Michael Reagan, who has long been a conservative commentator and speaker, understands the problems that can come from rampant incivility in culture.
Reagan — son of late former President Ronald Reagan — recently lamented the negative elements surrounding the U.S. political stalemate, particularly the lack of pleasantries and people’s overarching inability to handle themselves appropriately when their chosen candidate loses elections.
“You may not agree with the person who’s elected,” he said on the “Newsmakers” podcast. “I didn’t agree with Biden. I wouldn’t vote for Harris. I may not agree, but it doesn’t mean that I think democracy was thrown in the waste paper basket because my person wasn’t elected president of the United States — and that seems to be where we’re going today.”
Listen to Reagan explain:
He candidly spoke about negative changes that have evolved surrounding division in today’s politics and the stunning ways in which things were once quite different.
Reagan explained what happened after his father was shot outside the Washington Hilton in 1981 — a shocking event that could have claimed the former commander-in-chief’s life. Right after, Reagan said one of his father’s political rivals spent time in the hospital praying for the president.
Tip O’Neill, a Democrat who served as speaker of the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987, was a real-life friend of Ronald Reagan, despite their policy differences — and he lived out that friendship in the moments after the potentially deadly scenario.
“[My dad] is shot. He’s in the hospital, he wakes up in the hospital [and] who is sitting in a chair with a rosary, praying for my father, and with my father?” Michael Reagan rhetorically asked. “Tip O’Neill. Would that happen today? Would that happen today in the America we live in? And the answer might be, ‘No, it wouldn’t happen today.'”
He continued, “Here is the man, Tip O’Neill — the Catholic. Ronald Reagan — the Protestant, and Tip O’Neill sitting in a chair with a rosary praying for the President of the United States who had been shot.”
In light of the toxic divisiveness plaguing America today, Reagan said this scenario offers a lesson that can be gleaned from his father’s life. Likewise, he said the former president’s handling of dissension in his own family further offers guidance to people who struggle with political differences among loved ones.
“He had two children, Patti and Ron, who disagreed with him politically,” Reagan said of his dad. “If they voted at all, voted against him. Patty was a peace and freedom person. Ron — [an] atheist.”
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Despite intense political differences — and some public disagreements — all of the children were still welcome at the Thanksgiving dinner table, Reagan said.
“If Ronald Reagan could have two children who were so opposed to him they would lead marches on Washington, not become Christians, vote against him, or not vote at all, and they were still at the table for Thanksgiving dinner, we could learn a lot from that, and say, ‘You know something, I’m going to be more like Ronald Reagan, and those people I’ve been disagreeing with — I’m going to have at the dinner table,'” Reagan said. “Start healing the country the way Ronald Reagan would have healed it.”
Reagan spoke about the new feature film “Reagan,” which he believes captured his dad’s true person, with stories about his father coming “alive” throughout the movie. Learn more about that film here.
And listen to what else he had to say here.
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