Interview with Craig Shirley on Pearl Harbor, Ronald Reagan and Today’s Politics

New Zeal Blog

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

In an interview last month with Accuracy in Media, historian Craig Shirley described how the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and World War II marked a transition for this country, and in doing so, he offered insights that are very relevant today.

“This is a story about a country that goes from being a country of the past to becoming a country of the future, and all the things that spring out of it, big and small,” said Shirley. “The big, obviously, is that we become a permanent internationalist country. We never again retreat to isolationism, as we did after the Spanish-American War, and as we did after World War I. After we defeat Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, we then rebuild them and make them into allies under the Marshall Plan and Douglas MacArthur. We establish military bases around the world—that was unthinkable five years before, that we would have military bases all around the world. We had military bases in the Philippines, and several other locations, but those were the exceptions, not the rule.”

As the U.S. withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan, and absorbs the significance of President Obama’s new plans for America’s foreign policy and the use of our military, Shirley’s newest book, December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World, serves as an important reminder as to how and why America became a superpower during the 20th century.

Craig Shirley is also the bestselling author of Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign that Started It All, which details Reagan’s pivotal 1976 presidential campaign, and Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America, which looks at the 1980 campaign. Mr. Shirley is the president and CEO of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. He has been professionally involved in politics and government for more than 40 years, having worked in government and campaigns at the congressional, gubernatorial, and presidential levels. He is currently working on several more books about Reagan, and a political biography of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich—entitled Citizen Newt. You can learn more about Craig Shirley and his books by visiting his website, craigshirley.com.

We discussed the current political scene and started with his views on the notion, put forth by several liberal commentators, that President Reagan couldn’t win the Republican Party nomination this year because he would be considered too moderate.

Below, in italics, are excerpts from the interview, starting with his comments on Reagan.

You can listen to the complete interview (about 45 minutes) or read the transcript here.

On Reagan

SHIRLEY: I’ve heard that, and that’s utterly ridiculous. The people who say that about Ronald Reagan [that he couldn’t get the Republican nomination this year because he was too moderate] don’t know about Ronald Reagan. He was a conservative. Some of his positions had evolved over the years—he started out, in the ’30s and ’40s, as what he called not a “bleeding heart liberal,” but, as he said, “a hemophiliac liberal.” He was a rip-roaring supporter of the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt, and in 1948 he campaigned for Harry Truman as part of “Hollywood for Truman.” In 1950 he campaigned for Helen Gahagan Douglas against Richard Nixon for the Senate out there. His long political climb had started, and he didn’t really arrive at a conservative philosophy that was based on the individual—and, more importantly, based on the spiritual individual—until the late ’70s, and by then, his philosophy was fully formed as far as individual freedom, rights, privacy, a hatred of totalitarianism—especially as embraced by Soviet Communism—and an oppressive welfare state here in this country. I’m hard pressed to think, when they say—I think it’s just a dumb throwaway line, Roger, to be quite honest. To say that Ronald Reagan wasn’t conservative enough for the Republican Party, it’s ridiculous. When they say that, they don’t offer up any evidence. I’ve spent a lifetime studying Ronald Reagan, working for Ronald Reagan, writing books for Ronald Reagan…I don’t think there’s anybody who has been as steeped in Reagan history as I have. Those people who make those statements, they’re just making foolish statements.

The balance of it is, yes, he raised taxes, but he also cut taxes, and he also cut taxes much more massively, and more widespread—and reformed the tax code, which was far more consequential, and brought down capital gains, the inheritance taxes, and other things like that—than he ever raised. Even the one time he did work with Tip O’Neill, in 1982, to raise taxes, the deal was, there was supposed to be $3 in federal cuts for every $1 in taxes raised. Well, Reagan kept his side of the bargain, the Democrats didn’t. Tip O’Neill didn’t. Federal spending increased. He vowed, in his diaries, and said repeatedly afterwards, that he got snookered and he would never fall for it again—and he never did. He never embarked on any type of deal after that with the Democrats on Capitol Hill, as far as balancing cuts for a tax increase.

In ’91, Bush 41 got snookered by them, too, on the 1991 tax increase. There were supposed to be corresponding spending cuts. There weren’t corresponding spending cuts. So there’s a pretty good track record of Democrats being duplicitous on this issue. The Republicans have simply wised up. Now, they have not explained it well, so it makes them seem like they’re being obstructionists, but if they did a better job explaining their position to the American people, they would look like they’re creating solutions and leaving the American people alone instead of simply stopping spending cuts.

[Reagan] wrote in his diaries, too, that the amnesty bill wasn’t an amnesty bill per se, because amnesty means the abdication of any punishment for a crime committed. There were heavy penalties and citizenship classes and all sorts of things for those people who were here illegally—and we’re talking about a much smaller group of people in 1986 than we’re talking about today. That’s number one. Number two is, the laws were never implemented, and he wrote that in his memoirs. Number three, a lot of these illegals were people, Cubans and Nicaraguans, who had escaped Communist oppression and were here, for all intents and purposes, as political refugees, and not simply here for the economic opportunities. They were escaping the murderous tyrannies of Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro, and there’s nothing wrong with that as far as I’m concerned!

What Reagan wanted to do was to move power away from Washington, back to the states and individuals in the fashion as envisioned by the Founders, the fashion envisioned by Paine and Jefferson and others who believed in individuality over the State.  More >>