THE NATION’S NEWSPAPER
K-12
Case
Study
K-12PS2004-02
www.usatodaycollege.com
Leadership lessons from
the Reagan years
By Del Jones
5
Reporter's Notebook
Del Jones
6
Reagan's name conjures
range of emotions
By John Ritter
7-14
The Life and the Legacy:
In his words
15
The Legacy of
Ronald Wilson Reagan
Actor, Governor, President, Ronald Reagan was all these and more. To his
admirers he won the cold war, to his detractors he abandoned the poor.
But one thing is certain, Ronald Reagan will not be a footnote in history.
With his passing the debate on the legacy of the United States' 40th
president has been revitalized. Historians, separated from the emotions
of the moment and with hindsight as their guide are painting a canvas of
the man and his policies using a palette of opinions and events that give
Ronald Reagan's tenure as president both dimension and fluidity. As
time puts more distance between Ronald Reagan's years in the White
House we get a clearer picture of the man and his times. We see events
and actions not as participants but as students. Everyone leaves a legacy,
but what that legacy is depends as much on our own acts and
convictions as others' opinions of those acts and convictions.. This case
study will explore the legacy of Ronald Wilson Reagan and how each of
us would want to shape our own legacy.
Activities and student
extensions
Cover Story
16-17
USA TODAY Snapshots
Reagan 10th president
to lie in state at Capitol Rotunda
Ronald Reagan will be the 10th president to
lie in state since the Rotunda was built at the
U.S. Capitol in 1824:
Abraham Lincoln
1865
James Garfield
1881
William McKinley Jr. 1901
Warren Harding
1923
William Taft
1930
John Kennedy
1963
Herbert Hoover
1964
Dwight Eisenhower 1969
Lyndon Johnson
1973
Ronald Reagan
2004
Source:
USA TODAY
research
By Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY
Unconventional politician
who did it his way
Nation's voters always
thought well of optimistic
40th president
By Susan Page
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — He was too old
to be president, political pros scoffed
in 1980. He was too conservative.
Just an actor, and in B-movies at
that. Remember Bedtime for Bonzo?
Played second banana to a
chimpanzee.
But the conventional wisdom was
wrong in 1980, as it was so often
when it came to Ronald Wilson
Reagan.
He won that election, ousting a
sitting president and leading a
conservative tidal wave. Four years
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2004, PAGE 1A
questionable assertions of fact. By the time he
left the Oval Office in January 1989, he seemed
to be the nation's grandfather.
Historians have been revising — and raising —
their view of him since then. A 1994 poll among
481 historians ranked Reagan in the "below
average" group; a 1997 survey by Arthur
Schlesinger Jr. put him at the bottom end of
"average." But a survey of 58 presidential
historians in 2000 sponsored by C-SPAN
rated Reagan 11th of the first 42 presidents,
the highest of any president in the past
three decades.
Illustration by
Web Bryant, USA TODAY
later, he carried 49 states and won one of the biggest
electoral-vote landslides in the nation's history. One of just
12 people to complete two terms in the White House, he
left the United States and the world a different place. On
his watch, the Cold War began to end, U.S. prestige was
restored at home and abroad, major initiatives to cut taxes
and reduce regulations were launched and the federal
government's spending priorities were reordered.
"He's someone who clearly makes a difference, whose
presidency clearly makes a difference," presidential
scholar Fred Greenstein says. "That despite the fact that by
the normal standards of political professionals, he often
seemed to be not well-informed."
In his book The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style
from Roosevelt to Clinton, Greenstein calls Reagan "an
overshadowing political presence in his times."
The nation's 40th president was routinely
underestimated from his first contest for governor of
California in 1966. His rivals' misjudgments turned out
to be one of his great advantages, his closest advisers
would conclude.
In his time, Reagan built a remarkable connection with
the American people, even some of those who disagreed
with him on issues. He was confident and upbeat, sure of
what he believed, even when he sometimes made
In a separate poll in 2000 of 78 historians,
political scientists and legal scholars, Reagan
came out as both the most underrated and the
second most overrated of American presidents.
The survey was sponsored by The Federalist
Society and The Wall Street Journal.
But voters always thought well of him. A
Gallup Poll in August 1999 found that a solid majority of
Americans, 54%, believed that Reagan would be
remembered as an outstanding or above-average
president. His standing was higher than that of any
president since Kennedy.
"There's just something about the guy that people like,"
the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill, a Democrat from
Massachusetts, once mused, although the two men often
clashed. "They want him to be a success."
There is no question that he left his mark. During
Reagan's presidency, the Republican Party became more
conservative and the Democratic Party began to reexamine its traditional liberalism. Income-tax rates were
cut, budget deficits ballooned and the federal
government's domestic ambitions were limited as a result.
Defense spending grew 35%. That step and Reagan's
willingness to deal with a reform-minded Mikhail
Gorbachev in Moscow helped bring about the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
One of his chief accomplishments was more intangible
than substantive, historians say. Ever an optimist, Reagan
restored a sense of buoyancy to the nation's capital and its
government after a series of failed presidents and national
disappointments.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 2
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2004, PAGE 1A
Scandals, contradictions failed to diminish popularity of 'the Gipper'
"There had been a kind of cynicism
and distress that people felt, first over
the (John F.) Kennedy assassination,
then (Lyndon) Johnson and the
Vietnam War . . . then, most of all,
Watergate and (Richard) Nixon's
resignation," says historian Robert
Dallek, author of Ronald Reagan: The
Politics of Symbolism. "There was
(Gerald) Ford's pardoning of Nixon
and (Jimmy) Carter's failings as a
leader.
"The hallmark of Reagan's
presidency," Dallek says, "was that he
was much admired, much loved, and
he restored a measure of regard to the
presidency during the eight years
he served."
Reagan made jokes that reassured
the nation after an assassination
attempt left him seriously wounded
just two months after his first
inauguration. "I hope you're all
Republicans," he told the doctors as
he was being wheeled into surgery.
He gave a lifting address that
comforted grieving Americans when
the Challenger space shuttle exploded
in 1986 as schoolchildren across the
country were watching the liftoff on
TV. He rarely left much doubt about
where he stood. He called the Soviet
Union an "evil empire" and demanded
in a 1987 visit to Berlin, "Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
To the amazement of the world,
months after Reagan left office, the
Berlin Wall was torn down and the
epic U.S.-Soviet conflict that had
threatened civilization in the 20th
century eased.
Scandals and setbacks
There were scandals under Reagan's
tenure, too, and setbacks.
The terrorist bombing in 1983 of
Marine barracks in Beirut left 241
servicemembers dead. Dishonesty and
fraud at the Housing and Urban
Development Department brought
the nation's longest-running
independent-counsel investigation. In
the Iran-contra affair, his senior aides
tried to trade arms for hostages, then
illegally funneled the profits to
Nicaraguan guerrillas. Reagan insisted
he knew nothing about it, an
admission
that
seemed
to
acknowledge his casual oversight of
his administration.
None of it undermined the open
affection many voters felt for him,
however. One frustrated Democratic
member of Congress, Rep. Pat
Schroeder of Colorado, complained
that Reagan was so untouched by his
mistakes and aides' misdeeds that he
must be coated with Teflon: the
Teflon president.
All that stuck was the moniker.
Reagan believed in a few things on
which he never wavered: A smaller,
less intrusive government at home,
with lower taxes, less regulation and
less spending. A fervent opposition to
communism abroad, with whatever
Pentagon budget that might require.
"Maybe you didn't agree with him
and maybe you did, but there it was,"
former secretary of State George
Shultz told USA TODAY years later.
"What you saw was what you got."
Reagan was born in small-town
America, in the nation's heartland —
Tampico, Ill. — on Feb. 6, 1911. He
described his mother as a saintly
figure. His father was a shoe salesman
with the gift of gab and a tendency
toward alcoholic binges.
From the start, the son was blessed
with a cheerful outlook, an engaging
smile and seemingly effortless
success that stretched through an
improbable career.
As a senior in high school, about to
enter adulthood, he chose as his
yearbook motto, "Life is one grand,
sweet song, so start the music." The
melody he heard was the same at the
other end of his life, in 1991, after he
had left the White House. He told
biographer Lou Cannon, "Most of my
dreams came true."
A New Deal Democrat
He graduated from Eureka College
in Illinois in 1932, then got a job as a
radio sportscaster in neighboring
Iowa. In California to cover baseball
spring training, he made a screen test
for Warner Bros. and ended up
appearing in more than 50 films. He
became active in the Screen Actors
Guild, where he honed skills as a
negotiator that would serve him well
as president.
When his film career waned, he
landed a job as the corporate
spokesman for General Electric,
hosting a weekly TV drama series and
traveling the country to address
its employees.
He started out as a New Deal
Democrat who counted Franklin
Roosevelt as a hero, but the anticommunist campaigns in the film
industry and the free-enterprise
orientation of GE contributed to his
growing conservatism. Reagan
campaigned for the Democratic
candidate against Richard Nixon
when Nixon was first elected to the
Senate from California in 1950. By
1960, Reagan was campaigning as a
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 3
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2004, PAGE 1A
"Democrat for Nixon." In 1962, he
changed his party registration to
Republican. Two years later, he
emerged as the rising star of the GOP's
conservative wing.
"He was literally the Moses of the
conservative movement," says
Marshall Wittmann, a Republican
analyst who now works for Arizona
Sen. John McCain. "He brought
conservatives out of the wilderness
into the promised land." Reagan
persuaded so many blue-collar
workers to switch sides and vote for
him that they took his name: Reagan
Democrats. Since he left the scene,
nearly every would-be Republican
presidential contender has claimed to
be his heir.
A career is launched
Reagan's political career was
launched, appropriately enough, by a
speech. He could seem uninformed
when he got an unexpected question
at a news conference, but he was the
most skillful presidential orator since
FDR when he had a text and a friendly
audience. His manner was easy, his
voice trained, his language vaulting.
His breakthrough speech was in
1964, when he made a televised
fundraising appeal for GOP
presidential candidate Barry
Goldwater. "We will preserve for our
children this, the last best hope of
man on earth," Reagan said, "or we
will sentence them to take the
first step into a thousand years
of darkness."
Goldwater was doomed, but
Reagan's political career began.
He was 55 when he was elected to
the first of two terms as governor of
California in 1966. He beat the
Democratic incumbent by nearly a
million votes. Almost from the start,
he and his backers had their eyes on a
higher prize: He made a last-minute
bid for the Republican presidential
nomination in 1968 and waged a fullscale battle for the nomination against
then-president Ford in 1976.
He finally won the nomination four
years later.
Reagan was 69 when he became
president, the oldest man to be
elected to the Oval Office. By the time
he left the White House eight years
later, despite scars from the Irancontra scandal, he was still popular
enough to help install his vice
president, George Bush, as
his successor.
To the regular annoyance of friends
and foes, Reagan was a bundle of
contradictions. Biographer Edmund
Morris acknowledged his frustrated
inability to figure Reagan out despite
spending 14 years with special access
to produce his 874-page book, Dutch:
A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, in 1999.
Reagan preached the virtues of a
balanced budget but set the stage for
the biggest deficits in history. He
espoused family values and attacked
Democrats for abandoning them,
although he was the nation's first
divorced president. His second
marriage to Nancy Davis was
famously close, but he was often
estranged from his four children and
distant from those who considered
themselves friends.
And he held some ideas that
advisers had worried would alarm
voters. He had a strain of religious
mysticism, perhaps the legacy of his
mother, and believed in the biblical
prophecy of Armageddon. He
sometimes seemed to put more faith
in anecdotes than statistics. He
created a campaign conflagration in
1980 when he claimed that trees
created more air pollution than
cars did.
Four years later, his rambling
performance in the first debate of the
1984 campaign raised concerns about
his competence. He defused them in
the second debate with a
characteristic quip.
"I am not going to exploit for
political purposes my opponent's
youth and inexperience," he said.
Even opponent Walter Mondale had
to join in the laughter.
Out of office, Reagan published
ghostwritten memoirs and built his
presidential library on a California
hilltop overlooking the Pacific. In
November 1994, he released what
would be his last communication with
the American public. The two-page,
hand-written
letter
was
characteristically
Reagan:
unpretentious, unapologetic, direct.
And, despite the circumstances,
remarkably upbeat.
"I have recently been told that I am
one of the millions of Americans who
will be afflicted with Alzheimer's
Disease," he wrote in his tight,
backward-leaning scrawl. He talked
about his beloved Nancy and thanked
"the American people for giving me
the great honor of allowing me to
serve as your President.
"When the Lord calls me home," he
wrote then, before falling silent for
good, "whenever that may be, I will
leave with the greatest love for this
country of ours and eternal optimism
for its future."
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 4
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY MONEY SECTION, FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 2004, PAGE 6B
Leadership lessons from the Reagan years
By Del Jones
USA TODAY
Ronald Reagan, described as one of
the great presidents, might say
greatness can be boiled down to two
words: "Well . . . leadership."
What makes a great leader? That
question is complex enough to keep
an army of business consultants
employed. As Reagan is laid to
rest, USA TODAY went looking for
the leadership lessons of the
40th president.
Start with a moral foundation.
Reagan was called the Teflon
president because criticism didn't
stick. Why was that?
Alan Axelrod, author of leadership
books about several leaders including
Gen. George Patton and president
Harry Truman
and also a critic of
many Reagan policies
says it's
because Reagan was "a decent person
with high character," contrary to the
"selfish pig" impression exuded by
many CEOs.
Reagan saw right and wrong. To
him, communism was evil, and the
human craving for freedom was good.
Experts say most people forgive
mistakes made by leaders who have
both conviction and a good heart.
The vision thing matters. Vision
and strategy have fallen out of favor
as companies focus on the nuts and
bolts of slashing costs, eliminating
errors and executing. But vision is the
North Star for any organization, says
Wess Roberts, author of Leadership
Secrets of Attila the Hun.
Reagan had grand, long-term
visions to end the Cold War and block
intrusive government. He articulated
a direction, says Al Vicere, executive
education professor of strategic
leadership at Penn State.
Take the heat. Those who
transform the world, or a company,
make tough calls such as firing the air
traffic controllers, says Noel Tichy,
director of the University of Michigan
Global Leadership Program. Great
leaders have several qualities. One is
making tough decisions.
If Reagan were a corporate CEO, he
would be a combination of Herb
Kelleher of Southwest Airlines and
Jack Welch of General Electric,
Tichy says.
Be comfortable in your own skin.
So what if Sam Donaldson shouts
embarrassing questions? Have a jelly
bean. Joke about being friends with
Thomas Jefferson. That doesn't mean
making light of the importance of
your job.
The most powerful tool is the ability
to make people feel like what they do
matters, says Paul Argenti, director of
Dartmouth's Tuck Leadership Forum.
But leaders who are at home in their
skin give the OK for others to feel at
home in theirs. That's when things
get done.
Unlike former CEOs such as Al
Dunlap of Sunbeam, Reagan
demonstrated that leaders need not
be mean to be tough, says Jeffrey
Sonnenfeld, associate dean of
executive programs at the Yale School
of Management.
vice president, George Bush, and
Treasury secretary James Baker,
Sonnenfeld says.
Maintain a sense of humor. At all
times. Even during a nuclear arms
race. "I have left orders to be
awakened in case of national
emergency, even if I'm in a Cabinet
meeting," Reagan said.
Be a great communicator. Maybe
more CEOs should start out as actors
because they need to show more
emotion and passion.
Where it comes to vision and
strategy, "say it well, say it often, say
it simply and say it passionately," says
Michael Useem, director of the Center
for Leadership and Change
Management at the Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania.
Successful leaders take a simple
message and repeat it endlessly,
Tichy says.
"The absence of knowing what's
going on and why creates a toxic
environment where distrust,
suspicion, and fear overpower
confidence, camaraderie, and
courage," Roberts says.
Delegate. Get out of the way of
talented people. Reagan didn't
immerse himself in detail as did
workaholic presidents Richard Nixon
and Jimmy Carter before him.
"It's true hard work never killed
anybody, but I figure, why take the
chance?" Reagan said.
Reagan was secure enough to
surround himself with former
opponents,
including
his
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 5
Behind the Story: A Reporter's Notebook
As the corporate management
reporter in the Money section
at USA TODAY there is one
theme that runs throughout my
coverage: leadership. Most
people, including "followers"
such as myself, have experienced a variety of bosses and
have strong opinions about
what makes a good leader.
Therefore, I think most people
Del Jones
are interested in leadership
Reporter, Money
even if they have little or no
aspiration of becoming leaders
themselves. When President Reagan died it seemed only
natural to examine his leadership style and skills and try to
answer why he is likely going down in history as one of the
nation's most influential leaders.
This isn't the first time I've tackled the leadership issue
using a somewhat similar approach. In 2003, I interviewed
the authors of the Leadership Lessons of Attila the Hun,
Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Patton and
other similar books. I had them speak in the voice of the
historical leaders and did a Q&A, having Churchill and oth-
ers answer such questions as: "How do you motivate people who aren't performing at their potential?" I also wrote
a (hopefully) humorous story on the Leadership Lessons of
Saddam Hussein. Lesson No. One: Don't shoot the
messenger.
As part of my job I've interviewed many chief executive
officers of major corporations. They say the book on their
nightstand is often historical. They seem to learn a lot reading about leaders of the past and how they succeeded or
failed to rally the troops. That's what I attempted to offer
readers when writing about the leadership lessons of
Reagan. The difference is that it comes in the concise USA
TODAY style that summarizes in a few inches what others
write books about.
Del Jones is the corporate management reporter for the
Money section. He's been with USA TODAY since 1992 and
has written more than 200 cover stories. Previously he
reported business and sports for The El Paso Times and The
Santa Fe New Mexican, both Gannett newspapers (USA
TODAY's parent company). He holds a journalism degree
from the University of New Mexico and an MBA University
of Texas-El Paso. He is married and has two teenage
children.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 6
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRI-SUN, JUNE 11-13, 2004, PAGE 1A
For Russian émigrés, Reagan meant 'freedom'
The number of people from the Soviet
Union emigrating to the USA began to
increase as the Cold War ended. In
1988, fewer than 3,000 immigrants to
the USA claimed the Soviet Union as a
birthplace; by 1991, the number
neared 57,000.
NEW YORK — The women
gathered in a corner of Brooklyn
known as "Little Odessa" have much
in common.
They are Jews who, in the former
Soviet Union, lived in fear. They are
mothers who once worried that their
children would have no future. They
are former refugees who believe that
Ronald Reagan paved their way out
of Russia.
"The name 'Reagan' for us was like
a ticket to freedom," says Rita Kagan,
51, who came to the USA in 1991
with her parents and son. "Reagan for
us wasn't just a president. He was a
man who changed our lives."
The five women and their families
have now been in the USA for more
than a decade. They are social
workers at a community center in
Brighton Beach. They help many
who, like themselves, were able to
leave the former Soviet Union after
Reagan's presidency because of
improved relations between the USA
and Russia.
The women remember Reagan's
visit to Moscow's Red Square in 1988
and watching him on television. They
recall his speeches and how they
were moved by his presence and
passion, even though they
understood little English.
"He knew how to deal with Russia,"
says Raya Khaimchayev, 65, who was
denied permission to leave the Soviet
Union for 18 years before finally
coming to the USA in 1991. "We are
very grateful for what he did."
tried to emigrate in 1985, fearful that
their son, then 17, might have to join
the Red Army in Afghanistan. "We
didn't think he'd have the future he'd
have here because he was a Jewish
boy," she says.
Two years later, the family
unexpectedly got permission to come
to the USA. "Now we understand it
was because of Reagan," she says.
Reagan holds a sacred place in the
heart of Lyuba Tarnorutskaya.
"When I go to synagogue, I can
compare him only with Moses," says
Tarnorutskaya, 57, who came to the
USA with her family in 1990. "Now,"
she says, beginning to cry, "I feel so
sorry that I could not express my
gratitude when he was alive."
By Charisse Jones
Bella Bykov, 56, and her husband
Reagan's name conjures range of emotions
By John Ritter
USA TODAY
If Ronald Reagan's imprint left our
politics colored black and white,
surely our memories of this man of
old-fashioned, deeply held values are
infinitely more complex.
Image defined his public essence,
but for every flattering image of
Reagan — the incurable optimist, the
master of self-deprecating humor, the
steely cold warrior, the restorer of
America's confidence — there's a
countervailing one.
Some Americans see a conservative
ideologue who bloated the national
debt, who favored the rich over the
poor and the suffering, who
presided over a scandal-plagued
administration and whose detached,
corporate style fostered a nation that
was, as Haynes Johnson wrote,
"sleepwalking through history."
But as is usually the case with
presidents, the mosaic of the Reagan
years — bridging the healing of
Vietnam and Watergate and the
information technology explosion —
was woven by events: The decline of
communism. The rise of AIDS. The
spread of global terrorism. The loss of
a space shuttle. An assassination
attempt blocks from the White House.
So, it's hard to pigeonhole Ronald
Reagan. Even at a time of nationwide
mourning over his death, many
Americans can't ignore his warts. The
Gipper is beloved, not just on his side
of the political fence, and he is reviled.
To read what some Americans — his
admirers and his detractors — say
about the nation's 40th president,
read on.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 7
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRI-SUN, JUNE 11-13, 2004, PAGE 2A
Retired colonel remembers resurgence of military pride
Reagan inherited a military
demoralized by public opposition to the
Vietnam War. He increased military
spending by up to one-third, started new
weapons programs, including the "star
wars" missile-defense system, and
accelerated military technology.
DENVER — When Ronald Reagan
became president, Dick Rauschkolb
was a midcareer Air Force officer
teaching Middle Eastern history at the
Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
For many in the military, Rauschkolb
recalls, it was an electric moment.
"Morale increased right off the bat," he
says. When Iran released 52 American
hostages minutes after Reagan's first
inauguration in 1981, it was "a signal
we had a strong president."
Rauschkolb, 56, now a retired colonel
who is communications director for
the academy's Association of
Graduates in Colorado Springs, had a
ringside seat in the second Reagan
administration. He served as the
deputy military assistant to Adm.
William Crowe, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
Reagan was a friend to the armed
services and quickly won their respect,
Rauschkolb says. "It was clear Ronald
Reagan supported the troops," he says.
"He understood the sacrifices they
were making, and he took steps to
make sure they were taken care of
with the (higher) defense budgets he
proposed."
Rauschkolb credits Reagan with
ending a period in which the United
States, he says, "almost had an attitude
of appeasement" in world affairs. For
example, Reagan blamed Libya for the
1986 bombing of a West Berlin
discotheque that killed three people,
including a U.S. serviceman. The
United States retaliated by bombing
targets in Libya.
Rauschkolb also praises Reagan for
standing up to Soviet leaders, winning
arms-control agreements and setting
the stage for the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
"He was a tough negotiator,"
Rauschkolb says. "The strategic arms
reductions he negotiated with (Soviet
leader Mikhail) Gorbachev changed the
whole nuclear waterfront. And the big
thing was the end of the Cold War. He
toed a hard line, made the tough
decisions — and he won."
By Tom Kenworthy
Inner cities struggling to rebound from 'despairing time'
Reagan angered civil rights activists
and advocates for the poor by
ridiculing "welfare queens," trying to
cut school-lunch programs and vetoing
economic sanctions against South
Africa's apartheid government.
Decline began in the 1970s with a
middle-class exodus. But Tolliver says
the death of Washington Park was
cemented
by
the
Reagan
administration's social, economic and
urban policies.
CHICAGO — The Rev. Richard
Tolliver arrived at St. Edmund's
Episcopal Church in the Washington
Park neighborhood six months after
Ronald Reagan left office.
Reagan cut the budget of the
Department of Housing and Urban
Development by more than a third in
his first year. By 1989, the black
poverty rate was triple that for
whites. A decade earlier, it had been
double that of whites.
It was a bleak place.
Houses were boarded up. Crack
cocaine was rampant. Gangs ruled
the streets. Liquor stores provided
the only commerce. The population
shrank from 90,000 in 1970 to fewer
than 19,000 in 1990. "It was a
neighborhood that had been
completely written off," he says.
"Reagan was an astute politician.
He calculated that his support was
not from African-Americans, many of
whom live in the inner cities, so he
wrote them off," Tolliver, 58, says.
Reagan effectively turned over much
of the responsibility for the economic
health of inner cities to private
enterprise. In 1986, the government
began giving tax credits to urban
redevelopers.
It was a short lifeline, but Tolliver
grabbed it anyway. He formed the
non-profit
St.
Edmund's
Redevelopment Corp. in 1990. Since
then, Tolliver has scraped together
$51 million to rebuild 455 units in 14
buildings. A rehab of a 56-unit
housing project across from the
church is underway.
He found that banks were reluctant
to provide financing. A parishioner
persuaded the president of a local
black-owned bank to step up. "If it
weren't for that bank, none of this
would be here," he says.
By Debbie Howlett
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 8
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRI-SUN, JUNE 11-13, 2004, PAGE 2A
Couple touched by the renewed attention to Alzheimer's
In a letter to the American people in
1994, Reagan said he was in the early
stages of Alzheimer's disease. He
maintained his optimism: "I now begin
the journey that will lead me into the
sunset of my life. I know that for America
there will always be a bright
dawn ahead."
Marty and Laurie Bahr didn't know
each other when Ronald Reagan was
president. He was in Philadelphia. She
was in Southern California. He
supported Reagan politically. She did
not. He liked Reagan's honesty. She
disliked his conservative policies.
But when Reagan died last weekend,
the Bahrs were united in their
emotions. Reagan died of complications
of Alzheimer's disease. Marty Bahr was
diagnosed with the early stages of
dementia four years ago at age 51,
shortly after the two married.
"We are very touched by this," says
Laurie, 47. "I see in full frontal exactly
what is coming down the pike for my
husband. It makes us feel quite sad
knowing what's in our future, knowing
there really is no cure on the horizon
at all."
Reagan's death has thrown off the
delicate balance they've struggled to
maintain to cope with Alzheimer's.
"You find that you kind of live life
somewhere between just getting
through your day, between denial and
allowing it to overwhelm you," says
Laurie, an insurance broker and risk
management consultant.
But Marty finds some solace. Reagan
raised awareness and acceptance of
Alzheimer's by making his condition
public 10 years ago, he says. His death
is doing that again.
Marty, a former insurance executive,
realized something was wrong when
he began having trouble doing simple
computer tasks such as sending e-mail.
He had to quit work. He can't drive. He
has trouble reading.
But the Bahrs, who live in Bartlett, Ill.,
a Chicago suburb, say they're fortunate
that Marty's disease is progressing
slowly. He stays active and wants to do
more to help other people with
Alzheimer's.
The Reagan family's willingness to
publicize the president's disease "was
the best thing that ever happened to
us," Marty says. "It really was. His
wife kept going. . . . She just kept
pushing, pushing."
By Haya El Nasser
"The more that people know and
understand what it's truly like to have
Alzheimer's, the better off we are," says
Marty, now 55.
Fired air-traffic controller still feels the sting decades later
Reagan fired more than 11,000 airtraffic controllers in 1981 for staging a
strike. The president's move was a
major blow to the power of labor
unions.
Ron Taylor was fired by President
Reagan 23 years ago. He's still trying
to get his job back.
Taylor, 57, of Stuart, Fla., was one of
more than 11,000 air-traffic
controllers fired by Reagan after they
went on strike for higher wages and
fewer hours on the stress-filled job.
In 1993, President Clinton ended the
"ban for life" Reagan had imposed on
former members of the Professional
Air Traffic Controllers Association, but
Taylor and thousands of others
weren't rehired.
"When they talk about Reagan as
compassionate, I just don't know
what they are talking about," says
Taylor, president of PATCO, which
continues legal action to get
members' jobs back.
"Reagan banned us for life," Taylor
says. "Even murderers are eligible for
parole. We thought we, as labor, had
a friend in the White House."
Taylor has been working as an
electrical contractor since losing his
controller job. He says he and other
PATCO members would need only
minimal updates of their training.
"Many other controllers and I have
kept up our computer skills, and we
certainly still know how to move
planes," he says.
Reagan's firing of the controllers is
viewed by many business leaders and
historians as a defining act of his
presidency. They say it gave
corporations license to be much
tougher with organized labor and put
Soviet leaders on notice that Reagan
was tougher than they thought.
Today there are fewer air-traffic
controllers than in 1981 despite a
huge increase in air traffic. The
current union, the National Air Traffic
Controllers Association, warns that
thousands more controllers are
needed in the next 10 years.
Taylor and his membership would
like a crack at those jobs before they
get too old.
By David Kiley
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 9
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRI-SUN, JUNE 11-13, 2004, PAGE 2A
Restaurateur hails '80s economic turnaround
Reagan persuaded Congress to lower
income tax rates by 25% and later to
pass a tax-reform plan that cut rates
further and streamlined the tax code. He
also backed a series of tax increases.
When Ronald Reagan became
president, Carl Carreca was a General
Electric engineer dreaming of being a
restaurant owner.
their business in 1988 at the end of
Reagan's second term.
Carreca, 68, credits many of
Reagan's foreign and domestic
policies for helping spur his family's
success. On Reagan's watch, interest
rates fell to single digits, making
business loans more affordable.
But double-digit interest rates
stymied Carreca's plans to borrow
$300,000 to buy a Pizza Hut franchise.
"Devastating," he says of rates in the
early 1980s. "I couldn't do it."
Carreca concedes that he could have
plowed ahead and borrowed at skyhigh rates. But the higher cost would
have hamstrung growth during the
critical early years. "I would have been
worried about profitability," he says.
Carreca and his family now own 12
Pizza Huts in Tennessee and Kentucky
with about 400 employees and $10
million in annual sales. They started
Income tax rates also dropped,
helping him save $100,000 in start-up
money to buy the first restaurant in
Clarksville, Tenn.
The Cold War's end meant the
federal government could shift more
money to other programs. That
bolstered the U.S. economy and
Carreca's restaurant growth, he says.
Slow times were the reason Carreca
chose the business. Even in recessions,
he says, "people still have to eat."
But perhaps just as important, he
says, was Reagan's sunny outlook.
That inspired Carreca and countless
other would-be entrepreneurs to start
businesses when the economy was
still recovering from the 1981-82
recession.
Carreca recalls Reagan's message:
"You can do anything that you want to
do — this is a great, free society."
By Jim Hopkins
AIDS activist points to consequences of years of inaction
In 1981, only 199 cases of AIDS had
been reported in the USA. By the time
Reagan left office in 1989, more than
46,000 Americans had died. Reagan did
not deliver his first major speech on the
disease until 1987.
SAN FRANCISCO — In the early
1980s, a terrifying and littleunderstood disease called AIDS was
killing scores of gay men. Public
health officials here and in other
cities urged the federal government
to take the lead in battling it.
But Ronald Reagan was silent. Not
until late in his second term did he
even mention AIDS publicly. As
president, he could have ordered
federal money and research into the
battle to stop the disease. He could
have asked Congress for emergency
funding. His inaction remains a
source of resentment among
AIDS activists.
"This was an enormously popular
president with enormous political
power throughout the country," says
Rene Durazzo, a project manager for
the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
"And he set the tone. Unfortunately,
it was a tone that cost hundreds of
thousands of lives."
By 1985, researchers knew that
AIDS was an immune disorder caused
by a virus, that it was spread through
sexual contact and that infection
rates were soaring. A test had been
developed to detect HIV, the virus
that causes AIDS. Still Reagan
was silent.
Durazzo, 53, a San Francisco native,
was the foundation's public policy
director in the late 1980s. He recalls
the fear and hysteria in the early
years of AIDS. "There was enormous
homophobia and stigma around this
disease that the administration did
not want to hear," he says. "It did not
want to appear at all sympathetic to
an illness and a horror that was
happening to gay people primarily."
When the government finally took
action in 1987, it was ineffective, he
says. Public-service messages carried
no explicit information about how
AIDS spread or that gay men were
susceptible.
"It was really too late at that point,"
Durazzo says. "The epidemic had
already turned the corner and had
escalated. By then it was going to be
very difficult to contain it."
By John Ritter
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 10
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRI-SUN, JUNE 11-13, 2004, PAGE 2A
Cuban-American praises influence on both Cuba, America
Reagan's staunch anti-communism
meant continued chilly U.S. relations
with Fidel Castro's Cuba. The fiercely
anti-Castro Cuban exile community in
Miami revered Reagan and formed a
solidly Republican voting bloc.
On May 20, 1983, President Reagan
visited Miami for a celebration of
Cuban Independence Day. He
addressed thousands of CubanAmericans and ate lunch at a
restaurant in the city's Little Havana
district. A sandwich and a street were
named in his honor.
Pedro Rodriguez, 57, remembers
that visit well. He also remembers
another visit, after Reagan had left
office, when the former president
spoke to 20,000 cheering CubanAmericans at the Orange Bowl. "He
was wearing a white guayabera shirt,"
says Rodriguez, a self-employed naval
architect. "It's a very cool shirt."
Miami's Cuban-Americans found
Reagan a champion of their loathing
for Fidel Castro, the communist
dictator of the island nation. But that's
not why Rodriguez counts himself
among the thousands of Cubans who
were among Reagan's most fervent
supporters.
"My first memory of him was when
he was the governor of California,"
Rodriguez says. "When he got the
governorship, the state was a bit
messy. When he left, he left it with a
surplus. My initial impression was
that he was a person of conviction. He
would do what he thought was
appropriate to fix things."
Rodriguez, a board member of the
Cuban American National Foundation,
a powerful lobbying group, says he
feels that Reagan helped America hold
up its head again.
"When he ran against Mr. (Jimmy)
Carter, the economy was in shambles,
we had 21% interest rates, we had the
trouble with the Iran hostages," he
says. "I felt like he (Reagan) was a
person who could restore the faith in
our country, what we believe."
He also liked Reagan's handling of
striking air traffic controllers. "He told
them, 'You have a federal job with
national security involved. In your
contract, you said you were not going
to strike,' " Rodriguez says. "They
struck, they were fired."
By Larry Copeland
Father fears that son's sacrifice in Beirut will be forgotten
On Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide truck
bomber destroyed a U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut. The attack killed 241
Americans serving as peacekeepers in
Lebanon. The United States withdrew
its troops from Lebanon five
months later.
A flagpole stands outside the
condominium where Jack and Judy
Young live in Moorestown, N.J. Jack
put it up when they moved in,
natural enough for an Army vet and
the father of two Marines.
Today, as ceremonies continue for
Ronald Reagan, the American flag will
fly from the top of the pole. Jack
Young, whose son Jeff was killed in
the 1983 suicide bombing of a Marine
barracks in Beirut, won't lower it to
half-staff.
"It is mean-spirited, I know," the
father says. "But this just
opens wounds."
failures after the Beirut bombings
were a precursor to those raised 18
years later by the Sept. 11 attacks.
The barracks bombing was a huge
embarrassment for the Reagan
administration — and devastation for
the families of the 241 men killed.
The Youngs and other Beirut
families have tried to help the
families of Americans killed in
subsequent terrorist attacks. Judy,
now 64, started a support group for
families of those killed in Lebanon.
She is now a vice president of Gold
Star Mothers, women whose children
have died while serving in
the military.
The peacekeeping mission —
prompted by the bombing of the U.S.
Embassy in Beirut six months before
— ended with the remaining U.S.
troops leaving Lebanon.
"I'll respect (Reagan) as a
president," says Jack Young, 68, a
retired manager for a grocery store
chain. "But this is part of history that
should be told, and it should be told
on the front page."
In 1999, the Youngs laid flowers at
the site of the Marine barracks. "It's
just like those that go to Ground
Zero," Jack Young says. "We wanted
to do that from Day One."
By Martha T. Moore
The questions of intelligence
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 11
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRI-SUN, JUNE 11-13, 2004, PAGE 2A
Southerner recalls politician who picked
Democratic lock
The percentage of white conservatives in the South who
identified themselves as Republicans was 40% in 1980, when
Reagan was first elected president. That percentage grew to
60% in 1988 and 69% in 2000.
ATLANTA — By the time Ronald Reagan first ran for
president in 1980, Marvin Brown's folks were longtime
Democratic stalwarts who voted a straight party ticket.
"You weren't just expected to vote Democrat," says
Brown, 50, of Atlanta. "You could get excommunicated
from the family if you didn't."
Brown was a construction superintendent who had
voted Democratic until then. "I had learned that the
Republicans were for the rich, and the Democrats were
for working class people."
By 1980, though, Brown was moving more in business
circles. "I was getting different points of view," he says.
Reagan impressed him. "In every speech, he was direct.
He took firm positions, but he was upbeat at the same
time," says Brown, president of VinRam, a high-tech
venture-capital company. "That caught my attention.
I started listening to him." And he cast his first
Republican vote.
Brown says he liked Reagan's "trickle-down economics"
and his emphasis on small business. "I had always
thought there was big business and the working man," he
says. "But he believed in small business." Brown also liked
Reagan's strong stand on defense "and the fact that he
backed down the communists. He basically engineered
the fall of the Berlin Wall."
By Michael A. Schwarz, USA TODAY
Impressed: Marvin Brown of Atlanta comes from a family with
a long Democratic tradition, but Reagan won his vote in the
1980 election.
Many of Brown's fellow Southerners felt the same. In
The Rise of Southern Republicans, Earl and Merle Black
argue that Reagan, racial dynamics, religious
conservatism and population growth transformed the
region into a Republican stronghold.
"In the South, the Reagan realignment of the 1980s was
a momentous achievement," they write. "Reagan's
presidency made possible the Republicans' congressional
breakthrough in the 1990s."
Brown says the greatest presidents of the past century
were Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan. His family would
agree with him on the first. The second? Perhaps not.
"You know when I told my mother I voted Republican?"
he says. "Two weeks ago."
By Larry Copeland
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 12
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRI-SUN, JUNE 11-13, 2004, PAGE 2A
Teacher grades impact as 'negative' —
but not completely
Reagan vowed to eliminate the Education Department as
part of his emphasis on deferring to state and local
government, but he eventually dropped the idea. The
proposal created political problems for Republicans for years.
Even before Ronald Reagan became president, he was
no favorite of teacher Sandra Mack.
She was teaching Spanish at Lowell High School in San
Francisco when Reagan entered the White House. She had
disapproved of many steps Reagan had taken on
education when he was California's governor from 1967
to 1975. And she feared that his vow to kill the Education
Department would choke off federal funding to schools.
"Those kinds of things didn't lead me to expect great
things," says Mack, now 61 and a substitute teacher and
official of her local teachers' union. She still lives in
San Francisco.
As president, Reagan's impact on education was "very
negative," Mack says. She says that during his tenure,
federal aid for college students began shifting from grants
to loans, which forced students to shoulder big debts.
Mack remembers that when Reagan addressed the
American Federation of Teachers in 1983, federation
president Al Shanker had to remind audience members to
be civil to the president.
She was relieved that Reagan's threat to abolish the
Education Department didn't come to anything. And she
had high hopes for "A Nation at Risk," a 1983 report
commissioned by the administration that declared the
nation's schools to be in crisis.
By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
Education: Sandra Mack, a teacher and union official in San
Francisco, became familiar with Reagan's philosophy when he
was governor.
"I thought it was a positive step for education," she says.
"It put education on the political map in a way that it had
not been before."
But ultimately the report didn't make much difference,
Mack says. Americans didn't demand big changes, so
nothing happened.
Mack does give Reagan credit for enough flexibility to
change course, even raise taxes. And he was so
"congenial" that he was an elusive target. "Teachers were
not able to effectively marshal our opposition," she says.
"You couldn't get angry at the man."
By Traci Watson
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 13
Ronald Wilson Reagan Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRI-SUN, JUNE 11-13, 2004, PAGE 2A
Young Republican discovers his idol in 'man who changed the world'
College Republicans, founded in
1892, had more than 1,000 chapters
and 100,000 students during the
"Youth for Reagan" campaign of 1984.
The group dwindled to 400 chapters in
the 1990s and did not regain its
Reagan-era size until 2002.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — College senior
Ian Ellis, 21, of Martinsburg, W.Va.,
wasn't alive when Ronald Reagan
was elected president in 1980. He
was in elementary school when
Reagan exited public life after being
diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
He knows the former president
only as a historical figure. But the
mythic Ronald Reagan — strong,
virile and a beacon of moral clarity —
has been a life-changing force for this
young Republican activist.
Ellis, born into a Democratic family,
is chairman of the Ohio College
Republican Federation, an association
of Republican student groups. He has
been steeped in the Reagan legend
during internships at the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative think tank
in
Washington,
D.C.,
and
The Leadership Institute, which trains
conservative
activists
in
Arlington, Va.
that began in 1984. Some say it began
with (Barry) Goldwater in 1964. But
the difference was: Reagan was
successful. Goldwater was not."
Ellis, who plans to attend law
school, knows Reagan wasn't
universally loved. He recently
discussed Reagan's legacy with a
friend who shed tears about the
harm she thought his foreign policy
had caused in Latin America.
Ellis, a political science major at
Cedarville University, a Christian
school in Cedarville, Ohio, dedicates a
section of his dorm room to posters,
calendars and books that feature
Reagan. "I guess you'd call it a shrine,
as corny as that sounds," Ellis says.
Ellis was in Washington on
Thursday, standing in line for hours
to see Reagan's casket. "I should be
able to do that for a man who
changed the world," he says.
One poster shows Reagan in Berlin
in 1987 saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear
down this wall!" A calendar shows
Reagan at his California ranch,
wearing a cowboy hat.
By Dennis Cauchon
"My only childhood memory of
Reagan is that my grandparents, who
are liberal, hated him," Ellis says. "But
when I got to college, I was exposed
to the other Reagan.
Contributors
Contributing to this report: Paul
Overberg; Nick Summers; President
Reagan by Lou Cannon; Merle Black,
co-author, The Rise of Southern
Republicans
"Reagan was the father of modern
conservatism and gave birth to the
big conservative youth movement
How Americans rate Ronald Reagan:
A breakdown by demographics
All results
How Reagan will be regarded in history as a president:
15%
Outstanding
Above average
Average
Gender
31%
6% 4%
Poor
Race
45%
40%
26%
17%
Below average
43%
6% 5%
47%
35%
14%
7% 3%
6% 4%
Women
Men
28%
27%
16%
51%
43%
19%
14%
White
8% 5%
Non-white
13%
8%
6%
Black
Region
44%
35% 34%
16%
9% 4%
Northeast
10%
49%
40%
35%
19%
24%
8% 3%
Midwest
33%
16%
5% 3%
South
5% 6%
West
By Julie Snider, USA TODAY
Source: USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll June 3-6 of 1,000 adults. Reagan died June 5. Interviewing from June 3-4 showed slightly lower ratings than total sample. Margin of error: ±3 percentage
points for total sample, larger for smaller subgroups.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 14
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2004, PAGE 15A
In his words
"If you seek peace, if you seek
prosperity for the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe, if you seek
liberalization, come here to this gate!
Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
— Remarks directed to Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the
Berlin Wall, June 12, 1987
"A few months ago, I told the
American people I did not trade arms
for hostages. My heart and my best
intentions still tell me that is true, but
the facts and the evidence tell me it is
not."
— Addressing the nation about
Iran-contra, March 4, 1987
"Sending the Marines to Beirut was
the source of my greatest regret and
greatest sorrow."
— About the 1983 Lebanon
bombing that killed 241 U.S. troops,
in his book An American Life
"The poet called Miss Liberty's torch
'the lamp beside the golden door.'
Well, that was the entrance to
America, and it still is. And now you
really know why we're here tonight.
"The glistening hope of that lamp is
still ours. Every promise, every
opportunity is still golden in this land.
And through that golden door our
children can walk into tomorrow with
the knowledge that no one can be
denied the promise that is America.
"Her heart is full, her torch is still
golden, her future bright. She has
arms big enough to comfort and
strong enough to support, for the
strength in her arms is the strength of
her people. She will
carry on in the '80s
unafraid, unashamed
and unsurpassed.
"In this springtime of
hope, some lights seem
eternal; America's is."
— GOP convention,
Aug. 23, 1984
USA TODAY Snapshots
Oldest presidents
When Ronald Reagan was
inaugurated in 1981, he was the
oldest person to take the presidential
oath. How old presidents were when
they first took office:
Ronald Reagan
69 years, 349 days
William H. Harrison
68 years, 23 days
"We will never forget
James Buchanan
65 years, 315 days
them, nor the last time
George H.W. Bush
64 years, 223 days
we saw them — this
Zachary Taylor
64 years, 100 days
morning, as they
prepared for their
Dwight D. Eisenhower 62 years, 98 days
journey, and waved
goodbye, and 'slipped
Source: The top 10 of Everything, by Russell Ash
By Suzy Parker, USA TODAY
the surly bonds of earth'
to 'touch the face of
revolutionary crisis — a crisis where
God.' "
the demands of the economic order
— After the space shuttle are colliding directly with those of the
Challenger disaster, Jan. 28, 1986 political order. But the crisis is
happening not in the free, non"The West will not contain Marxist West, but in the home of
communism; it will transcend Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union."
communism. We will not bother to
— Parliament, June 8, 1982
denounce it; we'll dismiss it as a sad,
bizarre chapter in human history
"While (Soviet rulers) preach the
whose last pages are even now being supremacy of the state, declare its
written."
omnipotence over individual man and
— Notre Dame University, predict its eventual domination over
May 17,1981 all the peoples of the Earth, they are
the focus of evil in the modern world.
"The march of freedom and I urge you to beware the temptation
democracy will leave Marxism- to ignore the facts of history and the
Leninism on the ash heap of history, aggressive impulses of any evil
as it has left other tyrannies which empire, to simply call the arms race a
stifle the freedom and muzzle the giant misunderstanding and thereby
self-expression of the people."
remove yourself from the struggle
— Speech to Britain's Parliament, between right and wrong, good
June 8, 1982 and evil."
— Speech to the National
"In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was
Association of Evangelicals,
right. We are witnessing today a great
March 8, 1983
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 15
ACTIVITY: Unconventional politician who did it his way
Applications: political science, leadership, history, social studies
What accomplishments did Ronald Reagan achieve during his lifetime? What significant events and changes occurred
during his presidency? How was he regarded by the American public both during and after he served as president?
Why are historians revising their view of Reagan? What legacy do you think he will leave behind? Each person leaves a
''legacy'' based on their life choices and results of those choices. What would you like to leave as your legacy? Write a
two-page summary.
What type of leanings did Reagan have early in his political career? What factors contributed to his growing
conservatism? Analyst Marshall Wittman describes Reagan as "the Moses of the conservative movement." What does
he mean? In what way was Reagan "a bundle of contradictions"? How did he reconcile this as president?
SNAPSHOT: Support thin for Reagan dime
APPLICATIONS: social studies, government, knowledge
Why do you think most
people oppose replacing
Franklin D. Roosevelt's
image on the dime with a
portrait of Ronald Reagan?
Would you support or reject
such a change?
life. He also negotiated postWWII treaties.
Reagan, a Republican, was
president during the Cold
War - a period during which
Western fears of further
Soviet
(communist)
advancement predominated.
Reagan's presidency also
brought with it the largest
economic boom in U.S.
history (from 1981-88).*
FDR, a Democrat, was
president during WWII; he is
perhaps best remembered
for his New Deal legislation social and economic
measures
aimed
at
stimulating the economy
Was one a superior leader?
and improving the quality of If so, why? If not, explain.
(*Source: World Almanac)
STUDENT NOTES:
For more information, log on to www.usatodaycollege.com
Page 16
ACTIVITY: Leadership lessons from the Reagan years
Applications: political science, careers, leadership, social studies, history, SCANS: systems
According to reporter Del Jones, how might the late president Ronald Reagan have described greatness? What
leadership lessons did the nation's 40th president teach citizens of the U.S. and around the globe?
Why was Reagan referred to as the "Teflon" president? How did Reagan's character differ from that of many corporate
CEOs? How did he see right and wrong?
What is "vision"? Why is it an important leadership characteristic? Why have vision and strategy fallen out of favor in
American business and government lately?
What does Paul Argenti of Dartmouth's Tuck Leadership Forum believe is the most powerful leadership tool? What
does it mean to be a great communicator? Why is it important for leaders to maintain a sense of humor?
STUDENT EXTENSION: Leadership
What major events occurred during each decade of the 20th century? How might these circumstances have
contributed to a presidents positive or negative approval ratings? How do wars, a poor economy, scandals and other
negative situations impact people's perception of the quality of our country's leadership?
Is the president of the United States the only person who leads this country? What about members of Congress and
other elected representatives or Federal Agencies? Do they have leadership roles as well? Do state governors and other
officials? Why or why not?
Can you name the three branches of government that are designed to check and balance each other? Use a graphic
organizer to diagram this process. Then, explain the type of leadership roles each branch contributes to our political
system.
STUDENT NOTES:
For more information, log on to www.usatodaycollege.com
Page 17