Editing 75-16-A7 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Someday it might be worthwhile to find out how images are created, and even more worthwhile to learn how false images come into being. I'll be right back.

All of us have grown up accepting, with little question, certain images as accurate portraits of public figures, some living some dead. Seldom if ever do we ask if the images are true to the original. Even less do we question how the images were created. This is probably more true of presidents in our country because of the intense spotlight which centers on their every move. I'd like to talk about two presidents and their images.

One was Calvin Coolidge, the dry unexciting New Englander who's more often than not remembered as a lackluster almost laughable figure who just happened to live in the White House for a while. The other is Dwight David Eisenhower, remembered with affection, warmth and respect for his great military accomplishments in World War II but for many his image as a president is that of a genial golf player who didn't stir things up much and who, in the main, presided over a country that rowed at anchor for eight years. The late John Kennedy who followed him actually campaigned on a slogan of, "Get the Country Moving Again." Are these two images true or false? Well I'll list a few facts and then you can decide for yourself.

Calvin Coolidge, the man H.L. Mencken said had been weaned on a pickle, was he a do-nothing president in one of those lulls in our nation's history? If so, we should have such lulls today. There was better than full employment, jobs were competing for workers. The cost of living went down 2.3%. The federal budget was actually reduced and some of the national debt accumulated in World War I was paid off. During Silent Cal's presidency, the number of automobiles owned by Americans tripled and a great new industry, radio, went from 60 million dollars in sales to 842 million. They laughed when Calvin Coolidge said, "The business of America is business" but we had true peace and prosperity. Those things were promised so often but given so seldom.

Then the Eisenhower years, the era of the fifties when we're supposed to believe that an entire college generation had stagnated, probably because they didn't burn down the library. Well Ike ended a war in Korea that had killed tens of thousands of our young men, and for the rest of his eight years no young Americans were being shot at anywhere in the world. He also halted, dead in its tracks, the advance of communism. Big government didn't get any bigger and a citizen could go for an evening stroll in the park without getting bopped over the head. Wages went up steadily but prices remained the same. Steak was 85 cents a pound and a gallon of gas was only 29 cents. You could be well dressed in a fifty dollar suit and nine dollar shoes. The work day and the work week grew shorter and our taxes were reduced. Suddenly more kids were going to college, more families were buying homes, never had a nation's wealth been so widely distributed and we were so strong that no one in the world even thought about challenging us.

Well as I say you can make up your own mind about the image versus the man, but maybe we ought to go back and see what they did that we aren't doing.

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.

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