Cal Thomas: Remembering Ronald Reagan

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, August 29th, 2024. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. A new bio-pic of a well-loved American political figure opens tomorrow. WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says it has its flaws but worth the price of admission. Here’s Cal.

CAL THOMAS: It seems easier to portray a historical figure that no one currently living remembers. Someone closer to our own time—that’s much more challenging. In the case of “Reagan,” actor Dennis Quaid is more than up to that challenge.

Quaid avoids what could have easily been a temptation to portray Reagan as a caricature. Though he resembles the 40th president with the help of hair enhancement and makeup, Quaid’s performance does not distract from memories of those who lived through his presidency.

The film opens with real news footage of Reagan being shot as he left the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30th, 1981. It includes his now famous line to Nancy Reagan—played convincingly by Penelope Ann Miller: “Honey, I forgot to duck.” That’s followed by the even funnier line to surgeons at George Washington University Hospital: “I hope you are all Republicans.” Those two comments endeared Reagan to many of his political opponents like Speaker Tip O’Neill—portrayed by Dan Lauria. The film shows O’Neill visiting Reagan in the hospital and later agreeing to stop talking politics at 6 p.m. when he and Reagan would discuss how to resolve their differences over drinks at the White House.

While recalling his childhood, his early acting career, and leading the Screen Actors Guild a good portion of the film centers on Reagan’s efforts to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union and United States. He responded to criticism for not meeting with a succession of Soviet leaders, saying “I would but they keep dying.” Eventually he meets with the reformist Michael Gorbachev, played by Olek Krupa.

Reagan’s insistence on pursuing his Strategic Defense Initiative—known as “Star Wars” to his critics—is rightly credited with contributing to the fall of the Soviet Union during the administration of his successor, George H.W. Bush.

The film gets Reagan’s toughness and convictions right, but it also displays something absent from so much of today’s politics…his sense of humor. YouTube has a collection of some of his better jokes. The producers also include how he treated even his adversaries with respect. One line that isn’t in the film but is an accurate depiction of his way of criticizing the beliefs of opponents without calling them names: “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.”

Unlike Meryl Streep’s portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” “Reagan” is more of a love note to a man who did great things for his country and the world. There could be no better epitaph for any political leader.

If you are under 40, you could learn something beyond what biased historians and the media have said about the man. If you are over 40 and lived through his presidency, you’ll be reminded of what real leadership looks like. And how one man, in collaboration with a British prime minister and a pope, helped bring freedom to millions in Eastern Europe while restoring the faith of many Americans in their country.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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