodrow wilson had that problem. All that rendered him unable to cope with it is as him and opposition that are an everyday part of the presidency. That is a problem that many president s had and it was a problem that Ronald Reagan emphatically did not. He liked people. The title i gave when i asked for my speech was, i remembered fdr referring to al smith the happy warrior, and people referring to fdr as the happy warrior. I think Ronald Reagan was the happy cold warrior. He fought the cold war but he was not a belligerent negative man. He was a man of strong conservative principles, but he had a moderate personality in the sense of not being closed, he was close to people instead of being closed to people, which is why he was able to reach out to people politically who had not voted for a republican. It is not a coincidence that a whole new political term entered the vocabulary reagan democrat in starting in the 1980s. At any rate, those were some of the things that made it possible for him to do what he did. Another, the second book, i was reviewing. The review ran a few days ago tuesday. Was a book about Abraham Lincoln. And as i looked, and i know this is virginia, so i am not asking you it is too late to have to vote for or against Abraham Lincoln. So dont worry. But lincoln was a master of words. I entitled the review, Abraham Lincoln, a man of his words, with an s, because, as i will explain in a minute, he and Ronald Reagan is one of the few others who was a president of his words. He will be remembered for his words because his gift for expressing his ideals was quite powerful. And i tried to, well, i just started as i was doing the review of the lincoln book, i started thinking more and more about Ronald Reagan. I think you will see why. Most presses are defined by what happened while they were in office and what others write about them afterward. Few paint an endured selfportrait in their own words. In the 20 century only Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan embedded themselves in history largely through their living words and images. Fdr via radio and film and Ronald Reagan with television as well. Part of the reason is the immense, mainly positive impact of their words. Fdr told us we had nothing to fear but fear itself and we overcame the Great Depression and liberated the real axis of evil. Ronald reagan told mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wlaall and it came down, along with the evil empire hiding behind it. Great rhetoric matched by great events is remembered. Otherwise, it is just words. Only one 19th american president attained the same level of success. And he had some things in common with Ronald Reagan. Which is why i started thinking about that as i wrote this review. Abraham lincoln, well, basically, he expressed himself in a way that the vast majority of his fellow countrymen, without ever seeing him in person or even seeing very often a photograph of him, without hearing his voice, he burned his image into their souls. And he had a lot of common in common with Ronald Reagan. They both came from modest backgrounds. And Ronald Reagan became president at a time when you needed president ial speechwriters because of the incredible number of speeches you have to get the time and again, legal pad handwritten with very few corrections would come out of whole short speeches or whole sections of speeches that Ronald Reagan had done himself that is not true of many president s, i know. The other thing is that Abraham Lincoln, and i will not do the paraphrase here or quote from the article, Abraham Lincoln is a man of modest education self educated but very bright. Ronald reagan went had a college education, but had to w ork very hard to get it but it was at a modest liberal arts college at a time when a bachelors degree meant something. At a time when you graduated from the sixth grade, you can spell better than im afraid many a phd today. Abraham lincoln also had something going for him that no politician does anymore. There was one book and he was raised on it. That was an almost every American Home at the time. And it was a book that besides is beautiful and inspiring message, a beautiful and inspiring language, that was the king james bible. And if the gettysburg address had begun with 87 years ago instead of four score and seven years ago, we might not even remember it. We would not remember it with the same intensity, because there was a biblical imagery to it that gave it a majesty and which was even more powerful in those days. And then he linked it. Four score and seven years ago our forefathers he linked it to the founding fathers. So that he was not just talking about the north against the south at that moment. And then as he went through it and now we are engaged in a great civil war, he linked it to the tragedy of the civil war. But he then reconnected it and tried to make people understand that as bad as it was it was not being done for nothing because he talked about not just the forefather but a rebirth of freedom which was carrying it forward another step. Which is what america is all about, constantly moving forward with humane values, principles, honor. So that it ended even though it was a dedication of a cemetery on an inspiring and future looking note. That was a gift Ronald Reagan had in his speeches. In westminster, he defined the ideals, the values. He said in areas other speeches during the course of his career, why we had to do this, why we had to do things that were just very practical and material like the Strategic Defense Initiative , which was ridiculed as star wars as one of the advisors are remembered the time said, Teddy Kennedy thought he was being clever when he ridiculed the Strategic Defense Initiative as star wars. Remember, that is one of the most popular movies ever made. It has a happy ending and the good guys win. And that is what happened. So it backfired. Ronald reagan called the soviet empire, an evil empire. Why did he say that . Because it is. Having you noticed . We 9 it took a little fancy footwork. That expression was introduced at a what was a minor speech in the sense that it was not the state of the union or billed as a foreignpolicy speech. It was a speech to evangelicals in florida, in orlando, with the result that president ial speeches drafts are artists circulated to the are always circulated to the secretary of defense and state. There are a lot of president ial speeches at any given time. That was on the bottom of the pile and a lot of people some speech to religious broadcasters. So that the initial draft would be words evil empire did not get spotted by them. And the objections did not start pouring in until we had only gotten a draft to the president. The guy that happened to be on duty at the nsc, he and i said, there are going to be a lot of people very upset about this word but it is their job to find out and im not going to tell them about it. Let the president see it, because then you start getting the phone calls as director of speech writing, whoever had done the drafts, was that have gone to the president had to keep track of things and changes. So once it had gone to the president and came back out, he kept it in, if you got a call from a Senior Deputy from the secretary of state expressing, the secretary of state feels this must come out. You could say, i feel the secretary of state must tell the president that this must come out because he kept it in. If the secretary of state wants to tell the president , that is his job, and more power to him. Well, nobody did. Reagan kept it in. It made history, and of course he caught all kind of criticism at home. They always said he was wrong. They always underestimated him and it was one of the best things he had going for him. It was brought home to me how much speeches like that meant when i come after i had been a speechwriter for twice before for president s and i drafted i loved doing that for reagan but i liked doing my own writing. I quit toward the end of the first term, but in 1989, as a writer, i was with a group of other writers and journalists who went to warsaw and budapest and east berlin. And the people i met there, this was just when the wall was coming down, when you could say that Ronald Reagans policy had prophecy had been fulfilled. The people on the other side of the iron curtain, i m many of them actually saidet his were morew than words. And this could not have happened without iit. Thank you. And my great great great great grandfather thanks you. [applause] dean patterson going to be a tough act to follow. Thank you dr. Morrison and thank you Regent University. It is an honor and privilege to be here this morning. Speaking of the time of day reminds me of what Ronald Reagan once said about the collision of time and day and age. And when he would speak. He quipped that the definition of middle ages when youre faced with the temptations and you choose the one that let you get home to bed by 9 30. As a side note, im glad to tell you that just this week i turned on a many scooped for the last act, which is the 30third book i have written about Ronald Reagan. He did not go back to california and announcing had alzheimers and then pass away. There was a lot of living that went on in those 15 plus years as you will discover when the book comes out. But it only took three years. I was asked not to long ago about the whole practice of writing and was it profitable . Was it books or opeds or penning speeches . I thought for a moment, and the most profitable form of writing as ransom notes. [laughter] im also ive also begun work on a book about reagan in the wilderness and it goes to the prom the point of coverslip. From 1976 to 1979 he went through a complete ideological makeover. Because reagan in this time ends up rejecting the containment and daytime policies which had dominated american policy towards the soviet union and detente policy which had dominated american policy towards the soviet union. This had been a policy through detene fornte for 40 plus years. He comes to believe that the soviet union to be defeated. It earned him the scorn of the establishment who thought that the soviet union and the berlin wall were things of permanence. The cold war was a thing of permanence. Their patron saint at the time was henry kissinger. Who equated the west with athens and the east with sparta. Who codified it with the helsinki accords which he encouraged president ford to sign over the objections of dick cheney, his chief of staff at the time. In late 1979 hed support every republican except Ronald Reagan. He also once said, how did it occur to anyone that he sho