Reading

Storytelling – or narrative, as scholars now like to call it – was one of the most effective weapons in Reagan’s repertoire. No doubt it was the Irish in him, for he loved to regale an audience with a story. If it were a public setting, it would usually be about heroism; if in private with “the fellas”, an earthy story was never far away. He was also an accomplished mimic – elites, ethnics, gays, it didn’t seem to matter much. After the 1980 primary in New Hampshire, when reporters prodded him into repeating a private, ethnic joke and then reported his indiscretion, he kept a tight rein on his public stories.

But the storytelling went well beyond the anecdotes and jokes that so many speakers sprinkle into their speeches. They weren’t simply a form of light entertainment. In his public speeches, Reagan was eager that his tales illustrate the larger American story as he believed in it. They were a critical part of his connection with his followers – as critical as the values he emphasized. The two went together: the values informed the stories and the stories brought the values to life.

Reagan was weaving a large tapestry for his listening public, one that told them who they were and what they could become. Each of his stories – about Jimmy Doolittle or Davy Crockett or General Custer – was a thread. Together, they framed a heroic past, stretching from the battlefields of the Revolution to Vietnam. Some stories were funny, some poignant, some tragic, but they were all uplifting. His point was to show that the country had been on a journey of over two hundred years in which people fought and died for liberty, and from that struggle had come a bounteous nation. Surely, he was suggesting, we must have the gumption to stay on that same road in our own generation so our grandchildren will enjoy even more freedom and well-being.

Far more than a pleasant diversion, his stories were a form of moral instruction. In his first inaugural, Reagan chose to stand on the west side of the Capitol – the first president sworn in there – and offer a sweeping panorama of what he could see in his mind, just as Martin Luther King, Jr., had at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. …

Critics might dismiss Reagan’s tales as sappy and sentimental, but he wasn’t trying to please them. He was trying to overwhelm them. Far too long, as he saw it, the dominant culture had been telling stories that denigrated the American experience and undermined public confidence. Listening to the Left, he believed, one might think that U.S. history was primarily a tale of white male brutality toward Native Americans, blacks, and women; that the Revolution of 1776 had more to do with economic self-interest of a small elite than personal freedom; that Jefferson and even Lincoln weren’t serious about black rights; that the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a heinous act; that the Vietnam war was an act of American imperialism, and on and on. Not only did Reagan not believe those things, he wanted to persuade Americans to believe in a more heroic story. He was more successful than his critics expected.

His stories struck a resonant chord partly because he told them so vividly that audiences could picture the characters in their heads. But the audiences also related to them because many had grown up believing the things he believed. His remembrances were as familiar as Bible stories. They may have been tucked away in the backs of minds, but Reagan revived them and put them up front again. He reminded people what had they believed as children, and they remembered. America has always been a creed as well as a place, and Reagan brought that creed out of mothballs, dusted it off, and made it a centerpiece of his presidency.

(an extract from the book “Eyewitness to Power” by David Gergen)