OPINION:
In 1980, when George Bush won the Iowa caucuses and candidate Ronald Reagan was out of money and momentum, I was approached by the Fund for a Conservative Majority about running a high-dollar, independent expenditure to help boost Reagan in the next six primary states, starting with New Hampshire.
We helped Reagan turn around his campaign operations while Bush was well ahead in the polls. Reagan went on to win the Republican nomination, the election and historic recognition as one of America’s greatest presidents.
Forty-five years later, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute has gone the way of so many other formerly conservative institutions, such as the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund (now the Wallace Foundation), the MacArthur Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation. It has turned aggressively left, completely forgetting its reason for existence.
The foundation has thrown Reagan’s own conservatism onto the ash heap of history to embrace leftism and monied elitism and all they entail. Recent board member additions, for example, are wealthy donors and cronies who want their names on the foundation’s letterhead but have no association with Reagan, his legacy or conservatism.
Alia Tutor, the wife of a wealthy California construction executive, and John Momtazee, a media investment banker, have no relationship to conservative causes of any kind. Susan McCaw, Elaine Chao and Condoleezza Rice, all prominent figures in the neocon Bush 43 administration, have been added over the years.
Walter Benjamin was right when he said, “You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps.” The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum has censored most conservative books about Reagan from its online gift shop and disinvited conservative authors (me, for one) from its conferences while inviting myriad liberals who have no expertise on Reagan to appear at the library.
My six books on Reagan are now gone from the library’s site, including “Rendezvous With Destiny,” which was cited as one of the five finest campaign books ever by a Wall Street Journal columnist. So too are several of Kiron Skinner’s books and books by Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson, close aides to Reagan.
Also missing are significant books by Nobel Prize laureate Milton Friedman, Ken Khachigian (one of Reagan’s favorite speechwriters), Newt Gingrich, Art Laffer, Peter Schweizer and Peter Robinson, another Reagan speechwriter, as well as other conservatives.
Yet “The Triumph of Nancy Reagan” by ultraleftist Karen Tumulty is prominently displayed. A little-read and badly reviewed book by Trump hater Chris Christie is for sale.
I am especially disturbed by all this, as I am a longtime champion of Reagan’s legacy. My wife, Zorine, and I worked for Reagan. I wrote many op-eds, papers and books on him and his times. Over the years, the library has often called on me to defend Reagan’s reputation.
When Ronald Reagan Jr. wrote a half-baked, silly book about his father’s brain surgery, the library called me to mount a public campaign casting doubt on the book’s credibility. Yet that book is currently for sale at the library.
When a vial of Reagan’s blood was stolen during the 1981 failed assassination attempt, the library asked me to create a public pressure campaign to have the blood turned over to Mrs. Reagan, where it belonged. We were successful.
When Bill O’Reilly wrote his book about Reagan having Alzheimer’s symptoms during his presidency, the library called to ask that I again mount a public campaign, this time to undermine the credibility of the book. We were wildly successful. With several historians, we wrote op-eds disproving Mr. O’Reilly’s controversial accusations while persuading George F. Will to appear on Mr. O’Reilly’s show to dispute the claims.
When would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley Jr. was released, the library asked me to again write and make media appearances ripping Mr. Hinckley and the Clinton-appointed judge who set him free. I did. I also facilitated the donation of a Reagan staff assistant’s diary that documented the president’s time in the hospital after that attempt. It’s still on display at the library.
When the library needed to boost its campaign memorabilia displays, I gladly lent items. I also donated a large number of copies of my book “The Search for Reagan” and research materials.
In my book “Last Act,” I defend Reagan’s legacy against the lie that he had Alzheimer’s while in office. No one tells this lie anymore. I received many letters from Nancy Reagan over the years thanking me.
I have spoken many times at the Reagan library, but those days are now, sadly, over. This summer, when the library hosted a conference on the “Age of Reagan,” I called to offer my services, thinking the library had failed to invite me. An intern informed me that, although I was welcome to sit in the audience, I wasn’t needed for any panel because I was “too old.” At the time, I was a year younger than Reagan when he ran for president in 1980. Ageism is not very politically correct.
Apparently, the library was embarrassed by the whole affair, as a list of the participants is no longer available on the website. Still, the panels were loaded with liberal academic types.
I was proud and happy to do all this for the library, and I never thought about charging a dime. None of those now sanitizing and cleansing the place of Reaganism would have a job without my efforts in 1980. They might now be working as greeters at Walmart.
This is all doubly ironic to me, as Reagan dedicated his life to promoting conservatism and defeating collectivism — a labor of love. As he once said, “The conservative movement believes that government is not the solution to our problems.” The modern iteration of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute is not the solution either.
The final irony? President Trump is carrying on the Reagan agenda far better than the foundation named in honor of Reagan.
• Craig Shirley is an American historian and author. He has written multiple critically acclaimed books on President Reagan.
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