HOW WOULD FREE TRADER REAGAN RECOGNIZE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION? 8/8 Reagan: His Life and Legend Hardcover – September 10, 2024 by Max Boot (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Reagan-Life-Legend-Max-Boot/dp/0871409445 The story begins not in star-studde
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 1 June 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
by Max Boot (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Reagan-Life-Legend-Max-Boot/dp/0871409445
The story begins not in star-studded Hollywood but in the cradle of the Midwest, small-town Illinois, where Reagan was born in 1911 to Nelle Clyde Wilson, a devoted Disciples of Christ believer, and Jack Reagan, a struggling, alcoholic salesman. Boot vividly creates a portrait of a handsome young man, indeed a much-vaunted lifeguard, whose early successes mirrored those of Horatio Alger. And contextualizing Reagan’s life against American history, Boot re-creates the world in which Reagan transitioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor.
The world of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1950s would prove significant, not only in Reagan’s coming-of-age in such classics as Knute Rockne and Kings Row but during the twilight of his film career, when he played opposite a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo, and then his eventual emergence as a television host of General Electric Theater, which established his bona fides as one of the leading conservative voices of the time. Indeed, the leap to California governor in 1966 seemed almost preordained, in which Reagan became a bellwether for a nation in the throes of a generational shift.
Reagan’s 1980 presidential election augured a shift that continues into this century. Boot writes not as a partisan but as a historian seeking to set the story straight. He explains how Reagan was an ideologue but also a supreme pragmatist who signed pro-abortion and gun control bills as governor, cut deals with Democrats in both Sacramento and Washington, and befriended Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. A master communicator, Reagan revived America’s spirits after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. But Boot also shows how Reagan was armored in obliviousness. He traces Reagan’s opposition to civil rights over forty years, reveals how he neglected the exploding AIDS epidemic, and details how America experienced a level of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age.
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| 1:02.3 | This is CBSI in the world. I'm visiting with Max Booth, the author of the new biography of Ronald |
| 1:07.3 | Reagan, his life in legend. The late Reagan administration is troubled in all directions for foreign policy. Domestic policy seems to be on overdrive. We have Max, mentions a number of books that were popular in the 1980s. I'd forgotten about them. |
| 1:27.8 | Less than zero. I've forgotten that was in 1980s. |
| 1:31.3 | And I mentioned all of that because we come to the departure of Ronald Reagan from the White House. |
| 1:37.4 | I can remember seeing a video of the helicopter flying away. |
| 1:42.2 | So I wanted to review some of his most famous statements in where they |
| 1:45.9 | came from. Honey, I forgot to duck. Where did he get that, Max? Did he make it up at the spot? |
| 1:52.0 | I think it was an old Hollywood movie line that he quoted at the exact right moment. |
| 1:58.2 | To Nancy Reagan. And the one about... Oh, actually actually it wasn't a moving line I think it was |
| 2:04.1 | it was a boxing line it was Jack Dempsey I think or some other box for the 1920s who said that |
| 2:09.6 | after losing a fight and a ash heap of history was that Reagan original um yeah that was from the 1983 Westminster address. |
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