Actor, and is a spokesman for General Electric, and how these experiences influenced his life in public office. This 90 minute event is part of a Congress Posted by the Young Americans foundation. Start this panel, we have a special video clip we will be showing. In celebration of our time for choosing, event this weekend. Youngans Foundation Americas foundation released clips contrasting reagans vision of america with that of president obama. This one is featuring the subject of entitlements. It is a fitting piece for what we are experiencing in america, and for all of our videos, you. Org. O to yaf we have not massively extended the welfare state. Foodstamp use has surged. Towe asked so many people pass the effect. Thatcher once said the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other peoples money. They are going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Is hardly anybody who will defend this program. The government has made living off welfare a lifestyle choice. With government planning and welfare, they have had almost 30 years of it. Shouldnt we expect government to reuse store this once a while. I said change we could believe in tomorrow. Didnt they tell us in the decline in each year in the number of people leaving help . But the reverse is true. Each year, the need grows greater. Spending is 10 times greater than it was in the depths of the different a of the depression. What are we doing to those we seek to help . We sought to end the problems of government funding. You and i have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. [applause] hopefully, that got you guys excited for this panel that is coming up. Spokesman pratt, the for the young Americas Foundation. As a printable Outreach Foundation is the conservative movement, we introduce america to these principles. 96 of you are here today. Givers of a round of applause. Give yourself a round of applause. We provide essential conferences, seminars, educational materials, internships, and people across the country. One of the many projects of young Americas Foundation is the National Journalism center, which since 1977 has trained aspiring Young Journalist in the values of responsible, balanced, and accurate reporting. The balance of real world experience, inequality and quality academic training provides an edge. Panel. Ate this some of the conservative movements best and brightest media stars. [laughter] featured panelist today, and i will briefly introduce each of them, their list of a college mens is too long. They have been reduced a little bit, but their full bios are in your binders. Take a look at those. There are compliments are great. The fox newss channels chief washington correspondent, and the author of the strong man, John Mitchell and the secrets of watergate. A good book if you havent read it. I would recommend it. In may 2013, as many of you may know, james rosen was targeted by the Obama Administration specifically, attorney general eric holder, and he was actually named as a criminal token spirit or, and they found and gave him a search warrant. That was signed off by attorney general eric holder. Keene, who isavid the opinion editor of the washington times. He was formerly the president of the National Rifle association, from 2011 to 2013. He was also the chairman of the american conservative union. During his time at the university of wisconsin in the 1960s, he was actually a leader for his Young Americans for freedom chapter. , cheers to we adhere today. One day you could be david keene. During his time there, he took a strong stance against communism and built a name for himself. Is the cohostdt of fox and friends, one of their latest shows. While at fox news, she has reported on many highprofile news stories. She provided the network with awesome oversight. She does some breakins for breaking news overnight. She is up very early. The threehour time difference is not that great for today. Prior to joining fox news, she served as anchor for wl x tv in columbia, south carolina, where she comes from. She was named the best personality of the year. And lars larson, who is an awardwinning talk radio host and host of the lars larson show, which is being broadcast live from the Reagan Center today after this panel. He is a weekly guest on a variety of fox news shows. He has picked up more than 70 awards during his career. These wonderful panelists have dedicated their time today and have achieved significant compliments in their careers. They will provide valuable insight into reagans unique and effective cure indication styles, as well as an analysis of some of his iconic speeches. It is my pleasure to introduce to you these conservative rock stars. [applause] i will talk as little as possible, because these are all phenomenal panelists. We have nominated david keene to start today. Late to because i was the planning meeting. Unfortunately, that is true. David will begin come and we will continue. The will be time for questions and answers at the end of the panel. Thank you. Its a pleasure be here. One of the reasons we talk to young people is because we were young people ourselves. We knew what we had to do to try and change the world. Its hard for people to a mountain to imagine today what the world was like for conservatives in the 1960s. It was referred to earlier. In our politics and world politics, most political movements that have later impacts began as movements taste on ideas. Based on ideas. They morph into political movements. But the modern conservative movement began, of course, would like to talk about bill buckley. Who after all started when he was at yale and then founded a magazine. I was at the university of wisconsin, not exactly a bastion of rightwing activism. We had the First Student conservative journal of opinion at a College Campus published in the United States. All of this began with an election rules, and begin with students, began with ideas. The importance of Ronald Reagan and earlier, Barry Goldwater, was that they accelerated the morphing of that movement of ideas into a political movement. They began to take the various strains of american conservatism, and conservatives have always been a fractious bunch. We talked earlier about there were libertarians and traditionalists, those days there were all kinds of different people. Eventually, you had the libertarians talking about selling the roads and the post offices. Talkingtraditionalists about things we dont even talk about anymore. Time, and the genius of bill buckley at national review, and the rolled it very goldwater and later, Ronald Reagan played was to take these diverse views, but all based on the same values, and turn them in to a politically viable movement. About the Goldwater Campaign in 1934 earlier. But it was in 1961 Barry Goldwater was nominated for the vice presidency, and in withdrawing his name from nomination at the convention said ro up, conservatives. , conservatives. We can take this party, and we can take this country. Four years later, we did. We took the party, we didnt take the country, but it was indeed the most consequential losing campaign on the conservative side in modern history. The two most consequential residential losers in modern American History you transform their party, one was very goldwater and the republican party, and the other was George Mcgovern and the democratic party. And why did they transform their parties . The people who drove those campaigns were young people. 20 years later, those young people were running their parties for good or ill, depending on the party were looking at, and were the candidates that were running for public office. 1970s, thelate late david broder of the Washington Post wrote a book in which she said probably the most important political Youth Organization of the mid20th century was young americas for freedom. While everyone was focused on campus riots and demonstrations in the antiwar movement, Young Americans for freedom was training a generation of leaders who all of a sudden in 1976 and 1980, popped up out of nowhere in terms of the major medias view, and took over the country. With a candidate named Ronald Reagan. That is true. Shirley,ber when craig who was on the earlier panel he was writing his book, he asked to look at video he got of newscasts from the 1976 campaign. I went over there and looked at it and said oh my god, we were kids. What made us think we could take over the United States of america. Was 34. Ger i was in my 20s when i ran this through Ronald Reagan. The whole campaign, with the exception of a few senior advisors was like that. Thats what it takes to change the world, and thats why the works of the young Americas Foundation does is so important. Unless this generation does what we tried to do, with limited success, we are not going to have that rendezvous with destiny that Ronald Reagan talked about. What is politics about . Politics, rightly viewed, is a noble undertaking designed to advance certain ideas and views of society. Ronald reagan came to symbolize for all of us the kind of society, the kind of america that we wanted. And why did he do that . Not just because you shared our values. Not just because he was wellversed in the political philosophers. Evansob novak and rowland went to see Ronald Reagan for the first time, there had been all this stuff about what a dummy he was. He was an actor. They asked him about some philosophers. It was a little bit likely asking is recounting of him about witness, because he started rattling off all these people that he read and quoting from and all that. And bob said i went back to the office, i had not heard of half these guys. [laughter] and we realized he knew more about it than the people who were criticizing him. Later, after Ronald Reagans death, there was a program that Robbie George did at princeton on the past, present, and future of american conservatism. They had a panel at the conference on Ronald Reagan. One of the panelists was lou cannon. At it a habit of you have read blue cans work. He was a journalist in california whose first Ronald Reagan was about Ronald Reagan and jesse and ray here in california. There was reference this morning to the fact that Ronald Reagan really hated to fly. When he ran for governor of california, he had to. Lou was with him as a californiabased reporter when they had a storm, they barely made it to the ground. Opening,hat was my because reagan was so shaken up answered every question that i had. They didnt have to focus on the plane ride. They were on the panel and lou spoke, and he covered reagan as president , he covered him as governor. Speech at the end of his he said i wake up every morning realizing that Ronald Reagan was a greater president than i thought it was the night before when i went to sleep. Stan evans, one of the early journalistic leaders and activists leaders in the conservative movement immediately was on his feet. He said when the speech ended lou, i listen to the speech, and i think i understood what you said. But i also read your book. Lou had written a book at the end of the Reagan Administration called role of a lifetime, which was dismissive of Ronald Reagan. , is howmy question lou can the man who wrote that book of the speech . Lou said the answer to that is very simple, im still alive, i still think, and i still learn. And every day i learned that reagan was a greater president than i thought he was before. That is the correct answer, because we in this country do constantly revisit our history, and our history is important because without that history, we dont know where we are going to we will get there. Understood the history, he understood activism. Likeis great ability, they to call him the great comedic it are. He was. His acting background helped in that regard. Fact, and this goes to one of the edwards comments earlier. He had a photographic memory. You could remember everything. He can quote paragraphs from books because it was all there in his memory banks. At one point during the primaries, his speeches kept getting longer. Reagan would make notes on three by five cards and keep them. He would refer to them. He never had a prepared text, but he had these notes, and one would remind him of a story, this and that. Going into the florida primary, we sent a guy and his real one third of the notes. It never phased in. The speech was one third shorter, but just as good as it has been when it was longer. He had all of this in his head. He was able to do it. I was reminded of that talent, because when you think about it, if you are dealing in ideas, what is the greatest asset, the greatest tool you can have . Thats the ability not just understand the ideas, but to articulate them. Ronald reagan did that better than anybody. I talked to reporters about this in 1976. The typical reagan scene would be three economists would come to brief him privately, and they would talk to him and explain all these things. Then they would go away saying hes not up to it. Hes not that smart. They would go to the bar to have a drink, and then reagan would be on television and tell some little parable that would exactly encompass everything he had learned so that anybody, including all the other people at the bar could understand it. And the economists would say its more cop located in that. Hes not that smart. Complicated than that. Hes not that smart. Is the essence is taking ideas and communicating them with people who would understand what you are saying. That was the genius of Ronald Reagan. Years laterout that at the conservative Political Action process. It was the year when trent lott was the senate leader. It once and attlee, we were passing out an award. I asked Charlton Heston to come do it. It was a throwaway. He was in town, this was going to be 10 minutes he was going to talk. That afternoon, heston came to the hotel, he went down to the podium, and then he went up and practiced his speech. His remarks he was going to use for 10 minutes that no one was paying him for, it had no purpose other than he was doing us a favor. That evening, he came out and knocked the audience dead. , somebody,showed up and this is typical of american politicians, the champion of it was gerald ford, who never looked at his speech until after he delivered it. But trent lott showed up, they handed him the speech, and he read it, mispronouncing most of the names in the speech, and making a terrible impression. Afterwards i said to him i thought about todays experience on the you have to rely same tools that child heston has to rely on. Thats your ability to communicate, and you can do it. You can do it because you are not doing your job. You are not taking it seriously. You consider the communication part of your job to be a throwaway. Listen to politicians. Half of them dont bother to learn how to communicate with the people they need to communicate with to hold their jobs, let alone to change the direction of the country. Was indeed the great communicator because he understood that. And because he was able to look at things and draw the essence of the ideas out of those things, and then communicate them to the public that understood. That is a rare talent. It is much rarer than i would ever have thought it was when i was your age and went to washington to listen to these guys. G,ee, thesend think guys have gotten elected. Jim covers washington. You wonder after about a week how any of these people, or how most of them there are some who are pretty good. But whatever possessed them to think they could be elected in the first place . They neither grasp ideas or have any idea to communicate them. If you are looking at what we want to accomplish, thats what its about. Its about communication. Its about being able to convince others of the rightness of your cause. But there is Something Else too. If we go back to the speeches, to Ronald Reagans speech. Is of the interesting things the world never really changes, which is one of the reasons you want a look back at historys you can avoid screwups that others have under undertaken. There was some reference in an earlier panel about the fact that there was an argument about whether the reagan speech would actually be allowed to be aired in the 19th 24 campaign. Others whochell and were in the goldwater high command went to the senator and said its a crazy speech. We dont really need it, we want to rerun this other thing. It turned out as bill middendorf thatvered, it turned out the ad buying firm, the consultants would miss out on a 2300 commission if they used the reagan speech because it was independently funded. Its what we would call an independent expenditure. They wanted a kill it and use that mightve put something on the air for which they would get a commission. Which just tells you the consultants have never changed overall of those years. They are not to be trusted. Ultimately it aired of course, because they went to goldwater and goldwater said what is wrong with the speech . Kitchell couldnt tell