Douglas Brinkley Talks Reagan at Aurora University

It’s unlikely we’ll ever see more presidential faces added to Mount Rushmore. But should the chance ever arise, historian Douglas Brinkley believes Americans could get behind two nominees: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.

Bold statement? Possibly, but Brinkley has the credentials to back it up. A professor of history at Rice University and a fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Brinkley is a history commentator for CBS News, and has written books about Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt and John Kerry, among others. He has also edited a collection of Reagan’s diaries.

Brinkley received a doctorate in U.S. diplomatic history from Georgetown University, and served as director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization at Tulane University. And from 1994 to 2005, he was the Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans.

So when Brinkley, who spoke about the life of Ronald Reagan Monday night at Aurora University’s Crimi Auditorium, calls our 40th president the most politically influential since FDR, you know he’s backing that up with years of study and thought. His 90-minute talk on Monday largely stayed away from Reagan’s specific policies, but dove into the heart of his view of America.

That view, Brinkley said, was shaped by World War II. Specifically, he said, the story of the invasion of Pointe du Hoc, when 225 American rangers stormed a German-held beach at night, intending to knock out a battery of guns, stayed with Reagan for his entire life. Only 93 of those men survived, but they succeeded in their mission.

“Reagan wanted to get back to that fighting spirit of World War II, when we were all in it together,” Brinkley said.

He pointed to Reagan’s respect for World War II veterans as the spark that ignited similar passions in Stephen Ambrose (writer of Band of Brothers) and Steven Spielberg (director of Saving Private Ryan).

“That sea change of respect for World War II heroes begins in 1984, with Ronald Reagan,” he said.

And it was the agony of a job unfinished that haunted Reagan, Brinkley said. The liberation of Europe begun on Pointe du Hoc had not been completed, and Reagan saw the Soviet Union as a persistent threat. But that did not prevent him from negotiating with the USSR’s head of state, Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1987, Reagan famously challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall—a part of the speech he delivered against the counsel of his advisors. But three years later, the wall came down.

“If you read his speeches from 1965, 1967, in the middle of the ‘60s Reagan is talking about the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union,” Brinkley said. “No major intellectual in the United States at the time was saying that.”

On the subject of Reagan’s influence, Brinkley minced no words.

“America was in (Franklin Delano) Roosevelt’s shadow from 1933 to 1981,” he said. “It was all in his political dynamic, which was the belief that the federal government can solve our problems… Reagan’s election in 1981 was a revolution, the beginning of the feeling that the federal government had expanded too much.”

“Reagan as a political force has lasted from 1981 to 2011 so far,” he concluded. “We’re living in the age of Reagan.”

Brinkley’s talk was the first event in AU’s Celebrating Arts and Ideas series for the 2011-2012 school year. Now in its sixth year, the series brings performers and lecturers from around the country to Aurora.

Future events in the series include a performance by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on Oct. 15, a talk by digital culture expert Sherry Turkle on Nov. 16, and a lecture by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on Feb. 7, 2012.