You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

The battle was on, but who would lead to charge?

In a small college in Illinois, in the 1920s, a college full of working-class families,

happy to have sons, some daughters, in college at all.

Where the big concern was if they could beat that

slightly larger college's football team once in a while. There was a plan to cut classes

to reduce the faculty, and it would particularly hurt the upperclassmen. And led by a popular

dean, the faculty revolted and walked out of the college.

Stopped teaching.

Students now had a choice.

They could also, in conjunction with the teachers, walk out of classes.

And they held a meeting to decide.

And they spotted a freshman, a mere freshman,

who had great speaking skills. And he got up and speaks at this meeting. And after it,

the students file out of school and go on strike with the teachers. The board of trustees of the college eventually fires the president

that came up with that reduction plan, and everything is happy.

It's a classic Reagan story, and it's told in his own biography.

It's told in some speeches.

It's not a surprising story.

What is very much true about Reagan is that the

young Reagan was a new dealer. He and his father were supporters of FDR. Reagan cast his first vote for

Franklin Roosevelt. It's a great story. So great that I repeated it the first time I did what I called

...