Patti Davis, daughter of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, wrote a book about the last few years spent with her father as he suffered through Alzheimer’s disease.

Benny Goodman playing clarinet and Buddy Rich playing drums at State Dinner for King Hussein of Jordan. 11/2/81.

You will notice that the late Buddy Rich is pictured above playing the drums. I remember several years ago when I noticed that Ringo Starr was coming in for a concert. I went to buy a ticket but noticed that I had to go to Florida on a business trip when the concert was to take place. I commented to someone that I was going to miss seeing “the most famous drummer in the world.” I was corrected quickly. “No Buddy Rich is both the best and the most famous drummer in the world.” I have to admit that I did not know his name at the time.

Liberals hate to give Reagan any credit. Have you heard the lie that Presidential policy does not matter, but economic cycles come and go and we can not hold our politicians to blame. Many have said that about the success that Reagan had with the economy in the 1980’s. William A. Niskanen and Stephen Moore have sent the record straight in their October 22, 1996 paper “Supply-Side Tax Cuts and the Truth about the Reagan Economic Record.” I will be sharing portions of that article with you over the next few days.

Here is the myth:

Reagan’s political adversaries maintain that the economy expanded rapidly from 1983 to 1989 only because of theunderused resources from the severe recession of 1981-82. This interpretation of the 1980s expansion is contradictedby two facts. First, even taking into account the deep recession years of 1981-82, the economy grew at a faster rateover the entire Reagan period than it did over the Ford-Carter years and the Bush-Clinton years.
Second, the economic expansion of the 1980s was notable for not only its strength but also its length. The Reagan recovery lasted 92 months, making it the second longest uninterrupted economic
expansion in the century–outlasted only by the 1961-69 boom.

Nancy Reagan talking with Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton at a movie screening for “Reds” in the Family Theater. 12/5/81.

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Little known facts about our presidents: 

1. An anarchist and lawyer named Charles Guiteau shot James Garfield in the back with a five-barrel, .44-caliber pistol called a British Bulldog in 1881. He said he chose the gun because it would look good on a display in a museum someday. No one currently knows where the gun is.^b
2. The first attempt to assassinate a president was on Andrew Jackson by Richard Lawrence, a house painter. Both of his guns misfired, however—an event that statisticians say could occur only once in 125,000 times. Andrew Jackson then chased Lawrence with his walking stick.^j
3. James Garfield didn’t die from the gunshot wounds from his assassin’s gun; he died of blood poisoning after doctors and experts (including Alexander Graham Bell) tried to remove the bullet from his back with their dirty fingers and instruments, causing him to linger in pain for 80 days before dying. His assassin, Charles Guiteau, later claimed that he didn’t kill the president, the doctors had.ⁱ