Let me get this out of the way…no this is not a post alleging that Ronald Reagan was a liberal or a RINO as president or any other such half-baked revisionism. This is about the early phase of Ronald Reagan’s public life, when Reagan was in fact a liberal.

Reagan’s Early Life

Ronald Reagan’s early upbringing was influenced by the politics and religion of his parents. His mother was a devoutly religious woman and his father, Jack, a traveling salesman, was a staunchly populistic Democrat who supported the progressive causes of his day, strongly opposed the KKK and racial and religious bigotry, and would support the New Deal. As a young man, Ronald Reagan would let black college football players stay at his folks’ place when no establishment in his town would let them stay the night. Reagan’s experiences in young adulthood motivated him to stick with a liberal Democratic philosophy; after all, President Roosevelt’s work relief programs had provided his father and older brother with jobs (Cannon). In 1934, Reagan started his work as a sports radio announcer for WHO in Iowa. Interestingly, heading up the news section at WHO was H.R. Gross, would later become a notorious skinflint in Congress and support Reagan’s rise in politics. When asked in 1984 at a visit from President Reagan if he thought that Reagan had the chops to be president at the time, he responded, “No. He was a Democrat. He belonged to the wrong party” (UPI). After his time in radio, Reagan would move to Los Angeles and got a contract with Warner Brothers after a successful screen test. His enthusiasm for liberal causes was strong but it was based in a strong idealism and the personal magnetism of FDR appealed to him greatly. Writer Howard Fast even claimed that Reagan attempted to join the Communist Party in 1938, but was turned down as he was thought to be a lightweight and unreliable (Geller). This story is, however, disputed.

Reagan remained committed to FDR during his presidency and voted for him every time. By 1946, he concluded that the communists were a force of evil to be reckoned with much like the Nazis had been, but this approach was not well-received by many of the actors who had previously been in full support of his positions. He worked with actress Olivia de Havilland to counter communists in the Independent Citizens’ Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions, which was ostensibly a pro-FDR group, but was headed by secret communist Hannah Dorner who with the communist leadership made the organization always side with the USSR despite a primarily non-communist membership (Fund). Ultimately, Reagan, de Havilland, Roosevelt, and other prominent figures who lent credibility through their membership to the communist leaders left the organization, rendering the committee influentially inert.

The following year, he became president of the Screen Actors’ Guild and to this day he is the only president to have ever led a union. Reagan became a member of the newly established liberal Americans for Democratic Action (which would staunchly oppose his presidency) as well as United World Federalists. As president of the Screen Actor’s Guild he clashed with communists and pro-Communists in Hollywood, who were using underhanded methods to gain control of unions and had been trying to destroy the Stagehand’s Union (which was an anti-communist bulwark). He would testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as a friendly witness in 1949. In 1948, Reagan campaigned for the election of Harry S. Truman for a full term and Hubert Humphrey for the Senate. In a 1948 speech for the pair, he criticized the Republican 80^th Congress’s performance, condemning the Taft-Hartley Labor Bill and citing the Congress’s blocking an expansion of Social Security and failure to enact civil rights legislation as among their shortcomings (YouTube).

Although Ronald Reagan was initially supportive of liberal Rep. Helen Gahagan Dougals’s bid for the Senate in California in 1950 and contributed $50, his attitude shifted during the election. Towards the end of the election, he switched his support to Rep. Richard Nixon (Nixon Foundation). By this point, Reagan was although not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, not the strong liberal he had once been. In 1952, he again broke from his party in his decision to support Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. Reagan’s increasing conservatism would develop throughout his time hosting the General Electric Theater anthology series from 1954 to 1962, as he would often talk politics with conservative GE executives, who would persuade him to take up the conservative mantle. In 1962, Reagan officially switched his party registration to Republican. Reagan’s biographer Lou Cannon summed up Reagan’s transformation from liberal to conservative as being due to “ increased wealth, and the higher taxes that accompanied it; conflicts with leftist union leaders as an official of the Screen Actros Guild, and exposure in his General Electric days to a growing view that the federal government, epitomized by the New Deal, was stifling economic growth and individual freedom”.

References

Cannon, L. Ronald Reagan: Life in Brief. UVA Miller Center.

Retrieved from

https://millercenter.org/president/reagan/life-in-brief

Fund. J. (2020, August 2). How Olivia de Havilland and Ronald Reagan Beat the Hollywood Communists. National Review.

Retrieved from

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/how-olivia-de-havilland-and-ronald-reagan-beat-the-hollywood-communists/

Geller, A. (1999, September 26). Commies Rated Ron Too Dim to be a Red Star: Buddy Says Reagan Was Rejected By the Party. The New York Post.

Retrieved from

https://nypost.com/1999/09/26/commies-rated-ron-too-dim-to-be-a-red-star-buddy-says-reagan-was-rejected-by-the-party/

Meroney, J. (2010, December 12). Was Ronald Reagan a secret snitch? The Los Angeles Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-dec-12-la-oe-meroney-reagan-20101212-story.html

Reagan Campaigns for Truman in 1948. YouTube.

Retrieved from

Reagan reminisces of days at WHO. (1984, February 21). UPI.

Retrieved from

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/02/21/Reagan-reminisces-of-days-at-WHO/6619446187600/

RN Helped Switch RR. (2011, February 8). Nixon Foundation.

Retrieved fromhttps://www.nixonfoundation.org/2011/02/rn-helped-switch-rr/

President Carter had controversy over his sales of F-15s to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but the disapproval effort failed in a bipartisan vote. Israel and its advocates in the United States were against this sale, which was seen as part of diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. President Reagan, however, took it a step further in his sale of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar planes to Saudi Arabia in his first year of office. This was, at the time, the largest arms sale in history to another country, and it attracted even more opposition than Carter’s sale had. Although Israel didn’t like this, they didn’t make major efforts against this sale since Reagan had offered the nation $600 million in credits, the sale of 15 more F-15s, and relaxing export restrictions on Israel’s Kfir planes (Bard). By 1981, Israel was the only strategic asset in the Middle East after the fall of the Shah of Iran, and the US was looking to strengthen ties with other nations in the region, and one of those was the oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a vital priority given the US’s oil troubles in the 1970s. Cold War considerations motivated the US to make such arms sales to Saudi Arabia as well.

The American public was, after the Iran hostage crisis, hostile to the sale of arms to any other nation, with 52% polled against any sales and only 19% of the public supported this sale (US-Saudi Business). The giving away of the Panama Canal, which had been politically devastating for numerous Democrats, had better polling numbers than this proposal. The opponents of this sale argued that Israel would face greater threat from a nation that had declared “holy war” on it, that this sale would not be effective in deterring any potential Soviet attack, and questioned whether the secrets behind the development of AWACS could be protected (CQ Almanac). This seemed an easy issue for Democrats to oppose President Reagan on given that numerous Republicans were dissenting as well. Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.), while acknowledging as valid concerns that US-Saudi relations could be damaged if the sale failed, saw the alternative as worse, stating, “I’m afraid we’re in a position here where we are limiting damage” (CQ Almanac). There were also fears at the time that the Saudi royal family would fall in a coup like in Iran, and thus the AWACS technology could fall into hostile hands. Senator Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who had clashed with Reagan before in California state politics, cheekily stated “I would like to paraphrase the words of Ronald Reagan when he opposed President Carter on the Panama Canal issue. ‘We built the AWACS. We paid for them. We should keep them” (CQ Almanac).

Round One: The House

The Reagan Administration started to lobby the House to back the sale and they had not only the power of the office behind them but also the active support of all three living former presidents: Nixon, Ford, and Carter, although the former did some harm to this effort when he remarked that “parts of the American Jewish community” were holding up the sale and possibly “embarrassing and undermining the authority of their indispensable friend in the White House” (Bard). The Saudis had intensely lobbied numerous American businesses to support the sale, and they did. One event that had some potential to build support was the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat on October 6^th, which postponed the vote on blocking the AWACS sale and permitted Reagan to argue that the US was down a friend in the Arab world and that they needed Saudi Arabia more than before (CQ Almanac).

Despite the assassination of Sadat and the efforts of Reagan and former presidents, the House on October 14, 1981, voted to disapprove, and the vote was strongly bipartisan at 301-111. Democrats voted for the resolution 193-33 while Republicans voted for 108-78. Even some conservative hardliners in Congress who were almost always on board with Reagan voted for this, including John Rousselot of California and John Ashbrook of Ohio. Ron Paul of Texas was also another notable vote for.

Round Two: The Senate

Round one of this battle had ended badly for the Reagan Administration and it looked like the sale at the outset was set to go down in the Senate, as the resolution to disapprove had 50 Senate sponsors. Reagan secured the help of Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) to get the deal. Baker asserted that “Anyone who believes the security of Israel will be enhanced by reducing our influence in the Arab world is fundamentally wrong” (CQ Almanac). The measure also received the backing of Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Charles Percy (R-Ill.), who initially advised President Reagan to postpone the sale (Bard). The leading opponent on the Republican side was Oregon’s Bob Packwood, a moderate. However, the Reagan Administration went full on the offensive in securing support, including securing private meetings with 22 Republican senators and 22 Democratic senators. Reagan managed to persuade 14 of the 22 Republicans to vote for the sale and 10 of the 22 Democratic senators (Bard). Some of these votes were secured only the day before the vote, and in some cases, downright horse trading occurred. The Reagan Administration, for instance, won Senator John Melcher’s (D-Mont.) vote by pledging support for a coal-conversion facility near Butte as well as a letter of support for the sale from his predecessor and Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield (Bard). The Reagan Administration did not only offer carrots but also sticks in its approach. Iowa’s Roger Jepsen, who had been one of the Senate sponsors of the resolution to disapprove of the sale, was subject to the threat of sticks. The Reagan Administration painted a bleak picture of his political future were he to vote for the resolution, that he would be politically frozen out from the Reagan White House, especially since Iowa’s other Republican senator, Charles Grassley, had come to support the sale (Bard). However, horse trading and threats were not required in many cases. Arguments that Reagan’s influence and credibility in the Middle East would be damaged were sufficient for numerous Republicans to switch their positions (CQ Almanac). There were also some real consequences for Republican senators who opposed the sale. After Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.) voted against the sale in committee, he found out that an air force base in Duluth was to be shut down (Bard). The intense lobbying efforts, it turns out, did the trick. On October 28^th, the Senate rejected the resolution disapproving of the sale, with 48 senators voting to disapprove and 52 voting against (Mohr). Republicans voted against disapproval 12-41 and Democrats voted to disapprove 36-11. And just in case you were of the impression that a senator being Jewish meant support for this resolution, only 57% of the Senate’s Jews voted for it, with Senators William Cohen (R-Me.), Ed Zorinsky (D-Neb.), and Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) voting against disapproving the sale.

Although Reagan got his sale, he did not attempt more arms sales to Arab nations in the Middle East. Thus, although lobbying efforts against it did not prevent this sale, it did deter the Reagan Administration from pushing for more. Although there has been more talk about the Israel lobby since the October 7, 2023, attack from Hamas and the war that resulted, this is an example of when the Israel lobby didn’t get its way. Indeed, according to a study conducted by Mitchell Bard, in 782 American policy decisions between 1945 and 1984 Israel got its way 60% of the time, and when the president supported Israel’s position, it won 95% of the time, but Israel also won 27% of the time that the president opposed its position (Bard, 2009). The lobbies of Israel and its US-based supporters are indeed powerful, but where the president stands is of tremendous importance to whether Israel gets its way.

References

Bard, M. (1981). How Reagan Snatched Victory from the Jaws of Defeat On AWACS. Jewish Virtual Library.

Retrieved from

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/how-reagan-snatched-victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat-on-awacs

Bard, M. (2009). The Pro-Israel & Pro-Arab Lobbies. Jewish Virtual Library.

Retrieved from

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-pro-israel-and-pro-arab-lobbies

Mohr, C. (1981, October 29). Senate, 52-48, Supports Reagan on AWACS Jet Sale to Saudis; Heavy Lobbying Tips Key Votes. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Senate Supports Reagan on AWACS Sale. CQ Almanac.

Retrieved from

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal81-1171966#_=_

The vote by which the House, on a 301-111 vote, rejected the sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia. (1981, October 14). UPI.

Retrieved from

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/10/14/The-vote-by-which-the-House-on-a-301/7088371880000/

US military business export to Saudi Arabia. US-Saudi Business.

Retrieved from

https://www.us-saudi-business.org/us-military-export-to-saudi-arabia/