One of the worst chores at the ranch involved painting the long white fence that encircled the property. I can’t tell you how many board feet of fence I painted over the years—sometimes with Dad and sometimes with Richard Jackin, the son of Dad’s ranch foreman. By the time Richard and I would finish painting for a day, we’d be covered in paint—it’s a hot, unpleasant chore. But that’s how we made our spending money. After work, Richard and I would ride horses all over those hills, where the cities of Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village and the Sherwood Country Club are today. Richard Jackin and I remain good friends after all these decades.
Fast-forward to 1984, the night my father accepted his party’s nomination for a second term as president. That night, ABC’s 20/20 featured a special interview with my father—and in the course of that interview, he talked about those white fences and his son Michael. The interviewer was newsman Tom Jarriel, who had ridden with me in my Scarab racing boat when I set the world record between Ketchikan, Alaska, and Seattle, Washington, raising $250,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. So Jarriel knew me, and one of the questions he asked Dad was, “When did you know that Mike was going to make it in life?” Dad said:
Well, Tom, I can tell you the exact moment I knew Michael would make it. We had white fences at the Malibu ranch, and he’d make extra spending money in the summer by painting those fences. I’d pay him ten cents for the rails and fifteen cents a post. One day, I drove by the main entrance and I saw two young boys painting the fence. I didn’t know those boys, so I stopped and said, “I’m Ronald Reagan, and this is my ranch. Who are you fellows? And where’s Michael?” They said, “He’s at the beach. He’s paying us seven cents a foot to paint the fence.” So Michael had subcontracted the job to these boys, and he was making money while relaxing at the beach. That’s when I knew that Michael would do all right in life.
Dad believed in the importance of hard work—but he also believed in the importance of working smart. When he saw those two boys painting the fence, he knew I had the makings of a good businessman. He believed that the way to get ahead in life was to use your muscles—and your brains.
One of Dad’s most-quoted lines was, “I’ve heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take a chance?” A funny quip—but growing up with him, I knew better. Ronald Reagan believed in hard work. He worked hard at everything he did, whether it was mending his fences, making a movie, giving a speech, campaigning for office, or governing the country. And Dad worked hard to instill that Protestant work ethic in his four children.
Dad believed that some of the hardest and most important work we do is brain work. He believed in continually improving the mind. He was personally committed to the principle that education begins in school and continues throughout life. That’s why, after graduating with a degree in economics, he continued to study the writings of free market economists, from Adam Smith to Henry Hazlitt to Ludwig von Mises. He had a large personal library in his home, and when I lived with Dad and Nancy in my teen years, I often saw him reading books, underlining passages, and making notes in the margins.
My father proved that you don’t have to go to Harvard or Yale or some other Ivy League school to become president of the United States. But I would offer one suggestion as we make our decision at the polls: whoever we vote for should—like my father—have a degree in economics.
The historic success of Reaganomics during the 1980s didn’t just happen. It was an economic revolution Dad set in motion after years of personal study and hard work. He had a team of great free market economists advising him, including Arthur Laffer and Milton Friedman, and he knew exactly where he wanted to take the country. The miracle of the Reagan Eighties was the direct result of years of preparation Dad invested in his economic plan.
Many people assume that, because my father could deliver a speech so naturally and effortlessly (at least, he made it look effortless), he simply had a “gift” for public speaking. Few people realize how hard Dad worked to make his speeches seem so “effortless.” He spent countless hours preparing his speeches and honing his message in front of countless audiences. I lived with Dad and Nancy when he was a traveling ambassador for General Electric (GE). He wrote his own speeches, and he filled hundreds of index cards with talking points. He developed his own system of abbreviations so he could squeeze a lot of ideas into a single card. Then he practiced each speech until he no longer needed his notes.
Once, when I was eleven or twelve, I looked in the second drawer of Dad’s big desk at his home in Pacific Palisades, California. That drawer contained stacks and stacks of note cards for his speeches, all in his own neat handwriting, wrapped in rubber bands. During that time, when Dad was hosting General Electric Theater on television, he kept up a grueling ten-week travel schedule every year, going from one GE plant or civic club meeting to another, sometimes giving as many as a dozen speeches in a single day.
Those years of hard work and preparation are the reason his speeches looked “effortless.” I saw the hard work he put into becoming the “Great Communicator.” And I saw what a powerful medium of influence and persuasion public speaking can be. That’s why, to this day, I work hard at my own public speaking, and I continue to give fifty or sixty speeches every year.
Acting, public speaking, and leadership are essentially brain work. Yes, all three professions are physically taxing and can leave you physically spent at the end of the day. But whether you are emoting in front of a camera, delivering a passionate speech to an audience, or making decisions and chairing meetings all day, brain work is hard work—physically, as well as mentally and emotionally.
Always Working, Always Writing
Dad enjoyed physical labor as much as he enjoyed brain work. He could have been a great carpenter as well as an actor and president. He was, above all, a builder. If you go to Rancho del Cielo, his ranch in the Santa Inez Mountains near Santa Barbara, you’ll see the ranch that Ronald Reagan built. You’ll see the fence he put up with his own hands. You’ll see the roof that he tiled, the doors he hung, the fireplace he built, and the boat dock he constructed with his own hands. Whenever I went with Dad to the Northridge ranch or the Malibu ranch or Rancho del Cielo, he was always maintaining, improving, working. He carried out every task with care, patience, and pride.
Dad bought Rancho del Cielo in 1974, near the end of his first term as governor of California. After he left office, he hired two men as his personal assistants—Dennis LeBlanc, a member of Dad’s California State Police security detail, and Barney Barnett, a retired highway patrolman who had been Dad’s driver when he was governor. LeBlanc and Barnett continued to work with Dad, doing everything from scheduling and advance work for his speeches to helping Dad rebuild and remodel the ranch property.
LeBlanc recalled that throughout each day, Dad was always busy, always working—and much of his work was writing:
He was constantly writing. . . . A lot of the time it was on a legal pad, where he’d write things out longhand. Other times it would be taking speeches that he wrote out longhand, and then putting it on 4 by 6 cards. . . .
We drove up to the ranch from Los Angeles and back down the same day many, many times for the next two years. Either Barney or I would drive, and Reagan would sit in the backseat with his legal pad, writing. . . .
When we got to the ranch, we put in eight or nine hours of work. We ripped out walls and really gutted the place. . . . Then we’d drive back. He would be writing in the backseat. . . .
Ronald Reagan never slept on planes when he was traveling. It was the same way when I was with him in the station wagon. It was like—you’re wasting time if you are sleeping. You know, everyone’s got things to do. And his thing to do when I was with him was his writing.1
Dad cultivated an image of a chief executive who delegated everything and took a lot of naps, and I believe he did so because that image lulled his opponents into underestimating him. While they were laughing at him and calling him an “amiable dunce,�
�� he was running rings around them and enacting his agenda. Whether he was working with his hands or working with his mind, Dad always worked hard. Everyone who was close to him attests to his intense work ethic.
I remember taking Colleen and Cameron to visit Dad and Nancy at their Pacific Palisades home shortly before Dad took office in 1981. General Electric had built that house as a showcase in 1956, when Dad was a spokesman for GE. In 1980, when Dad ran for president, the Secret Service rented a small house below the main house to use as a security command post during the campaign. At taxpayer expense, the Secret Service built a stairway that cut through the ivy and connected the Secret Service house to the Reagan home, so agents could reach the house quickly. I was visiting the home one last time because I had spent much of my adolescence in that home, and it would be sold after the inauguration.
Dad and I took a walk around the house and yard, and he pointed to the Secret Service house below, and the stairs that led up to our house. “See those stairs?” he said. “What do you suppose it cost to build that stairway?”
“Dad, I have no idea.”
“Well, I just saw the bill for those stairs. The General Services Administration charged the Secret Service twenty-five hundred dollars to build those steps a year ago, and they’re charging another thousand dollars to rip them out. My driver, Barney, and I could have done that whole job for less than five hundred dollars with plenty of lumber left over. The federal government wastes too much money. Those steps are typical of all the waste in government, and I’m going to put a stop to it.”
When I look back on that conversation, I think it says a lot—not only about my father’s view of government waste, but also about his work ethic. He would have gladly gone down to the lumber yard, come back with a load of boards and nails, and he and Barney would have done the whole job for a fraction of the cost. And you know what? He would have enjoyed every moment of that project. Dad just loved to work.
His work ethic kept him in incredible shape for his age. After he was shot, Dad had a weight room set up in the family quarters of the White House. He wanted to stay in shape—and he knew that a person’s muscles tend to atrophy during a hospital stay. He worked out almost daily and ended up adding two inches of muscle to his chest. Riding horses, chopping wood, and mending fences at the ranch undoubtedly contributed to his excellent physical condition and longevity.
Many times when Dad and I were together, he’d jab my belly with his forefinger and say, “You should be working out, Mike.” Then he’d invite me to throw a punch at his rock-hard abs and say, “You’ve gotta stay in shape.”
The American Government versus the American Work Ethic
My father often talked about an experience he had while in college during the Great Depression. His father, Jack Reagan, was a federal relief administrator in Dixon, Illinois, and Jack shared an office with the supervisor of county relief programs. Dad sometimes dropped by Jack’s office, and he was dismayed to see the fathers of many of his classmates standing in line, waiting for handouts.
Jack Reagan knew that dependency on government handouts was killing the pride and dignity of those men, so he came up with a plan of his own. Every morning, on his own initiative, Jack Reagan would leave home early and drive around to different parts of the county, asking if anyone had temporary work available. Then he’d go back to his office, and when men came in for their handouts, Jack would tell them where they could find work.
My dad was often present when Jack gave those men the news that there was a job waiting for them. The men would actually stand taller because they wanted to work—they didn’t want to be dependent on handouts.
But a few weeks after Jack started finding jobs for these men, something changed. Jack would offer a lead on a job to a line of waiting men—and there were no takers. The men would just look at the floor, unable to make eye contact, unwilling to take the job. Finally, one of the men explained why.
“Jack,” the man said, “I know you’re trying to help, but the last time you found work for me, the man of the welfare office took away my relief check. He said I had a job. It didn’t matter that the job was temporary—I wasn’t eligible for welfare anymore. I can’t afford to do that to my family. I can’t take any more jobs.”
In the depths of the Great Depression, there were jobs to be had—and no takers. The government had made sure that those unemployed men stayed on the dole, not on a payroll. The government killed the incentive to work.
That experience helped shape Dad’s view of government. He knew that the best “program” for lifting people out of poverty is a job—a private sector job. And he saw how government policies undermined the hard-working American family.
As a result of government interference in our lives, working families spend more on taxes than they spend on food, shelter, and clothing combined.2 Many American moms and dads have to work extra jobs just to pay their taxes—and time spent away from the family is time robbed from children, time that can never be repaid once a child has outgrown those formative years. The crushing tax burden translates to more children who are not hugged, nurtured, read to, and prayed with as they should be. One of Dad’s economic advisors, Arthur Laffer, explained Dad’s economic philosophy this way: “When you tax something, you get less of it, and when you subsidize something, you get more of it. You know, we tax speeders to get them to stop speeding, and we tax cigarette smokers because we want them to stop smoking. And then we come along and tax people who work, and especially people who work very productively and make a lot of money. Do we do that to stop them from working and stop them from being productive?”3
My father thought it was outrageous that the government taxed American ingenuity, hard work, and productivity while subsidizing idleness and irresponsibility. He was not about to subsidize laziness in his own family—and he certainly didn’t want the government to subsidize laziness in his own family, including his son, Michael.
You have to understand, my father went to Eureka College then he paved the way for his brother Neil to also attend Eureka. He made arrangements for Neil to attend college on a scholarship—a scholarship based on financial need. So in Dad’s mind, Neil was receiving a “poor person’s scholarship”—and he told Neil, “You’re going to have to pay this scholarship back when you get out of school and start working.” To Dad, a scholarship was a form of charity.
Fast-forward to 1963. I was in my senior year at Judson School, a K–12 boarding school in Scottsdale, Arizona. I had led the Judson football team to a state championship and was named player of the year by the Scottsdale Press. So Arizona State wanted to offer me a football scholarship.
I came home for the Christmas holidays, and as I walked through the door, Dad said, “Do you know somebody named Kush?”
“Kush?” I said. “As in Frank Kush? The football coach at Arizona State?”
Dad said, “Yes, I believe it was Frank Kush.”
“Why are you asking?”
“Well, Frank Kush called me. He said he wanted to offer you a scholarship to play football next year at Arizona State.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him to give it to some young man who truly needed it. I could pay for your education, and you didn’t need a scholarship.”
My heart sank. “Dad,” I said, “you and I need to talk about the difference between a scholarship and welfare.”
I can laugh about it now, but at the time, I was boiling mad. Dad had thrown away my football scholarship! I later learned that, having gone through the Great Depression, Dad viewed scholarships as subsidies for poor people, like welfare or charity. I couldn’t be angry with Dad once I understood his thinking.
(As an aside, in December 2013, I attended a banquet aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in San Diego. It was a pregame event honoring the football teams of Arizona State and Texas Tech prior to the Holiday Bowl. Frank Kush, who had retired from coaching with a record of 176–54–1, was still working for ASU as a f
und-raiser, and he was at the banquet. I was asked to say a few words, so I told my story about Frank’s phone call to my dad, and the scholarship offer my father turned down. Then I turned to Frank and said, “Frank, is that what happened?” He laughed and said, “That’s absolutely right.”)
But that was my dad’s view of hard work—and he felt that government, whether in the form of scholarships or in the form of welfare—tended to undermine the work ethic of the people it was supposed to help. Dad did not believe in subsidizing laziness. He believed that hard work was good for the soul and that work ought to be incentivized and rewarded.
In 1966, as Dad was gearing up to run for governor, I was toiling away in the industrial heart of Los Angeles, loading oil well equipment for Asbury Trucking for $2.85 an hour. From five in the evening until one thirty in the morning, I worked on the loading dock. I hated every moment of it, and I cheered Dad’s political ambitions because I thought being the governor’s son would be my meal ticket.
I remember, the night before the election, daydreaming about how cool it would be if everybody in California voted except me—and it came down to a tie, and exact fifty-fifty split between Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown and Ronald Reagan. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to hold the deciding vote? I’d go to the Brown camp and I’d go to the Reagan camp and say, “Hey, I haven’t voted yet, the polls close in an hour, and what can you offer me?” Because at that point in my life, I was looking at everything—including Dad’s political career—in terms of what was in it for me.
On election night, I went to the victory party at the Ambassador Hotel and congratulated Dad. I was certain that my life was about to change. I asked Dad for a job in his administration.
“Michael,” he said, “you might as well know right now—I don’t believe in nepotism. You need to keep that job with the trucking company.”
Lessons My Father Taught Me Page 4
