The Great Communicator : Reagan Gets Presidential Treatment on Son’s Radio Show

For other radio talk show hosts, it might have been a coup--having former President Ronald Reagan alone in the radio booth for an hour. Imagine the possible fodder, not the least being the Iran-Contra affair, and whatever else callers might want to spring on him, live on the air, for a spontaneous and unrehearsed reaction.

But clearly, Reagan wasn’t exactly walking into treacherous territory Tuesday afternoon. Maybe it was the red, white and blue balloons that telegraphed friendly environs, or the similarly colored streamers hanging from the radio booth’s window, or the “Welcome Mr. President” banners.

Or maybe it was the sense that he wouldn’t be blindsided by his interviewer.

“For the next hour,” said the host, “we’re going to be visiting with a man who was the 40th President of the United States, all because at one time, he was incapable of reading the morning news, at WOC in Davenport, Iowa. He’ll be taking your phone calls. He’s my father. I also call him Mr. President. Welcome to the show, sir.”

“Thank you, Mike. It’s a pleasure to be here, to see where you carry on,” the former radio broadcaster responded to his son. This was, after all, the first time Michael Reagan had landed his dad to be a guest on his KSDO-AM afternoon talk show.

And so it was Tuesday, the Reagan-Reagan Show, father and son, one-on-one like some Thanksgiving dinner banter over old times, about as cutting and pointed as a high school newspaper reporter interviewing the principal. Son asked father if he had any favorites in the Notre Dame-USC football game. It was that kind of a show.

It was a mix of warm-fuzzies and spleen venting over old adversaries, and what it wasn’t was a call-in show. Over the hour, only four callers were put through--reasonably tender and manageable calls that were easily fielded.

Not that more people weren’t trying.

“People are calling (on the radio station’s business phone lines) to leave messages for Ronald Reagan,” a haggard telephone receptionist said to Executive Producer Gayle Falkenthal. “And they’re staying on the phone. Do I have permission to hang up on them?” Other callers on the phone-in lines were put on hold at 2 o’clock, and by show’s end, they were still holding.

In the meantime, Ronald Reagan talked to Michael Reagan about his summits with Soviet President Michael Gorbachev, the melting of the Iron Curtain, childhood memories, of working at Sears and getting a job on radio and, oh yeah, the President’s dismally selling autobiography, “An American Life.”

He got somber discussing his decisions to send American servicemen and women to battle in Grenada and the death of Marines in Lebanon, and empathized with President Bush’s handling of the Persian Gulf crisis. Give the Iraqis until Jan. 15, the former chief executive advised.

About the only time the President got testy was when he recalled battling a Democratic Congress over deficit spending and the media for lying, he said, about the Iran-Contra affair and for casting him as “the President of the rich.”

“I’d like to burn down every journalist in the country,” he said.

Later in the show, Reagan the son asked Reagan the elder about how he coped with one of his most trying days in office, with the Lebanon terrorism, Grenada and turmoil at home.

“How do you get through it?” son asked.

“Well, you have to get through it,” father answered.

How about Margaret Thatcher’s resignation as prime minister?

“I’m sorry about it, because I think she was one of the best things that has happened in England in years and years and years.”

As the hour neared its end, the younger Reagan picked one last call. He scanned his computer monitor to see which callers were on hold--identified by first name, city and a synopsis of the topic the caller wanted to broach.

One was on “choosing running-mates.” Another was on “battle with cancer.” Still another was on “budget deficit.” And then there was “Iraq-U.N.” Instead, the younger Reagan picked line 8.

It was Mike, from Tierrasanta, who wanted to know the President’s “greatest accomplishment.”

Reagan answered: “I’ll have to tell you. When I took office, I had a feeling the American people who had been told for such a long time before I got there that we had a malaise, that we were never going to be as good as we were before, that we had to gauge down and know we could never be as prosperous as we once were, I just had a feeling the American people were hungry for a spiritual revival, and this, I think, we succeeded in changing. . . . The American people (now) are patriotic, they believe in their country, they love their country, and they believe, once again, that ours is the best way of life.”

Michael Reagan closed the show by quoting the boss’s reaction to his father’s first radio job audition. “He said, after your audition on WOC Radio, ‘You done good, you big s.o.b.’ ” Both Reagans laughed.

When the hour was over, as the elder Reagan was being escorted from the second-floor interview booth to his waiting limousine, his son caught up to him in the lobby.

“Thanks, Dad!” Michael Reagan called out to his father.

“Thank you for having me on your show, son,” Ronald Reagan answered.

“Thanks for not taking it over,” Michael replied, laughing.

They shook hands. Then they embraced.

Then, just after the 3 o’clock news, KSDO-AM returned to the normalcy, with Bill Holland’s “Money Talks” show, of T-bills and Fanny Maes and volatile stocks.