Writing Speeches for Reagan | Peter Robinson

Hold These Truths with Dan Crenshaw

Dan Crenshaw

Politics, Energy, Healthcare, News, World, Society & Culture, Regulations, Finance, America, Freedom

4.6 • 16K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2022

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Reagan is considered one of the greatest communicators in American political history. How’d he do it?

With a great team. Peter Robinson spent six years as a White House speechwriter, first with Houston-native George H.W. Bush as VP, then for President Reagan himself. Peter tells us how he got to be a speechwriter, how betting on himself gave us Reagan’s famous speech at the Berlin Wall, and his views on the Republican Party now.

Peter Robinson is the Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits Hoover’s quarterly journal, and hosts the TV series and podcast: UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We hold these truths to be self-evident.
0:02.0	That all men are created.
0:04.0	There's a number of Congress I get to have a lot of really interesting people in the office.
0:07.2	Experts on what they're talking about.
0:09.2	This is the podcast for insights into the issues.
0:11.6	China, bioterrorism, Medicare for all, in-depth discussions.
0:16.0	Breaking it down into simple terms.
0:18.0	We hold these truths with Dan Crenshaw.
0:24.8	The world loves great storytellers.
0:26.8	The entertainment industry spends billions every year capturing stories onto film,
0:30.6	writing them down in books or in songs in front of sold out arenas.
0:34.4	We're enamored by speeches from movies, shows, and moments in history.
0:38.0	Political speeches of the past like JFK's, we choose to go to the moon, speech, and heast in Texas comes to mind.
0:44.1	My guess today is the man who wrote what is perhaps the most famous speech in American foreign policy history.
0:50.0	Peter Robinson was a speech writer in the Reagan administration, serving under
0:54.0	Vice President H.W. Bush and then President Reagan himself.
0:57.5	He's responsible for President Reagan's address in West Berlin in 1987,
1:01.7	where he spoke the famous line, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
1:06.4	Years later, Peter Robinson is now at the Hoover Institution.
1:09.5	As the Murdoch distinguished policy fellow where he writes about business and politics and
1:13.4	edits Hoover's quarterly journal and hosts, so I'm sure many of my listeners know,
1:18.7	because my listeners are into the wonky stuff.
	...

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