Politicians Offer Fond Memories of Reagan

Ronald Reagan’s final return to Washington this week unleashed a torrent of memories from lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, about the 40th president -- some funny, some nostalgic. But all of them reflected an enormous well of affection.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said that when Reagan was governor, he received a birthday cake during a visit to the state Assembly, then led by Democrat Jesse M. Unruh, a political adversary of the GOP governor.

Reagan blew out the candles, and someone called out, “Governor, did you make a wish?” Reagan looked straight at Unruh and said, “Yes. I made a wish, but it didn’t come true.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told a favorite Reagan joke.

When the president was asked why he didn’t seem to age, Specter said, Reagan told the story about two psychiatrists who came to work at the same time every day:

“Both were immaculately dressed. When they left in the afternoon at the same time, one psychiatrist was totally disheveled and the other continued to be immaculately dressed. After day after day, week after week, month after month of this happening, finally one day when they left, the disheveled psychiatrist said: How is it that we come to the office the same time every day to see our patients, and day after day, week after week, month after month, you leave immaculately dressed and I am disheveled? The immaculately dressed psychiatrist looked at his colleague and said: ‘Who listens?’

“This was President Reagan’s way of saying he can take all of the tough spots of the presidency and still retain his composure and still retain his vigor and his freshness,” Specter said.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) recalled telling Reagan in a phone call that he could not support the full increase in defense spending that the president was seeking. “I was told later by someone who had been in the president’s office during the call that the president turned red and threw the phone on the floor,” Domenici said. “And yet he was absolutely wonderful to me after that. He campaigned for me.”

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) said that as a freshman House member, he was called to a bank of telephones in the Democratic cloakroom. “They told me it was President Reagan calling,” he said. “The president wanted my vote for a policy he was proposing to the Congress. I listened to him, but in the end, I felt he was not right on that particular issue, and I said I could not support him on it. He said: ‘Well, you are a good man, and thanks for taking my call.’ It was just like him to frame it that way.... I believe he personified the notion that you can disagree without being disagreeable.”

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who worked in the Reagan White House, recalled Reagan’s 1989 House visit to deliver a private valedictory to Republican members a few days before President George H.W. Bush’s inauguration.

“He began his speech from the rostrum on the Democratic side of the aisle -- a mistake I attributed to his lack of familiarity with House procedure. It was no mistake. Midway through his remarks about his political career, he described how ‘I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me’ -- and strode purposefully from the left to the right-hand side of the aisle. The assembled Republican members loved it.”

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said: “Many of us were raised on Ronald Reagan. His was my first presidential campaign in 1976, when I was still a student at Kansas State University. I was riding in a tractor in Kansas when I heard the ‘evil empire’ speech. I started pounding on the dashboard, saying: ‘That is right, that is right.’ ”

A number of lawmakers, including Democrats, noted that pictures of meetings with Reagan adorned their offices. California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal Democrat, said she still had a picture hanging in her office of her meeting with Reagan after her election to the House in 1982.