LM#50--SPECIAL--Remembering Reagan: His Optimism

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Do you feel the country struggling to find its footing?

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Do you feel that negative feeling in our culture?

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Does it seem like we just can't get out of this funk?

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Let's talk about it on this 50th Liberty Minute.

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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.

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Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

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Hello, I am David and welcome back to this 50th Liberty Minute.

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It's hard to imagine we have done 50 of these together, so very happy that you are here and listening.

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And boy do we have a treat for you today.

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With as bad as the culture has become, let me assure you we have actually been here before with as terrible as the polarization of politics has been.

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We've been here before.

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We have fought an american revolution where we didn't win a battle for some two to three years.

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We have come through an American Civil War where, tragically, over some 650,000 of our fellow citizens died fighting for their ideals in that Civil War.

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We have come through many wars in the 20th century World War I, world War II, korea, vietnam, the Gulf War First Gulf War and now, in our 21st century, the Second Gulf War, the War on Terror, and then Afghanistan the longest war on record beating out Vietnam.

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And now we're looking for our current president to get us involved in Ukraine with some comments he just made.

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So there's a lot to point to.

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That is negative, but but we have come through all of that and if we had a president that would remind us of all that we've been through and put our times into context of where we have come and where we are going.

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We would then have a real leader and not just a placeholder, not just someone going through the motions, and that president could and would then lead accordingly and because of all that, we would be a much better nation because of it.

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So let me do this on this 50th Liberty Minute.

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Let me tell you about the last great president we had.

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That's our 40th president of the United States and no, I'm not going to haggle over the last series of presidents and prove to you why they are not great presidents.

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Great presidents only come along every so often.

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Washington, lincoln, fdr are certainly on this list in my book.

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Fdr we can argue about later, but I would argue that Ronald Reagan was our last great president.

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Now, I've made that case in the past and I'll make it again in the future, but for now, I want to share with you a quote and then a story, some quotes and then a story that I think we all need to hear and listen to, especially right now, in the middle of an election year in 2024.

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Let's go to our first pull quote.

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This book is one part biography, one part narrative chronicle and one part political analysis, an amalgam that does not fit easily into a recognized nonfiction genre.

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It attempts to explain how, and, more importantly, why, ronald Reagan became president in 1980.

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A capacious narrative seemed the best style to convey this broad theme.

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Winston Churchill noted the necessity of capturing the wider context of a person in his four-volume account of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.

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Quote in a portrait or impression, the human figure is best shown by its true relation to the objects and scenes against which it is thrown and by which it is defined.

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And here's the key nugget of wisdom I want to share with you.

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The decade and a half preceding Reagan's ascent to the White House was arguably the most politically tumultuous for the nation since the decade before the Civil War.

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The events shaping the political climate of the country seemed to be larger than the personalities who tried to master them, to the extent that Reagan came to express the soul of America.

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It is necessary to understand the trials of that soul.

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Reagan, to borrow a metaphor from his first career, was only occasionally at center stage during these years, which is why he enters and leaves this narrative like a supporting actor.

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Wait now.

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Wait a minute.

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I thought now was the most politically tumultuous the nation had ever seen since the decade before the Civil War.

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So now you're telling me that we have had other perilous times in our country's history and now may or may not be just as bad, okay, okay.

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Well then, let us reserve judgment and listen to this advice.

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This quote comes to us from a fantastic book, the Age of Reagan the Fall of the Old Liberal Order 1964 to 1980, by Stephen Hayward, and let me tell you I am super excited to share this story.

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I've started off reading very well the first 100 pages in quick fashion in the last several days and because this publisher was too stingy to actually have the book on Audible so I could cheat by listening to it.

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It is causing me less pain and suffering and gnashing of teeth than I originally thought, but there is a second volume.

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So for those of you that wanted me to read, actually read more books, those of you that wanted me to read, actually read more books.

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You can continue to pray for my pain and suffering and gnashing of teeth, but for all that, let's go back to the book, this fantastic book, this first volume of the Age of Reagan by Stephen Hayward, about Ronald Reagan.

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Age of Reagan by Stephen Hayward, about Ronald Reagan.

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The economic crisis seemed related somehow or dimly to the general crisis that had befallen the American democracy most acutely since Watergate and perhaps more generally since the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963.

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It had been one long downhill slide for America's elite institutions, both public and private, since those bright, glittering days of Camelot.

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By 1979, for the first time since public opinion surveys had been taken, the majority of Americans doubted that the future would be better than the past, or even equal to the present.

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In its wrap-up edition in 1979, newsweek magazine observed that there was a quote growing sense that the country's institutions and leaders were no longer up to managing problems that were simply too complex to grasp.

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The most doubtful institution of all, according to conventional wisdom, was the presidency.

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Presidents Johnson, nixon, ford and now Carter were reckoned as failures to one degree or another, and the notion was gaining credence that the presidency was an inherently impossible office in our modern, complex world.

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Some thought America had become quote ungovernable.

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In short, it seemed that the American century was over and that an era of American optimism and progress had come to a close.

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The concoction of Vietnam, watergate, the recurrent energy crisis, the swooning economy, the increasingly disordered world scene and the failed presidencies associated with these events robbed Americans of their native optimism.

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So Ronald Reagan's inaugural address was a classic mixture of his simultaneous optimism and harshness towards what he always saw as the chief impediment to American greatness big government.

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It's no coincidence he said that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government.

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Amen, so what I'm telling you is that we Americans are just suffering from bad leadership these days.

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Bad and ineffective leadership, in fact.

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Bad and ineffective, ineffective leadership, in fact, for the last several decades.

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So we have indeed been here before as a country.

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The malaise, the lack of confidence that everyone senses, the uncertainty, oh, the inflation.

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It was all here before.

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So what changes all that?

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How do we get out of the doldrums?

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It's leadership, simple, effective leadership, leadership that is displayed day in and day out during the presidency, and it's a leadership that Ronald Reagan displayed day in and day out.

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Now, newt Gingrich tells a great story about Reagan in his book, the March to the Majority.

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Let's go back to this book, because you will love this story.

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A group of us went down to see President Reagan after he took office.

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Most of us had already worked with his team and met him in person for the Capitol Steps event and other campaign meetings, but we wanted to formally meet and get started on the agenda.

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And I'll never forget when, as a way of explaining his style, reagan told us a story and the way Gingrich actually I've heard Gingrich retell this story outside of this book and he said there was roughly probably 90 to 100 GOP members and it was in the East Room and Reagan had just defeated Jimmy Carter by the largest margin to defeat an incumbent president, going back to FDR winning over Hoover in 1932.

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So it was a pretty big deal.

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So Reagan gets all the GOP congressmen in the East Room of the White House and he tells this story.

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Going back to the book, reagan explained there was once a set of parents who had two twin boys.

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One child was always pessimistic and the other was always optimistic.

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The parents decided they would break the children of their habits at Christmas.

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So they filled the cynical boy's room with cool toys and they filled the optimistic twin's room with horse manure.

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On Christmas morning the boys woke up and the parents peeked in to see their reactions.

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The pessimistic child was sitting in the middle of all his toys crying.

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The parents were puzzled and asked why he was sad.

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How could he be sad?

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The child explained that he knew that all his new toys would someday break, get stolen or be lost.

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New toys would someday break, get stolen or be lost.

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He went around the room and explained likely the lousy fates of each of his new toys and he was just inconsolable.

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The parents looked at each other and shrugged helplessly, shaking their heads as they walked away.

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The parents then went next door and became even more puzzled.

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They found the optimistic boy gleefully running around the room throwing horse manure in the air.

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At this point they asked what in the world the child was doing.

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The boy explained with all this manure, I just know there's a pony somewhere and I'm going to find it.

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That is such a great story and it displays Reagan's optimism.

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He later told those congressmen as they were walking out the door remember, I'm always the guy looking for the pony and Reagan's optimism was Was well-founded.

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He had been through seeing the communists close up, up close in Hollywood.

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He then experienced getting through World War Two and then the crazy decade of the 60s and 70s when he was a governor out in California.

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He faced down the student protesters at Berkeley.

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He was arguing with Democrats on a national scale and in his own legislature in in California, in his own legislature in California.

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So when the Republic was suffering through one of the most trying two decades since the Civil War, coming through all that, reagan by that time he was president.

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He just had an aura around him that things were going to work out for the best.

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He had an extreme sense of optimism and, yes, he was always truly the guy looking for the pony.

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So in this 50th Liberty Minute, it's hard to imagine that we made it to 50 of these.

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What a great collection of episodes to go back and revisit.

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But on this 50th Liberty Minute, no matter how bad the culture gets, no matter how bad the Republic faces its problems, remember Ronald Reagan, remember him.

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He looked back to FDR.

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He was actually a hero of Reagan's.

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Reagan looked back to Lincoln and couldn't imagine going through the Civil War.

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To Lincoln and couldn't imagine going through the Civil War.

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And perhaps our most melancholic President Lincoln who, despite all of those terrible things he saw, still in Lincoln's speeches were the most epic and the most optimistic and the most hopeful of the presidential words hopeful of a presidential words, he was always trying to repair the nation.

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When he gave addresses he know he knew would would go out to all the newspapers so all of the Americans would read him.

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So Lincoln is worth studying more in these Liberty minutes, and we will do so.

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But looking back to an FDR, to a Lincoln, and then especially to Washington, all the way through the American Revolution, when we couldn't catch a break, we couldn't win a battle for two or three years, that's worth studying too.

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Washington was a great man and a great president, but looking back at all of that, reagan never lost his optimism.

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Lost his optimism.

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And so for our questions in the beginning of this episode do you feel the country is struggling to find its footing?

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Perhaps look back to the great presidents a Washington, a Lincoln, a Reagan Do you feel like that negative feeling in our culture is never going to be replaced?

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Look back to the great presidents of Washington Lincoln, reagan and does it seem like we just can't get out of this funk?

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Let us look back to the great presidents of Washington Lincoln, reagan and keep up your prayer life too.

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Reagan was always big on prayer.

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He did it privately, though, and no matter if you do it publicly or privately.

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We should keep up our prayer life, keep praying for our country and keep praying for our leaders.

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God will provide.

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Don't lose hope.

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And in fact, let's go back to the book for just one more quote.

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As we were standing in the East Room of the White House laughing, reagan explained that he wanted all of us to know and understand that he would always be the guy looking for the pony.

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This was helpful in describing his optimism and it turned out to be true throughout his presidency.

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I only saw him wane one time and a bunch of us met with Reagan and were being negative about how he had handled something, and Reagan just looked at us and said maybe I need to go get shot again.

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We all immediately backed off, apologized and reined it in Maybe I just need to go get shot again.

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You could almost see Reagan with that quizzical smile and throwing that witty line back into the negative Nancy congressman to put them in their place.

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Reagan was always great with a equipped line just to send people back on their heels.

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So Reagan's humor was great.

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It always hit home and it made the point.

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So on this 50th Liberty Minute, no matter how bad everything gets, let us remember Reagan.

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He was our last great president and let us remember his optimism.

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We have the greatest country in the history of the world.

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We have the most exceptional country in the history of the world with the greatest legacy.

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Remember Reagan and always be looking for that pony among the horse manure.

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There's a lot of it out there and, as always, let's keep fighting the good fight.

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Thank you for joining us.

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We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast.

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Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources.

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Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.

LM#50--SPECIAL--Remembering Reagan: His Optimism

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