AMERICA'S GREATEST PRESIDENTS

with Christmas, Thanksgiving definitely top three. And it's a time when we can all take a step back and just think about how America's awesome and this is the greatest country in the world, in fact, in the history of the world. And a big part of that awesome as

comes from our amazing history of presidents. Not all of them have been great, obviously, but if there have been some tremendous patriots, some geniuses of governance, some titan of the polity, and we want to take a moment here before you go off for your holiday weekend and just celebrate some of the best of the best, their wisdom, their ideas, the things that brought this country together and have pushed us forward to this point in time where

despite all of our challenges, all the stuff we talked about here on the show, America is still number one. And that's something that we should all be pretty darn happy about. So let's take a look. For example, George Washington. We'll start with number one. Number O oh no, George Washington from his farewell address, it is important that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within

their respective constitutional spears. That's from Washington back in seventeen ninety six September of that year. George Washington was amazing, and he could have turned himself into a king, as we all know, he could have gone even further. Who knows how long we could have had presidential even King Washington. But he loved this country and he wanted a government of by and for the people, not to be replicating the monarchy that he had such a critical role in

overthrowealth pushing off American shore. As I should say, and this is obviously one of the greatest presidents we've ever had. A lot of people say the greatest, tough to beat number one. Not only was he great, he was the first. And without him would we even have had this republic bestowed to bestowed to all of us. So we're gonna

talk more about the greatness of George Washington. Here, just a little bit of a trip down awesome lane with our man George w not Bush, but Washington, and we'll have a conversation about him with an expert a little bit we also have, of course, you can talk about

George w also gonna talk about Thomas Jefferson. Right back in March of eighteen oh one, Jefferson wrote, a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise just free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from

the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. You gotta remember, folks, especially in this time when there's endless regulation and taxation and a lot of it, it it feels like without representation, at least, not worthwhile representation that the American founders, of which Jefferson was clearly a giant, they understood that the government needs to just do some basic things. Keep people from hurting each other illegally, right, keep people from injuring one another, and let them do their thing.

Let the business of the American people be business. I think that's actually Calvin Coolidge quote. But nonetheless, Calvin Coolidge is a pretty good guy too, and not actually be constantly taking so much from the American people that they feel like their government is onerous and oppressive. Now that

was from the founding. You think about this right now, with the inflation rate where it is, the Biden administration in this state of just termore and constant dissent in terms of the polls and just the way people feel about the country. Yeah, it feels like they're taking too much from us these days. It feels like they've made everything more expensive. Remember, inflation is just attacks on working

people that hurts them more than anybody else. So we are going to talk more about Jefferson, the genius of Thomas Jefferson. Also got to throw in there. James Madison, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, of course, the primary author and Federalists number five. He wrote, if angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing, a government would just to be administered by men over men. The great

difficulty lies in this. You must first enable the govern to control the government, and in the next place oblige it to control itself. You've got to restrain the Leviathan, my friends, it's absolutely critical. You see, our founding fathers understood that one of the great travesties of the previous centuries in Europe was that you had these monarchs who, in different ways, would basically do whatever they want to.

Right Magna Carta back in twelve fifteen in England was an attempt to at least put some rules the road in place, but they were often broken, and other countries in Europe obviously had no such restraints on the power of the monarchy. And you can't live with that level of tyranny. You're not a free people. If the government can just turn on the oppression mechanism, there's nothing that you can do about it. And that's just the way

that it is. So Madison was saying, look, we want governance, but we don't want a governance that has no limitations. There have to be clear markers of what the government can and cannot do. And now, look, there are a lot of president you can throw in the mix. A lot of people think and probably gonna talk about Abraham Lincoln next. I don't know, some of you probably get really excited about Calvin Coolidge. Are other names that might come to mind or Democrat viewers maybe FDR, though I'd

probably argue with them on that one. But Ronald Reagan, my friends, Ronald Reagan a guy talk about someone who loves freedom and in living memory, was president of the United States. You got to think about our man Reagan. Here he was back in nineteen eighty nine talking about how America is freedom. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise, and freedom is special

and rare. It's fragile, it needs production. We could say it quite like Dutch. All right, Look, it's Independence Day weekend. I know you're thinking about the holiday and everything else. Let's just do a little, as I said, trip down awesome lane here about freedom, liberty and America with some of the greatest presidents we've ever had a little bit of a refresher and fresh look at why they were so awesome. We'll get into that with some experts coming

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president under its new constitution. While in office, Washington was careful to adhere to the constitution he had sworn to protect and established many of the presidents that are still observed to this day. In his seventeen ninety six Farewell addressed the American people, Washington warned of the dangers of a government that acts beyond its constitution, beyond its constitutional authority,

a quote that's especially relevant today. Here, If in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation. Or though this in one instance maybe the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. Yes, Indeed, Joman out of gave more insight into America's first president.

Is another president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts. Kevin, thanks for being with us, Thanks for having me, Buck, It's pleasure. So look, there are some presidents that everybody know, every school child knows George Washington, first president, really important. You know, he's on some of our money, Our capital's named for him. How is this man such a giant? I mean, we're going to Independence Day weekend. We're having a little raw role Meerica moment here. How did he

bring it all together? You know, ironically, Buck Washington is a giant two hundred and fifty years after he burst onto the scene as a young army officer because of his humility. I mean, this is a man, if you read even a short biography of him, who possessed so many human virtues, so many great attributes. You know, I could at least speak for myself. If it were me, I'd probably be a little arrogant about having all those things. He was quite the opposite, And so I think his

humility actually made him appeal to people. They sort of were drawn to want to be led by him. And he understood this very important point, which is the virtue of virtues, as our founders understood, and that's magnanimity, that is aspiring to great things and impairing those two things meant that he was willing to sacrifice for the country in ways that he and his wife never anticipated doing, and for us now in the twenty first century, he remains a timeless model of what it means to adhere

to American values. What do people know to this day about about George Washington to the man? You know, I mean, there's there's some legends, right, but there's also enough biographical record and from the contemporary sources that we should have some portrait of him, obviously metaphorically speaking. So what was he like? Washington was a man that you wanted to

spend some time with. We would probably know even more about him had it not been that his wife burned almost all of the letters that he wrote to her, just to make sure that their relationship remained private, even for posterity's sake. But because the Washington's were so generous and hosting people at their home at Mount Vernon, we have a lot of firsthand accounts of what it was like to be in his person, and he was generous. He was not nearly as quiet as sometimes we portray

him to be. It isn't that he was as gregarious as some of his peers, but he was a very good conversationalist. He was extremely well read, He was certainly much smarter. He possessed a greater intellect than sometimes the contrast with Jefferson and Hamilton might suggest. But the point was, you wanted to be at dinner with Washington. You wanted if you happen to be an aide to camp or a young officer in the Continental Army, you wanted to

be in his presence. Not because he was going to give some sidewinding inspirational speech, but because he would really focus on you. He would home in on you as a person and come to know you and also inspire you in that way that sometimes these more quiet leaders. Do you know? He just as I'd sit here describing this as a historian, I think this is one of the guys I've always wanted to be able to spend some time with, if perhaps somehow time travel. We're not fiction.

And what can you tell us about Washington's for Washington becoming a great military leader? I mean, we often be first president. A lot of thoughts about the early days of the Republic under his time. A lot of people think about that. But he had a long and distor He had a very distinguished, certainly and reasonably long military career as well. Yeah, Washington cut his teeth as a young military officer because he was willing to go on

some pretty daring horseback raids. In fact, he got into trouble during the French and Indian War as a result of doing that. But there are a couple of attributes of Washington as a military leader that military historians have highlighted. The first is Washington is a very highly regarded tactician. You know, as it turns out, as you know, Washington had a lot of practice in the early years of

the Revolution using the tactic of retreat. You know, as I say that, students might say, well, gosh, he must have been awful. No, actually it was rather brilliant because, as many people know, the Condinal Army, almost routinely, in

contrast with the British Army, was underresourced. It was undermanned, and he had to be very prudent about the number of men and the amount of resources he had, and so he developed a very efficient way of abandoning a battlefield if it was not so strategically important to live

to fight another day. And it leads me to the second attribute of Washington as a military leader that historians have recognized and even cell painted, and it is his understanding that what happened on the battlefield had a huge impact on the home front. This is particularly true during

the British New York campaign in seventeen seventy six. In other words, he understood he had to minimize losses and he had to find those rare opportunities for his under manned army to find a tactical victory, which, of course he did enough early in the war to keep the morale at home going. This is a very underappreciated attribute of a military leader. That's particularly important in a republic where sustaining that morale, that will, that popular will for

support of the cause is always difficult. And what were some of the most important things for everyone at home when it came to Washington's role in the creation of this new republic, I mean more on the political side. Now, people often think about how well Washington could have made himself king, right, but he decided that he didn't want that. To your point about humility, what should everyone know? Well,

we cannot overstate that enough. I mean, it was very possible, it was politically plausible, if not likely, that if Washington wanted to be king or wanted to serve a limitless number of terms as president he could have. He was that popular. I mean, the Republic, the young Republic, owed that much debt to him for his leadership. And so once again it comes back to his humility, even as

a very popular political persona. But the second thing is he was an excellent judge of character and excellent judge of talent. And so just as he assembled the right combination of generals during the war, he assembled what I think remains the greatest cabinet of all of our president presidential administrations in history. I think about the talent the virtue of those men that you know, the first secretaries

of the various federal departments. Washington assembled them in a way that recognized there were some political differences among them, as we often discussed in history classes, but they also knew that they were forging a new republic. And it leads me to conclude my celebration of his political acumen by saying, he also recognized that America would be thrown into some political tension. And obviously, after he left office, and especially after he died, America did descend, I might say,

into its two party political system. But what Washington was able to do for the better part of a decade was keep that those factions from developing and focused instead on the economic and political and social health of the country. Had he not done that, Buck, and had we descended into Washington being leader of one political party or another, I'm not sure America would have been able to win its next major conflict with the British, the War of

eighteen twelve. Kevin, appreciate you educating us all for Independence Day weekend on Washington. We're gonna talk you a little later about another great president, So stay with us. Okay, after the break, Historian Kevin Gutzman joins us to help examine the author of the Declaration of Independence and arguably America's most radical president in some ways, Thomas Jefferson, Stay with us. A lot of companies promise that your privacy

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dot com and take back your privacy today. That's sekure dot com and use promo code buck for twenty five percent off. As we've been discussing, America has had a share of presidents who were dedicated to the ideals of liberty, but few, if any, are as closely associated with that ideal as our third President, Thomas Jefferson, as the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. It was Jefferson who's credited with the immortal words that serves the bedrock of

American liberty. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They're just what kind of president was Thomas Jefferson doing? To me? From We're inside as pressor of History at Western connect State University, an author of Thomas Jefferson Revolutionary A Radical Struggle to Remake America,

Kevin GutsMan, Kevin, thanks for being with us. I mean to be here, Buck. So just when you first sit down and you're speaking to students and you want to give them a sense, I mean, we're going into the Independence Day weekend now people are thinking a lot about America, our history, the greatness of Jefferson. Where do you begin? Well, wow, he stood for American independence. He stood for the independence of the individual. Is guiding principle in American politics was federalism,

or the idea of decentralization. He said that when it came to conflicts between the federal government of the states, he would favor the states. Within a state, he would tend to favor the counties, and within a county he would favor what he called wards, what we would think of his precincts. So he had the idea that virtually nobody would be in a position like his and which

he could influence national policy directly. And so if the common men were going to help to shape his own life as much as feasible, government should be as decentralized as practicable. And that's what he argued for while he was in Congress, when he was in the cabinet, and ultimately as president. And there were many facets did Jefferson right? I mean, he obviously is known as one of the primary found fathers. He was also an autodidact on a number of issues, right he was. He was an inventor.

He had I mean to tell everyone a little bit about some of his areas of exploration. Some of the things that he did that aren't you know, aren't necessarily the first things that come to mind. I mean about my understanding is he was really into plants and astronomy and why making and all kinds of things. Right well, he wanted to be o'car in every area of science. So he was a path breaking linguist. He was highly

interested in anthropology. He was an ethno historian. He was the first person who conducted a scientific archaeological excavation in North America. In fact, a colleague of mine tells me that that excavation, the methods he used remained current among

archaeologists for over a century after Jefferson conducted it. He wrote the most important American book of the eighteenth century, and there he was a leading architect, and in fact he's the fellow who's most responsible for the fact that American public buildings tend to be highly influenced by Greek and Roman architecture. He also had the idea that America

should have a decimal based coinage system. In fact, that was ours was the first one of such in the world, and in my memory even finally the British decided they should have a decimal coinage system too. So there is Jefferson's influence basically everywhere you want to look. And now talk to me a bit about the philosophical and personal debate between what I guess you could call Jeffersonianism and Hamiltonianism.

Well I mentioned Jefferson's primary political principle was this idea of decentralization, that if you wanted to elevate the role of the common man in making his community and making his life, had to ensure that the power of government was as localized as possible. Hamilton had essentially the opposite idea. He thought it was extremely important for the United States to be a powerful country on the world stage, and

so worked energetically to create the US Constitution. And then once the Washington administration came and he was Treasury Secretary, he worked indefatigably to try to centralize authority, to try to make the federal authority as strong as it could be, and this of course set the stage for the epic

clash between the two of them in the cabinet. Now, what can you tell us about Jefferson's thoughts on the French Revolution and perhaps some of the areas where if he had seen where things were going, he might have fought a little differently, I mean, on the cover of your book, as Jefferson, the revolutionary American Revolution ended up quite differently from the French Revolution. There's the book again, by the way, Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary, his thoughts on the

French Revolution, and did he have any regrets? Well, actually, Jefferson ended up saying that the reason that the French Revolution had been such a failure, and he was essentially the last important American to concede that it had been a failure, was that he said, they ultimately settled on the principle of and he used the French unadvisible, or

we would say one nation indivisible. So he thought the problem that the French had come to was that their National Assembly at the beginning of the revolution insisted we are the nation, and so they eliminated all the internal boundaries of France and said the administrative, the local, more local levels of government are going to exist for the administrative convenience of the center. To Jefferson, looked like a reflection of Hamiltonianism, and he thought this was the reason

why it had ended in the dictatorship. So, on one hand, Jefferson had been very hopeful about the French Revolution because in its early he was involved in drafting the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, and many of his acquaintances from the American Revolution, French officers who had been here and fought for the United States, ended up being leaders in the early days of the French Revolution.

But again, of course it failed, and he thought the main problem was essentially that the French had not seen his own personal primary principle as being as important as it was to him. And if you're just looking at what Jefferson. Now, there's of course what he wrote as part of the American founding, American independence movement, and his

role as an intellectual giant and all of that. But if you were looking more specifically at his achievements as president, what would be some of the top things that come to mind. Well, the most important thing, of course, this is Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States.

He also was responsible for the Voyage of Discovery, or what's more commonly called the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which traced a path from the Mississippi all the way to the Pacific, which nowadays we think of as you know, that's pretty pedestrian, but at the time people really had

no idea what was out there. And Jefferson was the one who was responsible for the fact that Lewis and Clark made their way to what is now Oregon, staked an American claim there, and made America a transcontinental country.

So these are the most important things. He also, well he might have contested my appraisal, because he also was the one responsible for the program that ultimately resulted in paying off the American federal debt completely in the eighteen thirty five people hear that Andrew Jackson paid off the debt, He's responsible for that. Actually, Andrew Jackson happened to be the president who was in office when Albert Gallatin, says, Jefferson's treasury secretaries planned for paying off the debt came

to fruition. It was paid off on the day that it was scheduled to be paid off during the Jefferson administration. So that was also extremely important to Jefferson. And he would have said that the ultimate collapse of the Federalist Party, the virtual disappearance of Alexander Hamilton's party during Jefferson's lifetime, was a vindication of Jefferson's arguments that Americans were essentially

all Republicans, famously set in his first inaugural address. We've called by different names brethren of the same principle, where all Republicans were all Federalists. But really he thought that Americans generally were all Jeffersonians, and of course he thought he had been vindicated by the disappearance of Hamilton's party in his lifetime. Kevin, stay right with us. We'll be back with more here. Because while Thomas Jefferson was the

genius behind the Declaration of Independence. America's fourth president was argued to the most prominent proponent of the nation's other founding document, the United States Constitution. We'd come back with take a closer look at America's fourth president, James Madison, stay with us. He's called the father of the Constitution.

America's fourth president, James Madison, played a key role in the adoption of the United States Constitution, contributing not only to its drafting, but authoring twenty nine to the Federalist Papers in its defense. In his later years, Madison would look back on the nation for which he'd fought and remarked, the happy union of these states is a wonder, their constitution, a miracle, their example, the hope of liberty throughout the world.

Joy once again. His historian and author of James Madison and the Making of America, Kevin GutsMan, Kevin effects so much happy to be here. So you know, there's Washington, there's Jefferson. There's some presidents whose names come with so much more cultural attention. And I think you know if you ask, if you ask any third grader who George Washington is, well, they know right, you ask them who James Madison is, they'll probably get it, but they won't have that much to say about it. Maybe we can

change a little bit of that. Now, what do people need to know about James Madison His role in the formation of our country are founding documents, and of course we'll talk about what he did as president. Well, the first really significant thing he did is that, as twenty five year old man and the youngest man in the room, he was responsible for including the principle of free exercise of religion in the Virginia Declaration of Rights of seventeen

seventy six. So that was the first American Declaration of Rights, and Virginia, in adopting this principle, became the first officially secular government in the history of the world. If Madison, I think, had died at that point, he would still be among the couple dozen most important minimer in history

twenty five years old. He also is the chief figure responsible for the fact that there ended up being the Philadelphia Convention in summer of seventeen eighty seven, in which delegates from twelve states drafted what we now know as

the United States Constitution. Madison had been one of the people who had agitated for that, And then he had also persuaded his fellow Virginia delegates to the Philadelphia Convention to prepare what came to be known as the Virginia Plan, which was an outline of a constitution which they presented in the Philadelphia Convention. It became a kind of basis of debate. So it's not true that Madison drafted the constitution.

About half of the proposals in his Virginia Plan were not included in the final constitution, but key ones like having proportional representation by population in one house, having population be reflected in the electoral college, having the new Congress have power to attacks, these were all Madison's ideas that ended up being in the Constitution. So he's extremely important

for that reason too. And finally, or another thing that's really important about him is that because he had been chasened by division in Virginia over whether to agree to the Constitution, in the ratification campaign that followed the Philadelphia Convention, Madison was persuaded that there needed to be amendments to

the Constitution. So he's the fellow who in the first Federal Congress proposed what came to be called the Bill of Rights, and ultimately, of course, Congress referred to twelve proposed amendments to the States for the ratification in seventeen eighty nine. Ten of those were ratified in seventeen ninety one. Those became the first ten amendments, and then another one of those twelve was ratified in nineteen ninety two, so it's the most recent amendment. The twenty seventh Amendment was

also James Madison's handiwork. There are various other things he did, but I think those are the most important. What do we know about him as a man? I mean, what could we say about We have a good sense of his temperament. Which of the Founding fathers, whom among the Founding fathers was he close to? Was he audiologically allied to? Well? He and Thomas Jefferson were literally each other's best friends in the world. So the two of them were the

closest of political allies. That tandem is the most important in American history. They had most of their leading principles

in common. He also, from time to time had temporary alignments with Robert Morris, who was the Minister for Finance, the Secretary for finance during the Confederation, with President Washington both during the war and then during the first Congress under the new Constitution, and of course with Alexander Hamilton, both in having the Philadelphia Convention occur and then in

arguing that the constitution it produced ought to be ratified. Madison, as far as his personality, who was a quiet fellow. He was bookish. If he found himself in a crowd, he might stand in the corner and talk to a couple of other people. He was not the kind of guy who was a hail fellow well met, although supposedly he was good at kind of friendly repartee in a small group. But he's also still today the smallest person

who's ever been president. So the fact that he was kind of shy and retiring is not surprising from that point of view and just looking at his actual time in office, unless the role he played, the huge role he played in the Federalist papers, in writing the founding documents and the philosophy behind it. He's the fourth president. What did he get done? What were the biggest issues? What do people need to know? Ah? Well, I think the most important factor about Madison's presidency is that his

foreign policy proved to be a failure. That is, he had argued in the Jefferson administration when he was Secretary of State that the United States should rely more on economic coercion than on traditional balance of powers military equations in foreign affairs. The United States, he insisted, didn't need to have a significant navy, didn't need to have taxes

to pay for one. When the War of eighteen twelve resulted from the failure of madison'siety of economic coercion, the United States weren't really prepared and Madison did a poor job of choosing a war secretary, of Navy secretary, and so on. The result of this was that a foreign army marched into Washington, burned down the Capitol, burned down the White House, burned down the Treasury Department, war state.

It was a debacle, but because of the way the war ended, because New England states were being essentially disloyal, and ultimately the American diplomats in Europe got a good piece out of the deal. The Federalist Party ended up being the one that was credited by the War of eighteen twelve. So by the time the War of eighteen twelve ended in Madison's and Jefferson's friend James Monroe, who had been Madison's Secretary of State, succeeded him as the

fifth president. The Federalist Party, the opposition party, had more or less ceased to exist. It's kind of hard to imagine that a foreign army invades the country, burns the capital, and the incumbent party ends up being the beneficiary of the war. But that's really what happened. So by the time Madison kind of rides out of Washington, the Federalist Party is no longer a significant factor in American politics. The Jeffersonian Republicans control today, and they're going to continue

to do so for another decade. Now. Kevin, You've got a new book coming out in December called The Jeffersonians, The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. We did not give a full segment to Monroe on our show here going into the Independence Day weekend, but I just wanted to give the man a moment, a minute or two here. What do people need to know about the Jeffersonianism and the legacy of President Monroe. Well, Monroe's a

fellow who's responsible for the Transcontinental Treaty. So the fact that the United States extended officially from the Atlantic to the Pacific is achieved during the Monroe administration. Of course, what he's also most famous for today is what's called the Monroe Doctrine, which he presented in one of his State of the Union messages. And he had the idea,

in fact, what had been opposition. Newspapers in New England referred to his tenure as the Era of Good Feelings because Monroe had the idea that if the Federalist Party no longer was a united opposition party, there was no reason for Monroe to try to keep the Republican Party going either. There should be just a kind of nonpartisan environment in which Americans had common principles and instead of seeing each other as political antagonists, they should try to

be brethren in the American experiment. So that was the way he approached the presidents in his entire two trum tenure. He wanted not to have formal parties as a permanent factor. Yeah, Kevin, good luck to you in the book. Thank you so much for bringing us back to some of the history that we might have learned a little bit of. And grammar school, high school, maybe college and had forgotten. We really appreciate you being with us. Thank you, You're welcome.

We'll be right back with more of this special edition of Hold the Line. No list of great presidents would be complete without a discussion of America's fortieth President, Ronald Reagan Dutch. Although he would come to be remembered as a champion of conservatism, Reagan was once a Democrat, even serving as the president of the Screen Actors Guild in

the nineteen forties and fifties. A fierce defender of liberty an opponent of communism, Reagan's finest moment arguably came on June twelfth, nineteen eighty seven, when he delivered a pointed message to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dran dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbutchev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate, mister Gorbutschev, Open this gate mister Gorbutschev, tear down this wall, one of those famous lines in the history of American politics, journey once again to share his thoughts on President Reagan. The President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, Kevin, thanks for

being back with us. My pleasure. Thanks. I gotta say, when the top line item of your legacy is brought about the defeat of an evil empire that had immiserrated people around the world for decades and had threatened the world with thousands of nuclear weapons, it's a pretty good start. Yeah, As I sit there watching that, I was a thirteen year old kid when he delivered that speech, watching it with my grandparents. Reagan was the first Republican they voted for.

They were Democrats in Louisiana, which says something about his cheerfulness. I get chills many years later watching that. For this reason, I spent a lot of time with former students, with younger colleagues here at the Heritage Foundation, who know that Reagan was special, that he was even a historic figure. But because they didn't live through the Cold War, and they therefore can't remember the palpable fear that those of us who did had about the Soviets. That speech for

us galvanized the American spirit. For that matter, the spirit of freedom for people around the world, folks in Eastern Europe obviously timely today, folks in Africa, Latin America. All of that to say, of all of the speeches that I've studied, that I've taught to students in history, I would say in all of history, Buck that speech that moment is top five or top ten in modern history. Pretty astonishing when you think about it, and we appreciate

you put it into that context. Reagan's political transformation, or perhaps a political evolution from Democrats, Green Actors, guild guy to governor California then president. What can you tell us about how that whole process came about. What pushed him, at least in my opinion, into the light of conservatism, Well,

two things, sort of a push and a pull. What pushed him away from a left of center he was never hyper liberal like like we would today in the twenty first century, was nonetheless the evolution of the American left toward a much more status entity, a movement that really wanted the centralization of power in state capitals and especially in the nation's capital, and Reagan because of his middle class upbringing in the Midwest, knew that's not how

Americans operated. And simultaneously what pulled him into the conservative movement was a number of episodes, not least among them very Goldwaters nineteen sixty four speech, another great speech in modern history, and Reagan understanding that in order for Americans to be self governing, that there was only one political and intellectual movement that could be home for him. He was, of course treated very poorly by people, fellow actors and

others on the left coast. But the poll by the conservative movement was this recognition that the people needed to take power back from those who were centralizing it in Washington, DC. In other words, Buck, if we had not had the expansion of government through the so called Great Society, and even under the Republican president Nixon, I don't think we would have had Reagan as a conservative leader, because there needed to be some counterweight to all of that nonsense.

Reagan is, like so many important historical figures, someone who also reflects the evolution of his age, and that evolution of his age that he reflected was an increasing skepticism, if not hostility, towards centralized power. Here in Washington. That really is politically one of his greatest legacies. Reagan as a communicator is often something that comes up when people reflect on his presidency. What was it? Why do you

think he was so able? Obviously, we came in with perhaps his most famous, memorable line and famous speech of his entire well of his entire life, and one of the most famous of the twentieth century, especially given the impact as we discussed of what it was all about. Reagan just seemed to connect. Reagan seemed to be able to form coalitions of different folks all of the country by making the case to them. Why was he so

good at that? I think because of his upbringing, you know it, had studied a lot of historical figures, especially in US history, and Reagan is one of those great leaders in our country's history, both Democrats and Republicans, who is a great communicator because he had life experiences that he not only didn't forget as an adult, but that he could relate. And the point that I'm trying to make here, Buck is Reagan was well read. He was a learned man. Even though the Left love to portray

him is forgetful and dumb. Neither of which was true. But he was able to cause Americans to be inspired to talk about aspirational goals, lofty abstract ideals like freedom and self governance. But this is the key point. He was able to do that while also explaining why, from our perch on the Gulf Coast where I grew up, if you are a working class kid, or if you were someone who was well to do, why you should

care about those ideals in the modern world. It was a pretty unique gift for someone in the twentieth century, and something that, as we are now a quarter of the way into the next century, you realize is pretty rare in American political leaders. If almost to look at the span of Reagan's accomplishments over the eight years that he was in office, right starting with the end of the Carter administration, a rough time in American history. Reagan

comes in. What's it like when Reagan takes office and what's the country like when he's done after eight years? Well, it's sort of like what I said about folks who were not alive then not being able to appreciate the contrast. And it's not because younger folks are unlearned. Is because when you live it you realize the contrast when it comes into office, inflation is through the roof. If you wanted to go get a mortgage for your home, you're

going to pay eighteen even nineteen, sometimes twenty percent. We complained today about four and a half and five percent. The country, most of all, though, even beyond those economic troubles, was in a system or a status of malaise. I mean, there was a huge ebb in the morale of the American people because at home inflation was terrible. There was

a lot of discord at home. This is just years, a few years after the unsuccessful conclusion of the Vietnam conflict, and then abroad, America I have to say, not unlike we'd see today under the Biden administration was not really projecting strength. Reagan said that America's best days were ahead

of it, not behind it. And even though there were people who criticized him for saying that, when you look at his policies in nineteen eighty nine, when he left office and you realize inflation was gone, he had initiated what was the longest period of uninterrupted prosperity in American history up to that point. And most of all, he had stared down the Soviets and the Berlin Wall soon would be torn down and the Soviet Union would collapse. You realize this man did a lot in a short

amount of time. Kevin, thank you so much for all the inside and expertise, and have a happy Independence Day weekend, sir, do the same. Thanks for having me. All right, that's all the time we have for the special edition of Hold the Line. I'd like to thank my guest historian Kevin Goodsman and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts for sharing their expertise. Build and' riley up next Field's high