A Tribute to 'The Great Communicator'

By Michael L. Garee and Thomas R. Schori, Principals,  Millennium Marketing Research, 808 E. Ironwood, Normal, IL 61761-5239. Tel. 309-532-8466 -

To some of his detractors, Ronald Reagan was merely a former “B” movie actor who managed to play the “role” of President of the United States to absolute perfection. To those who knew him well and to the millions of Americans who revered him, however, he was a true patriot, a dynamic leader and the person who put this country back on the path to greatness from which it had veered so substantially during his predecessor’s tenure. 

Now comes a new paperback “table-top” book to honor him, in his own words: “Ronald Reagan: The Great Communicator,” edited by Frederick J. Ryan Jr. and published by HarperCollins. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, et al. Featured in the text portion of the book are quotes from his many speeches, news conferences, presidential proclamations and assorted other sources. Taken as a whole these quotes reveal the many facets that comprised the seemingly complex yet actually very simple character and nature of our 40th president. 

Ryan sets the tone of the book in the preface, when he writes:  “‘I hope you are all Republicans,’ he said as he lay in the emergency room of the George Washington University Hospital. With an assassin’s bullet just millimeters from his heart, President Ronald Reagan used his unique God-given skill to convey calm and assurance to those desperately working to save his life. 

“This episode revealed not only Reagan’s incredible grace under pressure, but his unique ability to communicate warm humor in even the most dire circumstances.”

 To be sure, when he took office Reagan had a “full plate.” The country was faced with runaway inflation, joblessness was threatening to plunge the country into a economic depression, the Armed Forces, long neglected, had literally been gutted. Certainly, America didn’t stand quite as “tall” as she once had. Were the days of greatness coming to an end for America? Before Reagan took office it sure seemed that way sometimes.

 Without question, Reagan was the consummate communicator. He had the unique ability to reduce even the most complex problems to their simplest terms, effectively communicate that simple message to his various constituencies, and more important, then to move swiftly ahead with the appropriate remedy. In short, he simply made Americans believe in themselves again.

 Here is what Reagan, himself, said about the appellation, “The Great Communicator.”

 “I’m not sure when I was first dubbed ‘The Great Communicator,’ but I have always been honored by the title. If I have in any way earned it, I hope it’s because I have always tried to speak from the heart to you, the American people. God bless you for the privilege of allowing me to do so.”

 Reagan came to Washington with this simple, yet very important message: the federal government had gotten out of control and had to be reigned in, now! Power and control had to be returned in large part from whence they originated: The People.

 “Our government has no power except that granted it by the people,” he said during his 1981 inaugural address. “It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”

 Those words undoubtedly raised considerable alarm among those who had grown so accustomed to the federal government doing for them that which they were unwilling to do for themselves. But to the majority of Americans those words became a clarion call to action, the call to “take back America,” to return the country to its rightful owners, “We the people.”

 Time and time again, Reagan said many in the federal government had obviously forgotten the fact that it was the states that created it and not the other way round. He consistently championed ideas that would return power both to the individual states and the American citizens who lived in those states.  

 “This is the backbone of our country: Americans helping themselves, and each other. Reaching out and finding solutions--solutions that governments and huge institutions can’t find,” he said at the National Charity Awards Dinner in Phoenix, AZ, in 1992.

 During his nearly 60 years of public service, Reagan demonstrated time and time again that he sincerely believed there was a link between God and America. Here is but one example of his nearly childlike belief in God and in America and the irreversible relationship he saw existing between them.

 “Standing up for America also means standing up for the God who has so blessed this land,” he said in remarks to the National Rifle Association in 1983. “Moses brought down from the mountain the Ten Commandments, not ten suggestions--and if those of us who live for the Lord could remember that He wants us to love our Lord and our neighbor, then there’s no limit to the problems we could solve or the mountains we could climb together as a mighty force for good.”

 Regardless of how well you might think you “know” Ronald Reagan, if you would like to get the full measure of the man, then you would do well to pick up “Ronald Reagan: The Great Communicator.” Like us, we strongly suspect you don’t know quite as much about him as you think you do.

 No more fitting tribute could have been given to Reagan than that which Peggy Noonan gave him in the afterword.  “Ronald Reagan loved the truth,” she writes. “We all do or say we do, but Reagan thought the truth uniquely constructive. He thought that just by voicing it one could actually begin to make things better. He thought that the truth was the only foundation on which something strong and good and even towering could be built. He thought that in politics and world affairs of his time there had been too many lies for too long, and that they had been uniquely destructive.”

We couldn’t have said it better.