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President Reagan makes remarks to the crowd as Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Virgil Thompson, Katherine Dunham, and Elia Kazan look on in the East Room during a reception in Honor of Kennedy Center award recipients. 12/4/83.

Jimmy Stewart gets academy award in 1940

Above you will notice a picture of Jimmy Stewart. Stewart’s father Alex owned a hardware store in Indiana, PA. For his work in The Philadelphia Story, Stewart won the 1940 Academy Award for Best Actor. On the night of his win, the story goes, after a swirl of post-Oscar parties, the actor took a call from his dad, who wanted to confirm that his only son had won “some kind of prize.” “I heard about it on the radio,” Alex said. “Yeah, Dad,” his son replied. “It’s a Best Actor Award. They give ’em out every year. I won it for The Philadelphia Story.” “What kind of prize is it?” “It’s a kind of statuette. Looks like gold but isn’t. They call it the Oscar.” “Well, that’s fine, I guess. You’d better send it over. I’ll put it on show in the store where folks can take a look at it.” It remained there for the rest of Alex’s life.

The next few days I want to post some portions of an excellent article by Peggy Noonan “Ronald Reagan at 100,” (Wall Street Journal, Feb 3, 2011).

At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountain Range where old Hollywood directors shot Westerns, they will mark Sunday’s centenary of Reagan’s birth with events and speeches geared toward Monday’s opening of a rethought and renovated museum aimed at making his presidency more accessible to scholars and vividly available to the public. Fifty percent of the artifacts, officials note, have never been shown before—essays and short stories Reagan wrote in high school and college, the suit he wore the day he was shot, the condolence book signed by world leaders at his funeral. (Margaret Thatcher: “Well done, Thou good and faithful servant.”)

Much recently has been written about who he was—a good man who became a great president—but recent conversations about Reagan have me pondering some things he was not.

He wasn’t, for instance, sentimental, though he’s often thought of that way. His nature was marked by a characterological sweetness, and his impulse was to be kind and generous. (His daughter Patti Davis captured this last week in a beautifully remembered essay for Time.) But he wasn’t sentimental about people and events, or about history. Underlying all was a deep and natural skepticism. That, in a way, is why he was conservative. “If men were angels.” They are not, so we must limit the governmental power they might wield. But his skepticism didn’t leave him down. It left him laughing at the human condition, and at himself. Jim Baker, his first and great chief of staff, and his friend, remembered the other day the atmosphere of merriness around Reagan, the constant flow of humor.

But there was often a genial blackness to it, a mordant edge. In a classic Reagan joke, a man says sympathetically to his friend, “I’m so sorry your wife ran away with the gardener.” The guy answers, “It’s OK, I was going to fire him anyway.” Or: As winter began, the young teacher sought to impart to her third-graders the importance of dressing warmly. She told the heart-rending story of her little brother, a fun-loving boy who went out with his sled and stayed out too long, caught a cold, then pneumonia, and days later died. There was dead silence in the schoolroom as they took it in. She knew she’d gotten through. Then a voice came from the back: “Where’s the sled?”

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Little known presidential facts:

President Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday anniversary

Former president Ronald Reagan is kissed by Nancy inside their Bel-Air home in Los Angeles on Reagan’s 89th birthday. This is one of the last photos the Reagan family released of the former president, who had been stricken with Alzheimer’s disease.

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President Reagan talking with Christopher Reeve and Frank Gifford during a reception and picnic in honor of the 15th Anniversary of the Special Olympics program in the Diplomatic Reception room. 6/12/83.

1984 Reagan commercial

Frank Gifford is pictured above. He had a long career with the NY Giants and Pat Summerall was one of his teammates during that time. I got to ask Pat Summerall a question at the Little Rock Touchdown Club meeting back in October of 2010. Summerall had pointed out that Tom Landry was the defensive coordinator and Vince Lombardi was the offensive backfield coach when he played for the Giants.  Summerall had shared how he had recovered from his drinking habit and put his faith in Christ and was baptized.

I simply asked him if he had a chance to interact with any Christian Coaches like Tony Dungy or Tom Landry about his conversion. He said that he told Landry about his conversion and that was the only time he ever saw Landry smile. Walt Garrison told Summerall that he never saw Landry smile but he only played for him for 9 years.

I have heard over and over that the rich had a smaller tax load under Reagan and everyone else had a bigger tax load. 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.

The Rich Saw Their Tax Bills Go Down in the 1980s While Everyone Else Paid More
Contrary to popular rhetoric, the wealthiest Americans did not pay less taxes; rather, they paid more taxes after theincome tax rate cuts in 1981. In constant dollars, the richest 10 percent of Americans paid $177 billion in federalincome taxes in 1980 but paid $237 billion in 1988. The remaining 90 percent of households paid $5 billion less inincome taxes over this period.
 They earned more and they paid more. In fact, Federal Reserve Board memberLawrence Lindsey has shown that taxes paid by the wealthy were substantially higher than they would have been if thetop tax rate had remained at 70 percent.
 The share of total income taxes paid by the wealthiest1 percent of all Americans actually rose from 18 percent in 1981 to 25 percent in 1990. The wealthiest 5 percent ofAmericans saw their tax share rise from 35 to 44 percent. So the rise in the deficit was clearly not a result of “tax cuts
for the rich.”

Little known presidential facts:

1. Herbert Hoover was an orphan whose first job was picking bugs off potato plants, for which he was paid a dollar per hundred bugs. He also was a mine worker.^b
2. Gerald Ford worked as a model during college. He also worked as a forest ranger at Yellowstone National Park directing traffic and feeding the bears.^a

I have mentioned earlier that my son Wilson Hatcher was named after Ronald Wilson Reagan. It is fitting that for the first time ever, Wilson had his picture in the Ark Dem Gaz High Profile Section today on the 100 anniversary of Reagan’s birth (Reagan was born on Feb 6, 1911).

President Reagan and Nancy Reagan with Princess Caroline and Prince Albert of Monaco after Nancy Reagan’s National Symphony Orchestra Performance of Saint Saens “Carnival of the Animals” at the Kennedy Center. Washington, DC. 3/28/83.

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Reagan Roast

The clear facts show that lots of economic growth occurred during the Reagan years, but instead of denying that, lots of liberals just try to get that envy ploy going again. “Only the rich made money in the 1980’s while all the rest of us starved!!!” 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 another myth:

In the 1980s the Rich Got Richer and the Poor Got Poorer

During the Reagan years, the total share of national income tilted toward the wealthiest Americans. From 1980 to 1988 the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans increased their share of total income from 16.5 to 18.3 while the poorest fifth saw their share fall from 4.2 to 3.8 percent.

Yet it is not true that the gains by the wealthiest Americans came at the expense of low-income Americans. From 1981to 1989, every income quintile–from the richest to the poorest–gained income according to the Census Bureaueconomic data.
The reason the wealthiest Americans saw their share of total income rise is that they gained income at a faster pace than did the middle class and the poor. But Reaganomics did create a rising tide that lifted nearly all boats.
By 1989 there were 5.9 million more Americans whose salaries exceeded $50,000 a year than there were in 1981 (adjusting for inflation). Similarly, there were 2.5 million more Americans earning more than $75,000 a year, an 83 percent increase. And the number of Americans earning less than $10,000 a year fell by 3.4 million workers.

The gains in incomes of all income groups is all the more impressive when we examine data on income mobility. Tens
of millions of Americans moved up the income scale in the 1980s–an economic fact that is obscured when only the static income quintile data from the start of the decade to the end are examined. 86 percent of households that were in the poorest income quintile in 1980 had moved up the economic ladder to a higher income quintile by 1990. Incredibly, a poor household in 1980 was more likely to have moved all the way up to the richest income quintile by 1990 (15 percent) than to still be in the poorest quintile (14 percent).

President Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday anniversary

A statue of Ronald Reagan is unveiled in the U.S. Capitol’s Rotunda in 2009.

Little known presidential facts:

1. When Mexican general Santa Ana demanded Zachary Taylor (“Old Rough and Ready,” 1784-1850) to surrender, Taylor said, “Tell him to go to hell.”ⁱ

Andrew Jackson was involved in over 100 duels and fights

2. Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) was reportedly involved in over 100 duels, most to defend the honor of his wife, Rachel. He had a bullet in his chest from an 1806 duel and another bullet in his arm from a barroom fight in 1813 with Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton.^g