Tribute to Former President Ronald Reagan

TRIBUTE TO FORMER PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KYL. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is, by unanimous consent, Senator Brownback will follow Senator Kyl. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to follow Senator Brownback.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to extend my deepest sympathy to the Reagan family, and to send a thank you from a grateful Nation to someone who served this country so well. And I know that the citizens I represent in North Dakota feel the same way.

President Reagan had a profound impact on the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. I recall in the 1980s, in the middle of the cold war, when the lives of two men intersected: Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. These two men were very different in many ways, but they changed the course of history. Together, President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sat down together to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons in both countries.

The Soviet Union no longer exists. Eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact no longer exist. The Communist threat and cold war that stemmed from them is gone. And much of the credit, in my judgment, belongs to President Ronald Reagan.

We all recall the historic occasion when he stood at the wall in Berlin and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." It was a moment I will never forget.

But President Reagan was defined by more than this moment.

When hundreds of American troops were killed in Lebanon, it was Ronald Reagan who went to the press room and said: I am accountable. You don't see many in politics do that, but he did.

In 1986, I served on the House Ways and Means Committee, in which we provided the most significant tax reform that had been done in many decades in this country-under the leadership of a President who said let's reduce tax rates for all Americans and get rid of some of the tax loopholes. This President led and the Congress followed. I was proud to be a part of that.

His Presidency was not without substantial controversy and difficulty. I felt his fiscal policy would produce very large budget deficits, and it did. And the Iran-Contra scandal was a serious problem for the administration. Yet, despite those problems and setbacks and controversies, I think President Reagan provided leadership in some very important areas.

The charm of President Reagan was considerable. He had that cowboy hat kind of cocked back on his head. He had movie-star good looks. He had that famous smile. He was a great storyteller with a gleam in his eye. He told the story often about the pile of manure and the child who insisted that if there is a pile of manure, there must be a pony somewhere. The President loved to regale people with stories.

I don't pretend to have known him well, but I sat behind him on the west front of the Capitol in 1981, when he gave his inaugural address. I recall that he announced to the country that planes had just left the tarmac in Iran with the American hostages, now freed. It was a gray, cold day and the first inaugural of President Reagan. As he began to speak, the clouds began to part and rays of sunshine began to come through. It was a remarkable moment.

And I was a freshman member of the House when, one day, I was called to the bank of telephones in the Democratic cloakroom. They told me it was President Reagan calling.

The President wanted my vote for a policy he was proposing to the Congress. I listened to him, but in the end, I felt he was not right on that particular issue, and I said I could not support him on it. He said: Well, you are a good man, and thanks for taking my call. It was just like him to frame it that way.

I had the opportunity to have breakfast with him, along with a handful of my colleagues, one morning in the White House. Once again, he regaled all of us with wonderful, charming stories.

I have always said that if you could have dinner with anyone, you could not do better than Ronald Reagan or Tip O'Neill, both Irish, both wonderful people with a wit and a charm, and both great storytellers.

I believe that for President Reagan, politics was not bitter or rancid. In fact, he used to talk about the "11th commandment" for his party: Thou shalt not speak ill of someone in his own political party. It is a commandment that has been long forgotten, regrettably. I am afraid that today's politics have taken a turn for the worse.

President Reagan was aggressive in debate but always respectful. I believe he personified the notion that you can disagree without being disagreeable.

He was a man of great strength. After he was shot during an assassination attempt-seriously wounded-he was wheeled into the hospital emergency room, and he was ready with a quip for the doctors.

He was a remarkable person. When the Challenger accident occurred and this country was horrified by seeing the explosion of the Challenger and the death of those astronauts, it was Ronald Reagan who came on television and talked about that ill-fated flight. But he did it in such an inspiring way, and finished with the refrain from that poem: They have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and touched the face of God.

Later in life, as President Reagan lived in retirement in California, he began a long journey into the darkness of a devastating illness called Alzheimer's. His last statement to the American people was a poignant statement, in which he described his illness and its consequences.

This is a man who served his country with great distinction, someone with whom I had disagreements from time to time, but someone who I believe is owed the admiration of an entire nation.

I am reminded of a book that David McCullough wrote about another President, John Adams. In the book, you learn that John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, as our Founding Fathers tried to put this country of ours together-and he asked these questions: From where will the leadership come? Who will be the leaders? How will the leadership emerge to create this new country of ours? And then he would plaintively say to his wife: There is only us. There is me. There is Ben Franklin. There is George Washington. There is Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. There is George Mason.

Of course, in the rearview mirror of history, we recognize that these men were some of the greatest human talent ever assembled on Earth. But every generation has asked that same question for this great democracy. From where will the leadership come? Who will be the leaders? And this country has been fortunate that, in generation after generation, men and women of virtually all political persuasions have stepped forward to say: Let me serve this great country.

Ronald Reagan was one of those leaders. He served in California as Governor and then served two terms as President of the United States. He had, in my judgment, a kind of a peculiar quality, a quality that gave him an almost quenchless hope, boundless optimism, an indestructible belief that something good was going to happen, and he communicated that to a grateful nation.

So today we say thank you. Thank you for your service. God bless your memory, and God bless your family.

I yield the floor.