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| Newt Gingrich: Reagan Was a 'Remarkable Leader' |
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Newsmax.com
February 6, 2009
Former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells Newsmax that Ronald Reagan was a
"principled" leader who will be remembered as one of the two greatest
American presidents of the 20th century.
Gingrich also said
on Friday - Reagan's birthday - that the president enjoyed telling
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev jokes poking fun at the Soviet system.
Newsmax's
Ashley Martella pointed out that Michael Reagan said in a recent
Newsmax interview that President Reagan's greatest legacy was freedom -
liberating people of the former Soviet Union - and asked if Gingrich
agreed.
"First of all, his greatest achievement was turning
around America, rebuilding our economy, making us proud to be Americans
again," said Gingrich, who has a new DVD out, "Ronald Reagan:
Rendezvous with Destiny."
"And because he had built that base, he was able in the following few years to defeat the Soviet empire, which disappeared.
"It's
one of the greatest achievements in history - the idea that you could
roll back an entire empire, which was on offense in 1980 under Jimmy
Carter and looked like it was the dominant wave of the future, and 11
short years later it disappeared.
"I think that Ronald Reagan
is one of the most understudied leaders in modern times and really is
worthy of things such as the movie [his wife] Callista and I just did,
'Rendezvous with Destiny.' Because when you study Reagan - you see him
on film, not just read about him but see him - you realize what a
remarkable leader he was and how he integrated everything almost like a
great actor or a great ballerina."
Martella asked if Gingrich
thought, when Reagan said at Berlin Wall, "Mister Gorbachev, tear down
this wall," that it would actually happen.
"Well, he believed
it would ultimately happen. I don't think he thought it would happen as
fast as it did," answered Gingrich, well known as the architect of the
"Contract with America" that led the Republican Party to major
victories in the 1994 congressional elections.
"But he had
always believed that there were Germans on both sides of the wall and
sooner or later it was inevitable that they would want to be together
because they were all Germans.
"But the real key to 'Mister
Gorbachev, tear down this wall' occurred in 1983, four years earlier,
when he gave a speech in which he described the Soviet Union as an
'evil empire.' It was that speech and the use of the word 'evil' which
really struck at the heart of the moral authority of the Soviet Union.
"We
have it in the film. Natan Sharansky - who at the time was in the Gulag
in Siberia - tells the story of how when they learned that Reagan had
said 'evil empire,' the morale of the prison guards dropped and the
morale of the prisoners went up. And that was the decisive beginning of
the end in terms of the Soviet empire itself.
Martella asked Gingrich to recall a memorable personal encounter with Reagan.
"One
of the most memorable is actually a picture hanging on the wall of my
family room. The two of us are on Air Force One. We're both in
shirtsleeves. We both have our arms crossed and we're laughing. We're
laughing because Reagan has told another joke. Reagan collected jokes,
particularly about the Soviet Union."
One joke that Gingrich
recalls was about "the man who tells a reporter, 'I have as much
freedom in the Soviet Union as I have in Washington.' The reporter
says, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'Well, I can get up in front of the
Kremlin and I can say that Ronald Reagan is doing a terrible job. And I
can get in front of the White House and say Ronald Reagan is doing a
terrible job. See, I'm totally free'...
Read the rest of the article here...
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| Comments |
 By
For_The_Gipper @
Tuesday, February 10, 2009 4:52 PM
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I have been thinking about this for awhile now. I would like to see a great monument to the great Presidents of the 1900s.
You know something to make Americans feel good about being American. Maybe a new Mount Rushmore. FDR,JFK,Reagan. Some other mentions would be Eisenhower and Truman.
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