drawing: Faces #1450 "I've wondered all these years"

By Jack Brummet

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GOP-Tea Party Fact Check on nominations in a President's final year

By Mona Goldwater

Justice Scalia was nominated by President Reagan in July 1986. He was confirmed September 17th, a month and a half before Election Day (when Democrats regained control of the Senate). As Charles Clymer wrote recently "When things go their way, the system is working just fine. When the rules are inconvenient, the Constitution suddenly becomes a living document open to interpretation."

Photo: RWR and Scalia after the nomination announcement.

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President Ronald Reagan on the movie ET and alien life

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.

Over the years, RWR made many references and allusions to UFOs and aliens/greys, including discussing the time he saw a UFO. He and Nancy were portrayed in one of the last episodes (maybe the last) of the great series #DarkSkies.

Here is an audio clip and transcript of Steven Spielberg discussing Reagan's reaction to the film ET.

Quint: "Now, I've heard a story that I wanted to run by you. I have no idea if it's true, but an effects friend of mine told me about a special screening of E.T. for Ronald Reagan. Have you heard this story?"

Steven Spielberg: "I was there!"

Quint: "The story I heard is that when Reagan saw it he started talking about how close to reality it was and he was quickly ushered out of the room. Is that true?"

Steven Spielberg: No, he wasn't ushered out of the room. He was the President of the United States! Nobody could usher Ronald Reagan out of the room! It was in the White House screening room and Reagan got up to thank me for bringing the film to show the President, the First Lady and all of their guests, which included Sandra Day O'Connor in her first week of as a Justice of the Supreme Court, and it included some astronauts... I think Neil Armstrong was there, I'm not 100% certain, but it was an amazing, amazing evening. 

"He just stood up and he looked around the room, almost like he was doing a headcount, and he said, "I wanted to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie," and then he looked around the room and said, "And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true." And he said it without smiling! But he said that and everybody laughed, by the way. The whole room laughed because he presented it like a joke, but he wasn't smiling as he said it."

"The room did laugh and then later on I'll never forget my conversation with the President. He pulled me aside, he said... and I can't do Reagan. I wish I could do that breathy, wonderful voice of his... And Nancy Reagan was standing right next to him and the President said to me, "I only have one criticism about your movie," and I said "What's that?" He said, "How long were the end credits?" I said, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe three, three and a half minutes?" He said, "In my day, when I was an actor, our end credits were maybe 15 seconds long." He said, "Why don't you let everybody get a credit... three and a half, four minutes, that's fine, but only show that inside the industry, but throughout the rest of the country reduce your credits to 15 seconds at the end?" Nancy Reagan turned to him and said, "Oh, Ronny, they can't do that. You know that." And he went, "Oh, yes, yes. I suppose." (laughs) That was the extent of my conversation about that. That was his only criticism, he felt the end credits were too long! Quint: So, do you think he actually let something slip there? Steven Spielberg: I don't think he let something slip there, no. I think he delivered a joke without smiling, without a little bit of a twinkle behind the joke. I think the joke landed because everybody laughed, but because I'm a little bit of a Ufologist I was hoping that there was something more to the joke than met my eye. I'm sorry to say I think he was simply trying to tell a joke."

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Venus and Serena Williams with Ronald and Nancy Reagan, circa 1990

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President Reagan cuts in on the Chairman of the Board (a/k/a Frank Sinatra)

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

President Reagan cuts in at his birthday party in 1981.  Kitty Kelley, in a 1991 book on the Reagans, claimed (disputed by many) Nancy and The Chairman had a long term affair.

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Ron and Nancy Reagan on the campaign trail, 1976

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Four Presidents elected twice by a majority vote: FDR, DDE, RWR, and BHO

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed.

Question #1: 232 scholars think the President is rocking the Presidency.  What about the other 188, or 523 scholars who don't?

It's true only these four Presidents we're elected twice with majorities.  And it's awesome BHO is on the list.  Yes, he has taken a substantial political and PR shellacking while racking up some great accomplishments.  But so did the other three on this list (the shellackings anyhow).

RWR in particular was run through the mill--rightfully--his last two years in office, in addition to being portrayed as lazy and at times bizarre (e.g., consulting an astrologist regularly, seeing a UFO in 1974), on top of using drug money to arm the Anti-Sandinista Rebels, and the other clandestine acts  of the Ollie North era.   

Plenty of people called FDR treasonous after the Yalta meetings, and before.

Ike was often considered out of touch.  He was pretty bland. He was smart, but too blind to race.  He could have jump started the discussion.  But he did not.  He said a lot of smart things about the military and the munitions and war machine.

If BHO could communicate as passionately as he did when he was.a first term candidate, I think he would be on a lot steadier footing.  That's never been my problem with him.  Mine has been the hesitation, not waffling really, but kind of a Hamlet-like or Prufrockian pondering instead of acting.

Via Occupy Democrats - "OBAMA RATED BEST PRESIDENT IN PAST 50 YEARS, but you wouldn't know it. — Presidential scholars rank President Obama as the best president in the past 50 years, and Bush as the worst. Obama even bests the GOPper's sacrosanct cowboy, President Reagan. In fact, in the past 100 years only four presidents have been ranked better than Obama. Why then, do people question his achievements, ESPECIALLY in light of GOP obstruction bordering on sedition, and unprecedented voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering, along with Citizens United dollars? Eventually his rank will move higher on this list as Bush's moves toward the bottom of the barrel. But back to the premise of this image I created. Can there be any reason other than race that causes such widespread denial of presidential accomplishment and success? I conclude it can ONLY be about race. Millions of Americans will not give President Obama the respect he deserves not only as president but as a human being. The corporate owned media are among the worst sources for spreading these lies about the president's citizenship, academic accomplishment, presidential success, etc. These same deep rooted feelings of racial animus fuel the fear and hate that contributed to the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Racism has been institutionalized into our corporate hierarchies, into our prison and court systems and even into our police forces which are seven times as likely to kill black men as white men. Hopefully this image and the questions it raises, help put into perspective the deeply rooted racial undertones that guide our daily paths like the roads on which we drive, paths that dictate our sense of direction and our decisions, many of which are subliminal, yet have far reaching consequences, like police officer Darren Wilson wondering, "Can I legally kill this man?" Americans need to increase the intensity of this dialogue, to question their own conscious and unconscious decisions regarding race and its role in our lives. The future of our nation depends on this introspection, reflection and national conversation. Please share this image. Thank you. {Allow me to answer those of you who wonder about President Clinton's victories. You'll recall that H. Ross Perot mucked things up a bit, with Clinton winning but getting only 43% and 49% of the popular vote in 1992 and 1996 respectively." - Tracy Knauss

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A gathering of White House Superheroes: Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan. George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon

By Jack Brummet

[original photographer unknown]

A gathering of White House superheroes. Say what you will about Dick Nixon, he lasted longer in the West Wing than anyone else in this lineup, except RWR.

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President Ronald Reagan photobombed in the Oval Office, circa 1987

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

President Reagan was photobombed at a "photo op" in the Oval Office with with Congressman Curt Weldon and his family. Photo source:  Reagan Foundation.

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President Ronald W. Reagan rides a missle

By Jack Brummet

This is a 1981 photo of a statue of President Ronald Wilson Reagan of the United States on a missile. This was a protest sculpture on the street Nieuwezijdsvoorburgwal (really?!) in Amsterdam.  RWR appears to be emulating the final Slim Pickins scene in Dr. Strangelove.

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Sweatpants Gipper: Ronald Reagan goes casual

By Mona Goldwater, Fashion Ed.

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Ronald Reagan talks about the Democrats (Pre-politics of destruction in U.S.)

By Jack Brummet, Two-party system editor

This video clip of a good natured speech by President Ronald Reagan reminds me of the days before the politics of destruction took over.  It reminds me of Adlai Stevenson's famous quote about Republicans:  "I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”

[Thanks to Guy Brummet for sending this along].

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If Only. . .No. 3: President Mario Cuomo

By Jack Brummet
Democratic Affairs Editor

As Number 2 in our series "If only. . .",  we want to present former New York Governor Mario Cuomo.  He was a master speaker, but he was bright (150 watts), with a heart of shimmering gold.  I used to listen to him on his radio show in NYC (what we'd now call a side-project) and got a pretty good measure of the man over many hours listening to him at night.  I voted for him for Mayor in the fall of 1977, a few months after I moved to NYC. 

Why did he decline to run for President, even when it seemed likely he could at the least capture the Democratic nomination?  We'll never really know; but we probably know,  or we can guess:

• The best guys never run for President.  For all the reasons you've heard before.  Don't get me wrong--there have been plenty of ringers. . .good-hearted, decent, and very bright men (men, so far).  

• The timing is never right. This is a perennial problem in Presidential politics--when do you make the contest? There are scores of factors (all of which, in reality, boil down to $$$) and infinite variations exponentiated with chicanery, skullduggery, treacherous to inept boardroom and office politics, and when and to whom various levels of payoffs, grease, compromise, blackmail, and even physical and psychological harm should be applied).

• Skeletons rattling in the closet? Those skeletons were often alluded to, but none ever materialized.  If you ran for Mayor and Governor in New York, the rattling bones would have been shaken from the closet.  I never believed in those skeletons.

• He didn't want to know if he would win or not. He wanted to keep that aura, which would  be sullied by jumping in to The Snake Pit.  For me  at least, this was one of the great political heartbreakers of all time.  OK, not RFK heartbreaking, but a little sad.  You don't throw yourself off a cliff over a woulda-shoulda-coulda. . .but still, I often think about Mario and wonder "what if..."

Check out text of Mario Cuomo's 1984 keynote address, here if you need convincing.  It is one of the greatest speeches of our time.

Other ATIT articles on Governor Cuomo:

The Man Who Should Have Been King
Mario Cuomo Nominates Bill Clinton at the convention
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President Reagan and Vladimir Putin. . .23 years ago?

By Jack Brummet
Presidential History Editor

click to enlarge

I missed this photo/controversy when it first appeared two years ago.  People seem absolutely convinced this is Vladimir Putin posing as a tourist.  The Russians vehemently deny this is him at all.  There are fairly tantalizing arguments on either side of the question.

According to Pete Souza, "President Barack Obama's official photographer, a picture he took in Red Square 21 years ago indicates that Mr Putin was part of a KGB plot to embarrass Reagan on his first ever visit to Moscow."

Kremlin officials are said to be angry about the emergence of Mr Souza's photograph, and believe it is an attempt to smear Mr Putin.  Russian experts (e.g., "experts in Russia") claim that the young man dressed in a tight t-shirt with a camera slung around his neck is not Mr Putin.

Souza told National Public Radio in the United States that the incident occurred when Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet general secretary, toured Red Square in the Summer of 1988.  Reagan was led to a group of Russian tourists who were allegedly positioned in Red Square to ask a series of pointed questions about America's human rights record.

Souza now says that a secret service officer told him the tourists were in fact "all KGB families."

"Now what is really interesting is a picture I have in my Reagan book," he said. "Off to the left is one of these tourists with a camera around his shoulder and it has been pointed out to me and verified that that was Putin. As soon as you see the picture you go: 'Oh my gosh, it really is him.'"

Experts in Moscow, however, call B.S.  During Reagan's visit, Putin was serving as a mid-ranking KGB spy in Dresden and would not have been called to Moscow to help with a dirty trick.  The Russians also note that the man in the photograph has a thicker head of hair than Mr Putin ever did.

Yeah, it does resemble the Prime Minister.  But I could really go either way. . .

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