Anthony R. Dolan, former chief speechwriter to President Reagan and special advisor in the offices of Secretaries of State and Defense in the Bush administration, writes THE WEEKLY STANDARD in response to Paul Kengor’s “Duped at Notre Dame” from the May 18 issue:
Gratitude is due Paul Kengor for his scholarly work on the Reagan years which was in evidence in last week’s Weekly Standard piece on the ReaganObama contrast at Notre Dame commencements. And while personally grateful for the mention as the writer assigned to the speech, a sense of obligation to the Gipper and, I suppose, history forces me to put aside my normally self-congratulatory pose as a former Reagan associate and in a display of my prodigious though under-celebrated (mysteriously so) personal modesty, disclose that Reagan did the text, just about all of it. Indeed, shortly after I had heard the news “The president is writing his own draft” (devastating for a new speechwriter) Reagan called and — anxious always that nothing he ever did hurt a single person’s feelings — apologized for having the temerity to write his own commencement address, assuring me that what he kept calling “the many fine things in what you wrote” were in his draft. About that last part he was just being nice — a story I will have to tell elsewhere but the point is that Reagan as the old and wise smoothie he was showed in the text what young speechwriters have lots of trouble learning, that the most important audience is the one directly in front of the speaker. Start with some relaxing notes, establish some common ground — just take care of them and larger themes can be gracefully evolved and deftly executed. Speaking to the students and their families about the legend of Notre Dame Reagan does just that and it’s worth a look — on YouTube entitled “Source of All Strength.” The text also offers a chance to contemplate what many Reagan staffers knew directly in those days though we had trouble persuading a disbelieving capital class, that Reagan was a fine writer and not only had a fine mind but one lit by truths that he thought could trigger, if spoken aloud, powerfully beneficent if not fully understandable forces that could win the Cold War and even engage the attention of party-conscious graduating seniors.
