August 22, 2025 • 22 mins
In this episode, Karol sits down with bestselling author and political consultant Craig Shirley to unpack his surprising path into politics and his lifelong admiration for Ronald Reagan. From behind-the-scenes stories of Reagan’s rise to the lessons that shaped modern conservatism, Craig also opens up about family, his latest projects, and why reading (and real relationships) matter more than ever. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, and welcome back to Carol Mortywood Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Craig Shirley. Craig is an American author,
lecture historian, and public affairs consultant. He has written six
best sellers on Ronald Reagan, and his firm is Shirley
and McVicar Public Affairs.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So nice to have you on, Craig.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Thank you, Carol. It's a real pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
So I have a story for my viewers and listeners
and a reminder story for you. But my first job
in politics was actually working for Craig Shirley. I was
an intern in his office for about six weeks in
two thousand and four. I remember the year very specifically.
I was in graduate school and about three weeks into
(00:45):
the internship, my grandmother died and I had to go home,
and it was like a big deal. I was very
close with her, and Craig Shirley and his team were
so incredible to me. They were like, of course, you
have to go home. I was so nervous about, you know,
first job in politics. They planted a tree for her
in Israel, and they were just so wonderful. They sent
(01:07):
me like Flowers. I left that internship being like, oh,
people in DC are so nice. And I also did
a little bit of research on your book, Reagan's Revolution,
The Untold Story of the campaign that started it all.
And I like to refer to myself as an expert
on the nineteen seventy six around Reagan for election. Yeah, yeah,
because I did research on that book, and so I
(01:29):
had all this you know, knowledge on that election, which
was very funny.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So, Craig, it is so nice to.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Have you on, and I've remained a big fan of
yours over the years. I loved your books, and I
think you're just a terrific person.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
So thanks for coming on, Carl, Carol, the feelia is mutual.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
So how did you get your start in this world?
Did you always want to be in public affairs? Did
you always want to be a writer? How did this
happen for you?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I actually thought it was going to be a gym teacher.
I thought it was going to coach lacrosse. That was
really my plan when I went to college. I thought
I was going to be either a high school gym
teacher or a history teacher and coach athletics lacrosse. I
played lacrosse in college, and actually I went on to
(02:17):
played in high school in college, and then I went
to coach it for seventeen years while I was running
my firm. I think you probably maybe remember I was
coaching lacrosse at the time when you were at the firm.
But I didn't start out. I started out really. My
parents were very politically active in New York state politics.
My father was actually the first registered Conservative in the
(02:40):
state of New York when it became an official political
party back in nineteen sixty one. I want to say
he went down to the Board of Elections at four
o'clock in the morning and wait until it opened at
seven o'clock so he could be the first person registered,
so he could always say he was the first person
in the state of New York regis conservative. They dragged
(03:02):
me to New York State Convention Conservative conventions, and I
met Jim Buckley and Bill Buckley and so many other
conservative luminaries at an early age. And I went door
to door for Barry Goldwater in nineteen sixty four. So
I was politically active at an early age, and it
(03:24):
just seemed to gravitate toward that, even though I was
when I was in college and I started as a
history and visited major. Is that there was an attraction.
And I'll tell you there was a seminal moment for me.
Nineteen seventy six, I was actually I was slinging hash
at a seafood restaurant on Cape Cod and I remember
(03:47):
that the night I was cocktail waiting that night and
Reagan's speech the Kansas City Convention was on the TV
over the bar, and I watched the speech and I
just was mesmerized by and I said to myself, I've
got to get involved. I've got to get involved. That fall,
I went back to college and volunteered on the Gerald
fort campaign and in Western Massachusetts where I was going
(04:10):
to college.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
And of course four years yeah, well, actually we carried
Western mass Ford carried Western mass got slaughtered in the
state because of Boston and there's outlying areas.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
But you know, I did a good I you know,
I thought I did a good job. You know, I
registered voters and gave people rides of polls and did
lit drops, all the volunteer activities. The state chairman called me,
this is a big medicine for me. Right, I was
just you know, a little Puke College student and the
state chairman. The Republican state chairman called me a couple
(04:44):
of weeks later and asked me to come over to
Boston to have lunch with them. So I went over there.
I said, yes, of course, I'd love to. So I
drove over there and it was about one hundred miles
away from Springfield. And it was one of those old
Boston you know, private clubs with deep leather chairs, and
you know, I had to figure out which piece of
which silverware to use and off. So, yeah, exactly, yeah, right,
(05:11):
I figured that. Later, he said, you've got a knack
for this business. I said, well, thank you. He said, well,
what are your plans? I said, I think I'm just
going to be a high school you know, history teacher
and coach sports. He says, well, if you thought about
politics as a profession, I said, I didn't know you
(05:31):
could do politics profession, you know. And he said, oh, sure,
of course. You can need campaign manager and press secretary
and finance director and organizational you know, there's lots of
paid positions in politics. I said, well, that sounds interesting.
I am not committed to my future. I'm only nineteen
or twenty. I was nineteen or twenty. He said, he said, well,
(05:53):
you need to go to Washington and become an intern.
And I said, what's an intern? And he laughed. Then
I applied. I kind of figured things out, you know,
as I went along. I applied to a half dozen
conservative congressmen and number of senators. The Republican party, you remember,
in nineteen seventy seven, was in terrible, awful condition, you know.
(06:17):
It was just it was almost not even a political party.
And I got the only internship I got was ironically
from my home state senator, Senator Jacob Javis, who was
a very liberal Republican. He was very good on Israel
and he's very good on national events, and I always
say wonderful things about him. He was a terrific, terrific guy,
(06:40):
and he was very very kind to me and very
very nice to me. But I was quickly I was
the token Conservative and office build a lot of liberals.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I've been that on several campaigns as well.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
One thing led to another, and then I worked on
the Virginia Gubnou campaign, and then I went back to
school and I got a I went to a Nick
Pack campaign school, and there I met some people who
are very important in my political career in the future,
with Terry Dowan and Bill Radigan and Arthur Finkelstein, who
became my political mentor. And I went back to college
(07:15):
and I was just about two months away from graduating.
Arthur calls me and says, listen, there's a race in Philadelphia.
I want you to go work on it. I said,
I'm about to graduate. I can't do that. I just
you know, if I don't graduate now, I never will.
I said, okay. So he called me back a week
later and says, listen, I want you to go to
work for Abby Nelson. He's running for the US Senate
(07:36):
there in Massachusetts. And I said, Ozzie Nelson, isn't he
a band leader? He said, no, Abby Nelson, Avey Nelson.
He's a conservative radio talk show host and political leader
there in Boston. And so I ended up going to
work for him and we barely lost the primary. I
worked for him from June until August and we barely
(07:58):
lost the primary running Ed Brooke, who was then an
incumbent liberal Republican senator, and I went after after he lost.
How far do you want me to go with this?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I mean, however far you want. I love hearing people's stories.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
You know, you tell me, yeah, I'll speed it up.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
He went back. We had a house in Cape Cod
and my father and I built and I went down
there and I thought, you know, I'll just go back
to the seafood restaurant. I worked there this winter, his
fall in winter. And two days lefter, I get another
phone call for Arthur and he says, listen, I'm meeting
in Boston with the with the Republican nominee running in
New Hampshire, and I'd like, I want you to meet
(08:38):
us there. So I met. I went there and we
went over the polling data. The candidate was Gordon Humphrey
and uh, Humphrey of course was you know, went through
staff like like you know what through a goose and
h and he was he was look, he was searching
for a campaign manager and a press secretary and uh.
And after going over the polling data showing he was
(08:59):
going to lose, he says to me, I said, I
need a campaign manager. And Arthur points at me and
he says, well, there he is right there. I said,
oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, thank you. I'll
be the press secretary, right I was press secretary, and
we won, being a three term incumbent. We were labeled
the biggest upset in America on election night nineteen seventy eight.
(09:21):
And Humphrey was a firebrand conservative. I always admired him.
He was a little bit of kookie, but it was
a good, you know, reliable conservative vote. And after the
election he fired everybody on his staff and Nixon like maneuver,
but he asked he asked me and two other people
to come with him to Washington be on his staff.
As of course, I jumped at the chance and I
(09:43):
went to Washington and I was with him.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Have you been in Washington since then?
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I'm saying that was that your was that the what
moved you to Washington?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
I'd been there before when I intered for Jafts, right,
And I went back to Massachusetts and I went back
to work for Humphrey and I was there for about
a year. And then the fellow who rents fun for
a conservative majority asked me. He said, look, you know
about New Hampshire politics and communications. We're putting together an
independent expenditure and support of Governor Reagan. We'd like you
(10:14):
to run. I was twenty one years old. Yeah, he
handed me eight thousand dollars, which was a lot of
money in those days, and he said, we need to
help Reagan get the nomination because he's could lose to Bush,
and we want you to put together an independent expenditure campaign.
So I did radio and newspaper advertising in the first
six primary states, and we bought radio, wall to wall
(10:36):
everything we could, sports, agriculture, farm reports, everything. Reagan ended
up turning his campaign around, and I like to think
that myself and John Gizzi and Bob Heckman could take
a little bit of credit in helping turn around Reagan's
chances to win the nineteen eighty nomination.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Fantastic. So you've written six best selling books about Reagan?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yes, What is it about Reagan that has fascinated you?
So he's very important in my life as well. You know,
I started the show talking about working in your office
in two thousand and four and how.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
My grandmother died.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Reagan died that same year, and when he died my family.
You know, I'm from the Soviet Union. I have a
brother named Ronald. It's not a coincidence. He's born in
nineteen eighty two in America.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
He was very important to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
But you know, you've clearly taken that extra step and
really delved into his life.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
What did he mean to you?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Well, you know, in sixty four, after he gave his
famous speech for Goldwater, the speech was made into a
record album. My father brought it home one day and
he made my brother and me sit down listen to it,
and after the radio, after the record player, after the finish,
he said, this man Reagan himself should be president. That
(11:54):
was in nineteen sixty four. Yeah, my father was kind
of was prescient in that regard. But anyway, so I
followed his career assiduously all through the sixties and seventies
and was happy to. And I wasn't involved in seventy six,
but I was deeply involved in eighty and with the
White House Conference on a Small Business in eighty one
(12:16):
eighty two, and then I worked at the Republican National Committee,
which was the political arm of the Reagan White House,
and then worked on the eighty four re election campaign,
and lectured many times now at the Reagan Library and
the Reagan Institute. I mean, I'm giving this short version.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Care what is it about him that made you, you know,
his biographer.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
What was the thing that he.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Has that other people don't have that interests you so much.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I don't know. If I put my thumb on one
simple thing, I don't think you can. This was an
extremely intelligent man. Marty Anderson, his old Issues aid, was
a good friend of mine. He said. He once estimated
Reagan's intelligence to be a one hundred and seventy five.
Reagan was an extremely intelligent man. And you know he
(13:03):
read five newspapers day and read, you know, a a
historical book a week, and read viseness, you know, security
reports and things like that. He's an extremely intelligent man,
wrote thousands of letters.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
It was his compelling intellect, his ability to tell a
compelling story to make it seem so obvious that freedom
is the way personal dignity, personal freedom is the way
the individual is superior to the state.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
I was always attracted libertarian philosophy anyway. I remember in
Reason magazine in nineteen seventy five he said that libertarianism
was the fundamental basis for American conservatism, Which is true.
If it's centered on the individual, it's centered on privacy,
it centered on freedom, it's centered on liberty, then they
(13:55):
are simpatico the libertarian philosophy and the American conservative philosophy,
so the whole package. It was just you know, I
met him many times, and that wasn't why I supported him.
But he was utterly the same in private as he
was in public. You saw a man in public who
was compelling, who was friendly, who was charming. He was
(14:21):
like that in private too. A friend of mine who
since passed away, Paul Corbyn, worked for many years ago.
He used to play my weekly poker game.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Oh I played poker, do you I do? Yeah, I
played boker game.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I'm rusty now I played for twenty twenty five years
and since we moved away from Washington, you know, busted
up our old game. But anyway, Alcardon played in this game,
and he had worked for John Kennedy, and he said
that when Kennedy walked into a room, he tipped, he
tipped the field. You know, electricity flowed through a room,
(14:59):
right said that. I said, that's the way it is
with Reagan, and Reagan tips the field. Reagan, there's electricity
that flows through a room. Where Reagan walks into it,
it just he changes the dynamics of the setting.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Absolutely. You can see it.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Even I had never met him. You know, I was
born in seventy seven. I am a little late for
being in the political game with Reagan.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
You could see it.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Even I play old clips for my kids, and he
had something very different about him that it's hard to capture.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And the humor with which he did.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Certain things, the way that he was I played yesterday
for my children, The way he responded to Mondale about
his age. You know, he won't hold his opponent's youth
and inexperience against him, and he delivers it with his
straight face.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
He was really something special.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Somebody once, somebody wiser than me, once said that a
true leader has a physical, intellectual and moral presence. Reagan
had a physical, intellectual and moral presence, and that's what
made him, has made him one of our four greatest presidents.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
You have this historical background of our political system.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
What do you worry about right now?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Making a deadline? I'm working on a book right now.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I hear you.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, okay, yeah, you know what. I know what I'm
talking about. I worry about making a deadline. I worry
about finding publishers to the next three or four books.
I want to write, I worry about my children. You know,
they're all grown and they're all doing very very well.
My oldest, our oldest is a producer at Bloomberg, and
(16:40):
Andrew is the head of speech writing at NASA. Our daughter,
Taylor is an executive with a bank. And our son,
our son Mitchell, our youngest, he is working for a
DC lobbying firm.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So you must be so proud. That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
We're so proud of them. Unfortunately, two of them are
left wing knuts. No two are rational thinking. Can you
imagine that. My wife's so tough, right, she ran seapack
for you know, seven years. She worked for the Republican
National Committee, she worked for Reagan. We're both you know,
I like to consider ourselves intellectual conservatives, and we have
(17:23):
two children who are are conservative. They think well, I
they said, I think, therefore I am probably the world's
first conservative. And then we got two of that are
just phrased left wing knutballs. You know. I had an
argument ones with my youngest one. He was convinced that
(17:44):
a man can have a baby, and we argued for
half an hour. Said, please tell me in the animal kingdom,
where the male of the species can have a baby.
And he looked it up and looked it up and
looked up and so finally he says to me, he says,
sea horses.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Sea horses. That's the only right of course, yes, which.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Isn't even true, but that's the best you could find.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What advice would you
give your sixteen year old self having to kind.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Of do this all over again, have more fun?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Did you not have a lot of fun?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
I did, Carol. I have had a lot of fun.
It's been a lot of fun. But there's been a
lot of bumps in the road along the way.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
My father died when I was a kid, and then
my grandfather died when I was a month later, and
a lot of trials and tribulations along the way, and
I had to go to work at an early age.
And I had a lot of fun along the way.
I don't want to overstate it. I guess the first
thing is I would save more money, I would be
more careful with my money. I would read more. I
(18:45):
would read a lot more. You know, it's just I've
read hundreds of books, probably and I still feel inadequate.
There's so many books that I want to read. I
haven't read Grant's autobiography, and I want I want to
read grants autobiography. I just got a copy of the
of the Adams and Jefferson Correspondence, and I want to
(19:07):
read that. For pleasure. For research, I'm reading a bunch
of books on Donald Trump. And for pleasure, I'm reading
like Mark Levin's book on Power, which I just got
a copy from Mark. And I'm reading Kennedy by Ted Sorenson.
That's just for pleasure. But if I could give myself advice,
(19:28):
it would be well. First of all, never smoke. I
smoked for forty years. I quit ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Congratulations, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Do you want to know how I quit?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
How'd you quit?
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I prayed. I'll tell you something that I think is amazing.
I was drinking. I was never I was never an alcoholic.
I didn't drink to excess. But at night, after I
finished writing during the day, I would sit down and
edit out in the back porch and I would chain
smoke cigarettes and drink two or three glasses of wine.
(20:00):
And I did that four nights a week, and I
got to a point where I just thought, you know what,
this is not working for me anymore. I've been doing
that for forty years, and I did everything you know
I did. I wrote and ran a business, and you know,
did all the other things. Rehabbed old buildings and did
a lot of other things. One night, I just, I
(20:21):
guess I'm giving my testament. I beg your pard.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
One night, I just after two or three glass of
wine and smoking a bunch of cigarettes, I just I
get down my knees and I prayed. And the next
morning I woke up and both cravings were gone. It's incredible,
they were both going.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I believe it.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I think I haven't had a cigaret that's ten years now.
I was smoking two two and a half back the
day and I haven't had a cigarette in ten years.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
I was smoking, I was drinking two or three glass
of wine a night, and I haven't had a glass
of wine and ten years. I've had probably four or
five Jack Daniels. Five Jack Daniels in ten years, and
invariably I drink half of it and then pour the
rest of it down the drain.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
That's really something I fully believe prayer works.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I don't think that that's something controversial to say, or
even you know, questionable.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I feel comfortable with you that I can tell you that.
I know lots of people following you are probably going
to say, what a door.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I think my listeners know that prayer is the way,
and I do think that. And look, I have a
lot of Christians on my show who talk about how
prayer has changed their lives, and I don't.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Think there's anything certainly changed mind strange about it.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I've loved this conversation. Craig.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
You are such a fascinating man, and you've done such
incredible work. Leave us here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Re Read, Read and make as many friends as possible,
Pray as much as possible, love as much as possible.
Read drunk and white. I have a particular favorite Dorothy Parker.
She had a lot of good advice. One of the
best ones was authors and artists and actors and such.
Never know nothing but always know much.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Okay, well, thank you so much. He is Craig Shirley.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Check out his work, especially his six bestsellers on Ronald Reagan,
thank you so much, Craig for coming on.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Thank you, Carol so so much.
Hi, and welcome back to Carol Mortywood Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Craig Shirley. Craig is an American author,
lecture historian, and public affairs consultant. He has written six
best sellers on Ronald Reagan, and his firm is Shirley
and McVicar Public Affairs.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So nice to have you on, Craig.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Thank you, Carol. It's a real pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
So I have a story for my viewers and listeners
and a reminder story for you. But my first job
in politics was actually working for Craig Shirley. I was
an intern in his office for about six weeks in
two thousand and four. I remember the year very specifically.
I was in graduate school and about three weeks into
(00:45):
the internship, my grandmother died and I had to go home,
and it was like a big deal. I was very
close with her, and Craig Shirley and his team were
so incredible to me. They were like, of course, you
have to go home. I was so nervous about, you know,
first job in politics. They planted a tree for her
in Israel, and they were just so wonderful. They sent
(01:07):
me like Flowers. I left that internship being like, oh,
people in DC are so nice. And I also did
a little bit of research on your book, Reagan's Revolution,
The Untold Story of the campaign that started it all.
And I like to refer to myself as an expert
on the nineteen seventy six around Reagan for election. Yeah, yeah,
because I did research on that book, and so I
(01:29):
had all this you know, knowledge on that election, which
was very funny.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So, Craig, it is so nice to.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Have you on, and I've remained a big fan of
yours over the years. I loved your books, and I
think you're just a terrific person.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
So thanks for coming on, Carl, Carol, the feelia is mutual.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
So how did you get your start in this world?
Did you always want to be in public affairs? Did
you always want to be a writer? How did this
happen for you?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I actually thought it was going to be a gym teacher.
I thought it was going to coach lacrosse. That was
really my plan when I went to college. I thought
I was going to be either a high school gym
teacher or a history teacher and coach athletics lacrosse. I
played lacrosse in college, and actually I went on to
(02:17):
played in high school in college, and then I went
to coach it for seventeen years while I was running
my firm. I think you probably maybe remember I was
coaching lacrosse at the time when you were at the firm.
But I didn't start out. I started out really. My
parents were very politically active in New York state politics.
My father was actually the first registered Conservative in the
(02:40):
state of New York when it became an official political
party back in nineteen sixty one. I want to say
he went down to the Board of Elections at four
o'clock in the morning and wait until it opened at
seven o'clock so he could be the first person registered,
so he could always say he was the first person
in the state of New York regis conservative. They dragged
(03:02):
me to New York State Convention Conservative conventions, and I
met Jim Buckley and Bill Buckley and so many other
conservative luminaries at an early age. And I went door
to door for Barry Goldwater in nineteen sixty four. So
I was politically active at an early age, and it
(03:24):
just seemed to gravitate toward that, even though I was
when I was in college and I started as a
history and visited major. Is that there was an attraction.
And I'll tell you there was a seminal moment for me.
Nineteen seventy six, I was actually I was slinging hash
at a seafood restaurant on Cape Cod and I remember
(03:47):
that the night I was cocktail waiting that night and
Reagan's speech the Kansas City Convention was on the TV
over the bar, and I watched the speech and I
just was mesmerized by and I said to myself, I've
got to get involved. I've got to get involved. That fall,
I went back to college and volunteered on the Gerald
fort campaign and in Western Massachusetts where I was going
(04:10):
to college.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
And of course four years yeah, well, actually we carried
Western mass Ford carried Western mass got slaughtered in the
state because of Boston and there's outlying areas.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
But you know, I did a good I you know,
I thought I did a good job. You know, I
registered voters and gave people rides of polls and did
lit drops, all the volunteer activities. The state chairman called me,
this is a big medicine for me. Right, I was
just you know, a little Puke College student and the
state chairman. The Republican state chairman called me a couple
(04:44):
of weeks later and asked me to come over to
Boston to have lunch with them. So I went over there.
I said, yes, of course, I'd love to. So I
drove over there and it was about one hundred miles
away from Springfield. And it was one of those old
Boston you know, private clubs with deep leather chairs, and
you know, I had to figure out which piece of
which silverware to use and off. So, yeah, exactly, yeah, right,
(05:11):
I figured that. Later, he said, you've got a knack
for this business. I said, well, thank you. He said, well,
what are your plans? I said, I think I'm just
going to be a high school you know, history teacher
and coach sports. He says, well, if you thought about
politics as a profession, I said, I didn't know you
(05:31):
could do politics profession, you know. And he said, oh, sure,
of course. You can need campaign manager and press secretary
and finance director and organizational you know, there's lots of
paid positions in politics. I said, well, that sounds interesting.
I am not committed to my future. I'm only nineteen
or twenty. I was nineteen or twenty. He said, he said, well,
(05:53):
you need to go to Washington and become an intern.
And I said, what's an intern? And he laughed. Then
I applied. I kind of figured things out, you know,
as I went along. I applied to a half dozen
conservative congressmen and number of senators. The Republican party, you remember,
in nineteen seventy seven, was in terrible, awful condition, you know.
(06:17):
It was just it was almost not even a political party.
And I got the only internship I got was ironically
from my home state senator, Senator Jacob Javis, who was
a very liberal Republican. He was very good on Israel
and he's very good on national events, and I always
say wonderful things about him. He was a terrific, terrific guy,
(06:40):
and he was very very kind to me and very
very nice to me. But I was quickly I was
the token Conservative and office build a lot of liberals.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I've been that on several campaigns as well.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
One thing led to another, and then I worked on
the Virginia Gubnou campaign, and then I went back to
school and I got a I went to a Nick
Pack campaign school, and there I met some people who
are very important in my political career in the future,
with Terry Dowan and Bill Radigan and Arthur Finkelstein, who
became my political mentor. And I went back to college
(07:15):
and I was just about two months away from graduating.
Arthur calls me and says, listen, there's a race in Philadelphia.
I want you to go work on it. I said,
I'm about to graduate. I can't do that. I just
you know, if I don't graduate now, I never will.
I said, okay. So he called me back a week
later and says, listen, I want you to go to
work for Abby Nelson. He's running for the US Senate
(07:36):
there in Massachusetts. And I said, Ozzie Nelson, isn't he
a band leader? He said, no, Abby Nelson, Avey Nelson.
He's a conservative radio talk show host and political leader
there in Boston. And so I ended up going to
work for him and we barely lost the primary. I
worked for him from June until August and we barely
(07:58):
lost the primary running Ed Brooke, who was then an
incumbent liberal Republican senator, and I went after after he lost.
How far do you want me to go with this?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I mean, however far you want. I love hearing people's stories.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
You know, you tell me, yeah, I'll speed it up.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
He went back. We had a house in Cape Cod
and my father and I built and I went down
there and I thought, you know, I'll just go back
to the seafood restaurant. I worked there this winter, his
fall in winter. And two days lefter, I get another
phone call for Arthur and he says, listen, I'm meeting
in Boston with the with the Republican nominee running in
New Hampshire, and I'd like, I want you to meet
(08:38):
us there. So I met. I went there and we
went over the polling data. The candidate was Gordon Humphrey
and uh, Humphrey of course was you know, went through
staff like like you know what through a goose and
h and he was he was look, he was searching
for a campaign manager and a press secretary and uh.
And after going over the polling data showing he was
(08:59):
going to lose, he says to me, I said, I
need a campaign manager. And Arthur points at me and
he says, well, there he is right there. I said,
oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, thank you. I'll
be the press secretary, right I was press secretary, and
we won, being a three term incumbent. We were labeled
the biggest upset in America on election night nineteen seventy eight.
(09:21):
And Humphrey was a firebrand conservative. I always admired him.
He was a little bit of kookie, but it was
a good, you know, reliable conservative vote. And after the
election he fired everybody on his staff and Nixon like maneuver,
but he asked he asked me and two other people
to come with him to Washington be on his staff.
As of course, I jumped at the chance and I
(09:43):
went to Washington and I was with him.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Have you been in Washington since then?
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I'm saying that was that your was that the what
moved you to Washington?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
I'd been there before when I intered for Jafts, right,
And I went back to Massachusetts and I went back
to work for Humphrey and I was there for about
a year. And then the fellow who rents fun for
a conservative majority asked me. He said, look, you know
about New Hampshire politics and communications. We're putting together an
independent expenditure and support of Governor Reagan. We'd like you
(10:14):
to run. I was twenty one years old. Yeah, he
handed me eight thousand dollars, which was a lot of
money in those days, and he said, we need to
help Reagan get the nomination because he's could lose to Bush,
and we want you to put together an independent expenditure campaign.
So I did radio and newspaper advertising in the first
six primary states, and we bought radio, wall to wall
(10:36):
everything we could, sports, agriculture, farm reports, everything. Reagan ended
up turning his campaign around, and I like to think
that myself and John Gizzi and Bob Heckman could take
a little bit of credit in helping turn around Reagan's
chances to win the nineteen eighty nomination.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Fantastic. So you've written six best selling books about Reagan?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yes, What is it about Reagan that has fascinated you?
So he's very important in my life as well. You know,
I started the show talking about working in your office
in two thousand and four and how.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
My grandmother died.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Reagan died that same year, and when he died my family.
You know, I'm from the Soviet Union. I have a
brother named Ronald. It's not a coincidence. He's born in
nineteen eighty two in America.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
He was very important to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
But you know, you've clearly taken that extra step and
really delved into his life.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
What did he mean to you?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Well, you know, in sixty four, after he gave his
famous speech for Goldwater, the speech was made into a
record album. My father brought it home one day and
he made my brother and me sit down listen to it,
and after the radio, after the record player, after the finish,
he said, this man Reagan himself should be president. That
(11:54):
was in nineteen sixty four. Yeah, my father was kind
of was prescient in that regard. But anyway, so I
followed his career assiduously all through the sixties and seventies
and was happy to. And I wasn't involved in seventy six,
but I was deeply involved in eighty and with the
White House Conference on a Small Business in eighty one
(12:16):
eighty two, and then I worked at the Republican National Committee,
which was the political arm of the Reagan White House,
and then worked on the eighty four re election campaign,
and lectured many times now at the Reagan Library and
the Reagan Institute. I mean, I'm giving this short version.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Care what is it about him that made you, you know,
his biographer.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
What was the thing that he.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Has that other people don't have that interests you so much.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I don't know. If I put my thumb on one
simple thing, I don't think you can. This was an
extremely intelligent man. Marty Anderson, his old Issues aid, was
a good friend of mine. He said. He once estimated
Reagan's intelligence to be a one hundred and seventy five.
Reagan was an extremely intelligent man. And you know he
(13:03):
read five newspapers day and read, you know, a a
historical book a week, and read viseness, you know, security
reports and things like that. He's an extremely intelligent man,
wrote thousands of letters.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
It was his compelling intellect, his ability to tell a
compelling story to make it seem so obvious that freedom
is the way personal dignity, personal freedom is the way
the individual is superior to the state.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
I was always attracted libertarian philosophy anyway. I remember in
Reason magazine in nineteen seventy five he said that libertarianism
was the fundamental basis for American conservatism, Which is true.
If it's centered on the individual, it's centered on privacy,
it centered on freedom, it's centered on liberty, then they
(13:55):
are simpatico the libertarian philosophy and the American conservative philosophy,
so the whole package. It was just you know, I
met him many times, and that wasn't why I supported him.
But he was utterly the same in private as he
was in public. You saw a man in public who
was compelling, who was friendly, who was charming. He was
(14:21):
like that in private too. A friend of mine who
since passed away, Paul Corbyn, worked for many years ago.
He used to play my weekly poker game.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Oh I played poker, do you I do? Yeah, I
played boker game.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I'm rusty now I played for twenty twenty five years
and since we moved away from Washington, you know, busted
up our old game. But anyway, Alcardon played in this game,
and he had worked for John Kennedy, and he said
that when Kennedy walked into a room, he tipped, he
tipped the field. You know, electricity flowed through a room,
(14:59):
right said that. I said, that's the way it is
with Reagan, and Reagan tips the field. Reagan, there's electricity
that flows through a room. Where Reagan walks into it,
it just he changes the dynamics of the setting.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Absolutely. You can see it.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Even I had never met him. You know, I was
born in seventy seven. I am a little late for
being in the political game with Reagan.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
You could see it.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Even I play old clips for my kids, and he
had something very different about him that it's hard to capture.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And the humor with which he did.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Certain things, the way that he was I played yesterday
for my children, The way he responded to Mondale about
his age. You know, he won't hold his opponent's youth
and inexperience against him, and he delivers it with his
straight face.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
He was really something special.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Somebody once, somebody wiser than me, once said that a
true leader has a physical, intellectual and moral presence. Reagan
had a physical, intellectual and moral presence, and that's what
made him, has made him one of our four greatest presidents.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
You have this historical background of our political system.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
What do you worry about right now?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Making a deadline? I'm working on a book right now.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I hear you.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, okay, yeah, you know what. I know what I'm
talking about. I worry about making a deadline. I worry
about finding publishers to the next three or four books.
I want to write, I worry about my children. You know,
they're all grown and they're all doing very very well.
My oldest, our oldest is a producer at Bloomberg, and
(16:40):
Andrew is the head of speech writing at NASA. Our daughter,
Taylor is an executive with a bank. And our son,
our son Mitchell, our youngest, he is working for a
DC lobbying firm.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So you must be so proud. That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
We're so proud of them. Unfortunately, two of them are
left wing knuts. No two are rational thinking. Can you
imagine that. My wife's so tough, right, she ran seapack
for you know, seven years. She worked for the Republican
National Committee, she worked for Reagan. We're both you know,
I like to consider ourselves intellectual conservatives, and we have
(17:23):
two children who are are conservative. They think well, I
they said, I think, therefore I am probably the world's
first conservative. And then we got two of that are
just phrased left wing knutballs. You know. I had an
argument ones with my youngest one. He was convinced that
(17:44):
a man can have a baby, and we argued for
half an hour. Said, please tell me in the animal kingdom,
where the male of the species can have a baby.
And he looked it up and looked it up and
looked up and so finally he says to me, he says,
sea horses.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Sea horses. That's the only right of course, yes, which.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Isn't even true, but that's the best you could find.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What advice would you
give your sixteen year old self having to kind.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Of do this all over again, have more fun?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Did you not have a lot of fun?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
I did, Carol. I have had a lot of fun.
It's been a lot of fun. But there's been a
lot of bumps in the road along the way.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
My father died when I was a kid, and then
my grandfather died when I was a month later, and
a lot of trials and tribulations along the way, and
I had to go to work at an early age.
And I had a lot of fun along the way.
I don't want to overstate it. I guess the first
thing is I would save more money, I would be
more careful with my money. I would read more. I
(18:45):
would read a lot more. You know, it's just I've
read hundreds of books, probably and I still feel inadequate.
There's so many books that I want to read. I
haven't read Grant's autobiography, and I want I want to
read grants autobiography. I just got a copy of the
of the Adams and Jefferson Correspondence, and I want to
(19:07):
read that. For pleasure. For research, I'm reading a bunch
of books on Donald Trump. And for pleasure, I'm reading
like Mark Levin's book on Power, which I just got
a copy from Mark. And I'm reading Kennedy by Ted Sorenson.
That's just for pleasure. But if I could give myself advice,
(19:28):
it would be well. First of all, never smoke. I
smoked for forty years. I quit ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Congratulations, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Do you want to know how I quit?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
How'd you quit?
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I prayed. I'll tell you something that I think is amazing.
I was drinking. I was never I was never an alcoholic.
I didn't drink to excess. But at night, after I
finished writing during the day, I would sit down and
edit out in the back porch and I would chain
smoke cigarettes and drink two or three glasses of wine.
(20:00):
And I did that four nights a week, and I
got to a point where I just thought, you know what,
this is not working for me anymore. I've been doing
that for forty years, and I did everything you know
I did. I wrote and ran a business, and you know,
did all the other things. Rehabbed old buildings and did
a lot of other things. One night, I just, I
(20:21):
guess I'm giving my testament. I beg your pard.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
One night, I just after two or three glass of
wine and smoking a bunch of cigarettes, I just I
get down my knees and I prayed. And the next
morning I woke up and both cravings were gone. It's incredible,
they were both going.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I believe it.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I think I haven't had a cigaret that's ten years now.
I was smoking two two and a half back the
day and I haven't had a cigarette in ten years.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
I was smoking, I was drinking two or three glass
of wine a night, and I haven't had a glass
of wine and ten years. I've had probably four or
five Jack Daniels. Five Jack Daniels in ten years, and
invariably I drink half of it and then pour the
rest of it down the drain.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
That's really something I fully believe prayer works.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I don't think that that's something controversial to say, or
even you know, questionable.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I feel comfortable with you that I can tell you that.
I know lots of people following you are probably going
to say, what a door.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I think my listeners know that prayer is the way,
and I do think that. And look, I have a
lot of Christians on my show who talk about how
prayer has changed their lives, and I don't.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Think there's anything certainly changed mind strange about it.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I've loved this conversation. Craig.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
You are such a fascinating man, and you've done such
incredible work. Leave us here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Re Read, Read and make as many friends as possible,
Pray as much as possible, love as much as possible.
Read drunk and white. I have a particular favorite Dorothy Parker.
She had a lot of good advice. One of the
best ones was authors and artists and actors and such.
Never know nothing but always know much.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Okay, well, thank you so much. He is Craig Shirley.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Check out his work, especially his six bestsellers on Ronald Reagan,
thank you so much, Craig for coming on.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Thank you, Carol so so much.
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