The Ronald Reagan Memorial Employment Plan

Entrance to Amalgamated Sugar Company factory at opening of second beet season. Nyssa, Oregon; 1939
Photographer: Dorothea Lange
Library of Congress FSA/OWI archive

No surprise that the jobs program is a closed door, for most of us.

But it's a great deal for all the former speechwriters and surviving members of his administration, what with their book deals and wingnut foundation gigs.

This Friday, Morning Edition gave nearly eight minutes to this, on the upcoming anniversary of Reagan's March 30, 1981 popularity surge.

Here, it's not a former Reagan staffer cashing in, but a WaPo writer (who happens to be married to an NPR correspondent). Wilber has detoured from his federal court system beat to devote 320 pages to "the day the shots were fired, and how Reagan managed to keep his sense of humor throughout the traumatic events."

Or perhaps, after a lifetime in acting, he never broke character.

We'll never have so much airtime devoted to Reagan's record, so we'll have to settle for this dewey-eyed piece, as it rehashes the operating room anecdotes of he who was dubbed by Gore Vidal, the Acting President.

The segment did have one revealing bit, in an interview with the Secret Service agent who got Reagan to the hospital—

"Since he did live and do what he did for those eight years, you can see the results of saving his life. And that's what our job is, saving lives... Before that event, even though there had been attacks on John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King [Jr.], a whole bevy of problems for the Secret Service, we still took a defensive posture. With this event we realized that wouldn't work anymore, and we did it in a flash. That's what came out of it..."

Threats to Kennedys and King: ehhh...
To Reagan: wake-up call!

On other job fronts, if Wisconsinites could fire Scott Walker today, they likely would.

His moves since day one in the Governor's office couldn't have been more obviously patterned on Reagan's career.

There was the attack on unions [see: President Reagan]. His earliest tactic was to threaten teachers and nurses with the National Guard, and his "budget repair" is, among many things, an assault on the University of Wisconsin [see: Governor Reagan, on both counts].

Walker may be unpopular at home—and subject to recall next year—but he'll never be out of work. He's got the media spotlight and big money behind him; a made man with a lifetime ticket to the right-wing gravy train.

All around the country, everyone else needing a job can expect the aid and compassion the great man himself always displayed.

Some quotes from Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor: A Chronicle of the American '80s— [1982]

1/19 At his seventh press conference, President Reagan:

• Claims there are "a million people more working than there were in 1980," though statistics show that 100,000 fewer are employed
...
• Responds to a question about the 17% black unemployment rate by pointing out that "in this time of great unemployment," Sunday's papers had "24 full pages of ... employers looking for employees," though most of the jobs available…require special training, for which his administration has cut funds by over 30%.

3/16 "Is it news if some fellow out in South Succotash someplace has just been laid off, that he should be interviewed nationwide?"
—President Reagan—whose Presidency is based on the premise that people believe what they see on TV—complaining about coverage of the nation's economic suffering

4/15 "The statisticians in Washington have funny ways of counting."
—President Reagan explaining to Illinois high school students why, although the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a rise in unemployment, he believes the jobless rate has in fact declined

9/4 "South Succotash, with its population of 11 million, must be a considerable place."
—AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland on the unemployment figures

10/4 President Reagan suggests—and not, by any means, for the first time—that since he sees big help-wanted sections in the Sunday papers, unemployment must be caused by a lot of lazy people who'd just rather not work.

10/18 "Now we are trying to get unemployment to go up, and I think we are going to succeed."
—President Reagan getting confused during a GOP fundraising speech

12/23 President Reagan suggests that the key to solving the unemployment problem could very well be something as simple as hiring unnecessary workers. "If a lot of businesses ... could hire just one person ... it would be interesting to see how much we can reduce these unemployment rolls."

[1983]

1/18 "The President and Cap sit around and talk about how workfare got surfers off the beach in California. They have no concept of what is going on."
—Unnamed aide on President Reagan's failure to comprehend the seriousness of the recession

And some undated quotes:

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION TALKS ABOUT THE ECONOMY

"The number of people remaining in poverty is very small and it grows smaller every day."
—Domestic adviser Martin Anderson

"An increase in the number of people seeking work who did not find it."
—Larry Speakes on the cause of unemployment

"Just remember, for every person who is out of work, there are nine of us with jobs."
—President Reagan on the unemployment rate