The narrative starts with Ronald Reagan's landslide win over the hapless Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. Reagan campaigned as a Washington outsider, just as Carter had four years earlier. But the difference between the two was that, unlike Carter, Reagan recognized that he would have to get along with the Washington powers that be in order to function effectively as president.
Consequently, he and Nancy moved to Washington after the election, and accepted dinner party invitations. After he took office, his first White House guests were Tip O'Neill and his wife. He coninued building his close relatonship with O'Neill throughout his presidency. The result is that he was far closer to O'Neill than Carter ever was, even though Reagan and O'Neill were far apart politically. As they used to tell each other, "politics stops at 6:00".
The rift between Carter and O'Neill is illustarted by snubs Carter was guilty of on his way in and on his way out. On the way in, he denied O'Neill and his wife seats at the inaugural ball, an inexplicable snub. And on his way out, he turned a deaf ear to o'Neill when O'Neill begged him not to concede to Reagan before the polls in California closed. Carter ignored him, and at least two incumbent Democratic congressmen lost their seats as a result.
The first crisis of the new Reagan administraton was the March 30, 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan's life. When O'Neill visited Reagan in the hospital, he got down on his knees and prayed for the president.
The scond crisis began on August 3rd, when the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) went on strike. Reagan acted decisively, issuing a statement that anyone not returning to work in 48 hours would be fired. Matthews says that "by breaking PATCO, he showed in a single executive judgment call how different he was from his recent predecessors." Dwayne Andreas, a prominent American businessman with close ties to Moscow, came back from a visit to the Soviet Union and told Tip that the Soviet top brass "credited Reagan, io contrast to his predecessors, with the strength of will to qualify him as a true leader."
Reagan's decisiveness stands in sharp contrast to that of our most recent president, the feckless Joe Biden. Two wars arose during Biden's presidency, and Biden's rsponse to each was characterized by a lack of the requisite decisiveness. With regard to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, Biden continued to provide military support to the Israelis, when he should have been firm with them and denied them any aid so long as they continued the genocide against innocent Gaza residents. How he could stand by and watch little kids starving to death because of lack of nutrition is unforgiveable. And with regard to Russia's war against Ukraine, Biden refused to provide the military support to Ukraine that would have allowed them to attack inside Russia.
The key issue for Reagan in his first year was the passage of of his 25% tax cut, which passed the House 238-195. O'Neill opposed this but decieded not to fight it when he realized that many in his caucus were going to support the bill. He figured that it was best to let Reagan have his cut, and then bear the responsibility for the consequences. Despite the adverse consequences (the deficit ballooned), Republicans since 1981 have pursued this bad policy ever since, pushing through similar tax cuts under George W. Bush and under Donald Trump. The theory of "trickle down" economics has proven to be bogus time and time again, but the American people are too ignorant to understand this. During the 1980 primary campaign, George H. W. Bush had aptly called Reagan's trickle down theory "voodoo economics".
On a more positive note, O'Neill and Reagan worked together to pass two major bills--comprehensive immigration reform and comprehensive social security reform. Reagan's approach to the latter was sheer genius. He formed a 15-member bi-partisan commission to address the fiscal crisis social security was facing. The result was a bi-partisan bill passed in 1983. Similarly, in 1986 comprehensive immigration reform was passed, giving undocumented people a path to legalized status if they'd been here since before 1982. Both of these accomplishments were possible because of the mature cooperation of Reagan and the House Speaker, cooperation we have rarely seen since in Washington. These two reforms remain to this day the last time either of these key issues has been addressed in any sort of comprehensive way. Indeed, cooperation betwen the two parties seems out of the question in the highly partisan environment we live in today.
One of the most important services Matthews provided to O'Neill was to get him to be more available to the TV cameras. Tip would hold 15-minute press conferences every day before the House opened for the day's business, but cameras were prohibited. O'Neill thought he didn't come across well on camera, unlike the photogenic Reagan. And O'Neill never went on the Sunday shows, as is so popular today, preferring instead to spend his weekends at home in Massachusetts with his wife. Matthews and the other staff members convinced O'Neill to open up to the cameras, and the results were quite positive. O'Neill had always seen himself as a "wholesale" politican, meaning he was an expert at one-on-one interactions. Reagan, by contrast, was a great "retail" poitician, reaching out to millions at a time by playing expertly to the cameras. Credit goes to O'Neill for being wise enough to change with the times.
Democrats have perhaps not internalized this lesson fully, as Joe Biden had fewer press conferences during his term than any of the prior six presidents. And when he declined the opportunity for twenty minutes of free air time on the Super Bowl pregame show when he was running for re-election, his campaign was doomed. Had Biden interacted more with the press, he might have been better prepared for the infamous debate that ruined his campaign.
Kamala Harris made the same blunder when she declined a chance to go on Joe Rogan's top-rated podcast. This would have given her a chance for people to get to know her as a person. When she declined, her campaign was toast.
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