Lessons from the Master
In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth next week, many writers are recalling his political legacy. To make their subject matter current, many of them are drawing parallels between the Great Communicator and Barack Obama, another indisputably effective communicator. Time Magazine even has a cover story called “Why Obama Hearts Reagan,” complete with a composite photograph of the two presidents in friendly embrace.
The love affair is not new. In the president’s bestselling autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, he frequently referenced Mr. Reagan. “I understand his appeal,” Mr. Obama wrote, referring to Mr. Reagan’s ability to spark Americans to “rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work, patriotism, personal responsibility, optimism and faith. That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke … to his skills a communicator.”
More recently, Mr. Obama told USA Today, “No matter what political disagreements you may have had with President Reagan— and I certainly had my share — there is no denying his leadership in the world, or his gift for communicating his vision for America.”
The president took his admiration with him on his recent holiday vacation in Hawaii. According to ABC News, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reported that Mr. Obama’s reading list included a biography called President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon.
Frank Rich of the New York Times described what Mr. Obama found in Mr. Cannon’s book. “What Reagan did know was how to deliver a message… In a particularly instructive passage, Cannon tells of Reagan’s habit of endlessly recycling an inspirational World War II anecdote that, as the press discovered, was a movie-spawned fiction.”
The operative word is “anecdote.” Of all of The Great Communicator’s many skills, his ability to tell a human interest story was high on the list. Mr. Rich described several other of his qualities worth noting—“[his] brand of sunny and homespun (if Hollywood-honed) geniality… ability to pick adversaries and hammer them relentlessly without losing his cool… pitch-perfect showmanship, timing and salesmanship… Reaganesque humor”—but Mr. Reagan’s anecdotes outshone all the others.
You read about the origins and legacy of his human interest stories in a prior post called “Ronald Reagan Meets Lenny Skutnik.”
Several days after Barack Obama returned from his holiday vacation, he was forced to call upon that legacy in a speech about the tragic events in Tucson—the subject of the next post.