EDITOR’S NOTE: This article appears in the June 28, 2004, issue of National Review.
I held a unique vantage point on Ronald Reagan. For six years I was top aide to Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, otherwise known as Ronald Reagan’s No. 1 rival. Before that I was a presidential speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, the man he beat to win the White House.
I first met President Reagan himself in the Speaker’s ceremonial office. It was the president’s “holding room” for the 1982 State of the Union. “Welcome, Mr. President, to the room where we plot against you!” I said. “Not after six,” he answered without a second’s hesitation. “The Speaker says that here in Washington we’re all friends after six.”
Yes, it really happened that way. As the Speaker’s aide, I was that wise a guy, and Ronald Reagan was that masterful in taking command.
Reagan was a tougher, more on-guard character than the guy you’d figure from his breezy public personality–more Jimmy Cagney than Jimmy Stewart. The Ronald Reagan I met in the Speaker’s room was the guy who had survived his divorce from Jane Wyman, the decline of his movie career, the cancellation of his TV show, and the cruel social downgrading that rides shotgun on such defeats.
People forget: Reagan defeated Bobby Kennedy in debate. He was the political street fighter who got up off the dirt to win the 1976 North Carolina primary when nearly everybody counted him for dead. He was the cold-blooded gladiator who strode to the podium of that year’s Republican convention and delivered such a barn-burner it made people wonder what Gerald Ford, the party nominee, was doing on the stage.
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