Ronald Wilson Reagan - 40th President of the United States of America

You should know that I have a soft spot for President Ronald Wilson Reagan 40^th President of the United States of America. Maybe it’s because I have lived in a foreign country for the last year or perhaps it is the sentimental attachment, but I spent the day in Simi Valley California swelled with pride for my country and appreciation for what President Reagan accomplished.

You may recall from the stirring television coverage of the funeral procession in Simi Valley the long and curving uphill climb to the Presidential Library and Museum. From this elevation you will find the tale of a man who climbed from meager beginnings in Dixon Illinois to the highest elected office in the land. It is only fitting for the man who inspired millions for American to become a bright shining city on a hill.

The location is beautiful. The building is deceptively larger on the inside than it looks on the outside. It is very California in design.

I took the iTouch tour for an additional price and found it was well worth the additional price. It’s packed full of great additional information and you can take photos to send yourself in email.

Like the Lincoln Museum the President is a “rock star”. There are multimedia displays, detailed records, and the crowds of fans pack the place on a Sunday afternoon.

Staff here manage crowds, repeat the same information dozens of times each hour, and are amazingly friendly.

There were several times during my five-hour tour that I “swelled with pride” (became a little weepy). The attempt on the life of the President was moving. Especially to see the new navy suit he was wearing for the first time that had been cut away by doctors and is now on display. The speech by Former First Lady Nancy Reagan at the Republican National Convention about the state of the President’s mind slipping into away due to Alzheimer’s. And the most moving was the final resting place of the 40^th President looking over the valley’s of his great state of California.

Richard Milhous Nixon - 37th President of the United States of America

 Is the truism that “history is written by the victors” really that accurate? Many take the mantel of Lincoln’s words to cover their beliefs even in part or contradiction to what he may have actually said or believed. When people quote the movie JFK to me as a fact of what actually took place when many of the files will remain sealed until I am in my 90’s, I have to take pause.

 Sometimes we just don’t know the truth. Other times, many times, we believe only what we want to believe regardless of facts (Confirmation Bias).

 I will not try to sway you one way or another about the 37th President of the United States of America Richard M. Nixon. You likely have an opinion about him. If it is based on your witness to his actions, watching movies made by those who despised him, or documentaries that only focus on certain aspects of his life, your opinion is not going to change from this blog post. I am here to learn more about the person in the position and what they did while holding it.

 Contrary to those who try to paint him as a monster, he was, in fact, a man. Born in Yorba Linda California in a house his father built, the family lived there for the first ten years of his life before moving to Wittier California. He first met his wife Pat in a high school play. It took him years to court and win her over.

 After serving in the Navy during WWII he became a Congressman. The 80^th Congress held two freshman that would become future presidents, Richard Nixon the 37^th, and also John F Kennedy the 35^th.  The first time the two debated was in 1947 while both served on the Labor Committee and the topic was the Taft-Hartley Bill.

 He next became a senator winning office from his efforts to fight communism during the trial of Alger Hiss.

 Nixon served as Vice President under General Dwight D. Eisenhower 34^th President of the United States of America. In this role he traveled a great deal around the world. On one of these trips to Peru student protesters attacked his motorcade.

 Loosing the next presidential campaign to JFK, Nixon spent his “time in the wilderness” rebuilding relationships behind the scenes in state competitions. He was not elected Governor of California, but helped Republicans make huge gains in mid-term elections.  

 He was sworn into office on top of two family bibles opened to Isaiah 2:4 “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.”

 During his presidency he opened China, negotiated with the Soviets, had a strong Latin American policy, expanded the Middle Eastern policy, and made huge steps in domestic policies by making OSHA, the EPA, strides in civil rights through integration of schools and signed into law the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX. 

 His years after office were spent as an author and elder statesman. He was hugely influential behind the scenes with every President who held office through to his death in 1994, roughly a year after his wife Pat had passed.

 Yorba Linda California is a beautiful place filled with friendly people.  My travel here is reminiscent of central Spain. There are mountains, it is warm, it’s dry, and the buildings have a similar influence. When the Nixon’s first moved here they were lemon farmers in a small home. To this day, only a few blocks from the library, there are horses and a street called lemon.

 The museum is modest and humble. I know that is odd to hear when you have a Sea King Parked on the lawn. It is a tasteful design with the story of how American Democracy works. There is a good deal of information on how presidents become elected, along with the standard display of pins and items to rally the base many of these locations hold. There are items unique to the president and gifts that people have made or provided.

 It was good to see so much of former First Lady Pat Nixon as part of this location. The work she did on her own and the support she provided is well displayed and documented. It would be good to see this on permanent display.

 I left with the sense of three things after walking the grounds this day: Richard Nixon was not the villain many have made him, his impact and influence will continue for several generations around the world, and he really loved Pat.  

 I cannot express how friendly the staff and visitors here have been. This is not to say that other curators of presidential history have been less friendly, but I think it takes a certain additional level of dedication to work here.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy - 35th President of the United States of America

Our conference hosted an evening reception at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. We loaded up on busses at the hotel and were raced across the city of Boston by police escort through rush hour traffic. If you live in Boston I am sure you were not happy to see us. From our vantage, it was pretty cool.

The library and museum is stunningly beautiful in design and situated right on the water for a great view. Our evening was a walk through the exhibits, drinks in the large windowed area, then on to an upper lounge for the private party.

I was very disappointed in the exhibits. Most Presidential Libraries provide a history of the President’s life, a sense of how he developed as a man, the challenges he faced. Perhaps it was due to the nature of the evening, but we were dropped right into the election. More than half of what we toured was about winning the office, the advent of televised debate, and the electoral process. The remainder of the tour included select gifts the Kennedy’s received, a closet sized room about the space program, and the fashions of the first lady.

At the end of this walk is a stark black room designed to give you a sense of sadness. It includes television screens recounting the assassination of the JFK. Following this is a turn in the corridor with 20 yards of exhibit encouraging you to donate to the JFK foundation with a slice of the Berlin wall at the end.

The food at this event was amazing! The place is beautiful. But for having grown up hearing so many wonderful things about JFK, I did not learn anything new. It was disappointing.

I genuinely want to like JFK. I would have enjoyed learning about how he grew up, the family, PT-109, his time in the House of Representatives, and details about his roughly 34 months in office.

One of the largest challenges I see in our observation of those who serve in this office is the constant re-interpretation of history. Depending on what is happening in the news that week people will justify a current presidents actions/inactions by one of his predecessor’s decisions. Some weeks I will hear that Lincoln did not support slavery, other weeks some will say that certain inactions meant he was for slavery.

This is what I knew going in as well as going out of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum: this man inspired many, and he is remembered more for his death than accomplishments.

Jimmy Carter - 39th President of the United Sates of America

Atlanta is a beautiful city. I was reminded of this on my recent trip there for business. While there I took and extra day to visit the Carter Presidential Center.

June was the perfect time to visit these grounds. It is in a part of the city that is residential with the lush greens and boulevards lined with bright orange colored blossoms. The center has a groomed landscape that frames the building highlighting features of the area.

The Carter Center is my first visit to a Presidential Museum of a living President but not the first to one that served in office during my life.

A moment in time that I have always found amazingly interesting (and I think would make for a great play) includes Carter. Following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, third President of Egypt, Air Force One carried US diplomates to the funeral. As I recall, current President Reagan, Vice President Bush and Former Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon all flew together. Ford and Carter, who had become friends once out of office, discussed building Presidential Centers. Mostly the conversation was about strategies to raise money and use them for causes.

Here I was. Visiting the results of that conversation.

Jimmy Cater was born to a family of peanut farmers. Point of interest - the first President to be born in a hospital. I had always heard his story portrayed as one of rising from the poverty of the Great Depression. However I do not believe that to be accurate. He was born during that time period, and I have no doubt things were tight, but his father owned the farm and a store along with a few other businesses. During that time to operate and own a business put you well above large segments of the population.

Later Carter went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis. He married Roslyn. He serviced on a diesel hunter killer submarine. There are some nice pictures of him in Hawaii at the center along with the uniform he wore.

After the navy he returned to Georgia to run the family business. He ran for small local governing positions over municipal bodies. This lead to a run in the State Senate where he served from 1961 to 1966.

He ran for governor in 1966 and lost. He went back to the agricultural business he been growing from the simple family farm and store. In 1970 he ran for governor again and won.

In 1976 he entered the Democratic National Party primary with a 2% name recognition. Over that year he built a base and won the important Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

The race between Carter and Ford that year showed that Carter was considerably ahead early on. But the race tightened dramatically putting the two in a tight election. Something not mentioned at the Carter Center was an interview with Playboy magazine where Carter admitted to “lust in his heart.” He also suggested questionable measures if put into office. The press also circulated that he had registered a UFO sighting a few years earlier.

In the first presidential debate since 1960 Carter did not do well. In the second debate, focused on international affairs, President Ford claimed that there was no Soviet dominance in eastern Europe. This one slip by Ford spoiled the debate for Ford and set his campaign into recovery mode. The Carter Center will tell you that Jimmy won the close election - nearly everyone else will tell you that Ford lost that election.

The main area of the Carter Center focuses on three things. The first is “a day in the life of the President.” This is a really interesting multimedia presentation on multiple screens that show one busy day and all the players involved. The second is the Camp David Accord where Carter used “Cabin Diplomacy” between the cottages at Camp David to bring together Egypt and Israel. This event is covered in great detail. Finally there is the Iranian Hostage negotiations. A phrase that remains with me about this section “There were two White Houses, one focused on the hostages and the other running daily affairs.”


Something I recall very well - the solar cells put on top of the White House.

There is considerable attention at the Carter Center placed on post presidential activities. All of the work and time spent on fair elections in third world countries and Habitat for Humanity.

I was surprised on how empty the Carter Canter was. How chatty the staff was with one another having open conversations speaking loudly across the floor.

Nothing was more surprising to me about my visit than the asian family who walked through the center with me. One of the members of the family was a woman in her late teens early 20’s who had a cough that sounded like tuberculosis. As I watched a video about the debates and commercials I kept an eye on her watching another video 10 feet away.

When she coughed there was not polite hand cover or the more PC cough into the bend of your arm. It was free and open carpet bombing coughing that covered everything in her way.

At one point during the video her cough resulted in her gum shooting out of her mouth, bouncing off the flat screen monitor and hitting the carpeted floor at her feet. After a good minuted passed before she stooped down, picked up the gum, and put it back in her mouth for continued chewing.

That was the highlight. That is what I remember most. Like the Carter Administration it was short, some things happened, and those things that stood out were kind of sad.