Reagan Library Discards Think-Tank Plan : Attractions: The Center for Public Affairs at the facility near Simi Valley will sponsor more event-oriented programs.

The private foundation that built the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library near Simi Valley is abandoning its plans to develop a public policy think tank in favor of sponsoring more event-oriented programs with popular appeal.

Officials said the recent appointment of renowned historian and biographer Richard Norton Smith as the new director of the Reagan Center for Public Affairs represents a shift away from the initial goals of the center to tackle tough public policy issues.

“It’s a change of focus,” said John J. Midgley, who will be replaced by Smith as director of the center. “And it’s a change that in many respects is consistent with other presidential libraries.”

Midgley said Smith, currently director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Museum in Iowa, will focus more on special events and exhibits with mass appeal to boost library attendance.

“This is clearly his expertise,” Midgley said. “He is the embodiment of this approach.”

Indeed, Smith is the organizer of a current exhibit at the Reagan library. The display, called “Our Presidents: From Washington to Clinton,” features mementos from all 41 Presidents, ranging from John Adams’ silver baby rattle to Abraham Lincoln’s straight razor and shaving mirror.

Smith, who takes over his new job on Nov. 8, said he is already planning a speaker series that will include famous national and international figures.

Promising more than fluff, Smith said he also wants the center to host conferences on a wide range of issues, including a possible seminar in the spring focusing on the future of the Republican Party with Reagan as the keynote speaker.

He said the center’s programs would encourage, rather than exclude public participation by featuring “real people, interesting practitioners, rather than theorists and academics.”

“We want to bring the library to life for people who don’t have Ph.D.s,” Smith said. “I don’t want to remake the Hoover Institution. I’m more interested in appealing to the general public.”

Frederick J. Ryan, Reagan’s chief of staff and a member of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said while Smith’s appointment represents “a bit of a change of focus, it’s not an about-face.”

“We just want to reach out to the general public and have them more involved,” he said. “That’s why we’ve decided on the event-oriented format.”

Walter F. Beran, treasurer of the Reagan foundation, said Smith’s programs will also help focus attention on the library as a major attraction. “My vision is that the Southern California community is going to discover that this is one of the great wonders of the area.”

Midgley said he is leaving because of the board’s decision to change direction of the center. He will stay on as a consultant until the end of the year to help with the transition.

“I’m a political scientist,” Midgley said. “I’m more interested in current events, major policy issues. This is not something that requires my skills.”

A former scholar at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Midgley was sought out to launch the Reagan Center for Public Affairs as a conservative research and public policy institute.

Midgley set out to organize an ambitious series of conferences that would bring together political figures, business leaders and scholars from around the world to conceive new solutions to domestic and international problems.

The basic mission of the center, Midgley said, was to promote the Reagan legacy of individual, political and economic freedom in the ongoing national dialogue over public policies.

The center would take the “principles Ronald Reagan stood for in his life, and translate those ideas into action,” he said. “It would ensure that the Reagan legacy remains applicable to the most important and pressing public policy questions of our time.”

Initially, two conferences were planned this year, but later canceled.

The first was to have focused on the U.S. economy and be headed by former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp. A second was going to concentrate on arms control and include Russian political leaders, with a possible joint appearance by former President Reagan and former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Midgley even traveled to Moscow in February to arrange the conference on arms control and had personally consulted with Gorbachev in April in San Francisco about his participation.

Midgley was also developing a program that would bring to the center potential foreign leaders from Eastern Europe and the emerging democracies of the former Soviet Union for weeks of intensive leadership training.

But after extensive planning, the foundation’s board of trustees decided to shelve the projects to re-evaluate the future of the library and center.

The nine-member board of trustees includes Ronald and Nancy Reagan; Mary Jane Wick, a longtime friend of Nancy Reagan; Ryan, Reagan’s chief of staff; Lodwrick Cook, foundation chairman and chief executive officer of Arco; George P. Schultz, former secretary of state, and publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes Jr.

The trustees asked Midgley to conduct a study on the annual costs of operating a public policy think tank compared to an event-oriented program that would boost library attendance.

After reviewing both proposals, the board selected the less ambitious, less costly option. “They decided that the center and foundation should stay focused on the library,” Midgley said.

John Fawcett, the National Archives assistant archivist, said he recommended Smith for the job at the Reagan Center for Public Affairs.

Fawcett said Smith is a first-rate historian who has authored several books, including “Thomas E. Dewey and His Times” and more recently “Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation.”

Fawcett said Smith also sponsored a number of successful conferences when he was director of the Hoover Presidential Library-Museum and acting director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library.

Perhaps the best example, Fawcett said, was a conference held in 1990 to commemorate the Centennial of Eisenhower’s birth. The program focused on the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which resulted in the desegregation of public schools.

Fawcett said the National Archives favors these types of activities because they help direct attention to the presidential library, which deals primarily with history rather than current events.

“From our perspective, this is far more preferable than a think-tank kind of operation,” Fawcett said. “We don’t have many of those types of operations. The Jimmy Carter Center comes as close to that as any we have.”

Since its inception 11 years ago, the Carter Center in Georgia has been widely acclaimed for resurrecting Carter’s image since Reagan defeated him in 1980.

The center, located on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, has sponsored major conferences on Middle East peace prospects, U.S. health care policy, arms control, Latin America’s debt and international violations of human rights.

Carter himself has been working with leaders of Third World countries to increase food production and eradicate diseases. He has also personally monitored new democratic elections in Zambia, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Smith said the Carter center’s university site is an advantage, and that had the Reagan library and center for public affairs been built at Stanford University as originally planned its mission would be altogether different.

“When the Reagan center was going to be on the Stanford campus, its mission was already defined,” Smith said. “When it was moved to Simi Valley, it had to redefine that mission.”

Meanwhile, Midgley said he is proud of the one conference that he was able to sponsor at the Reagan center this year. In May, four Russian lawmakers were invited to meet with American economists and academics to discuss the economic crisis and power struggles gripping their country as it fights to establish a democratic government.

During the visit, the Reagan center arranged for the Russian politicians to meet with government leaders in Washington and members of the National Security Council at the White House, Midgley said. They also met with Reagan at his Century City office.

“It was exciting,” Midgley said. “It was a chance to take people who are carrying the ball, pull them off to the side, and let them exchange ideas before sending them back into action.

“It was a small step,” he said. “But it was a step in the right direction toward building a public policy center.”