Making of the Great Communicator
Ronald Reagan's Transformation from Actor to Governor
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One week after Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for governor of California, the San Francisco Chronicle gibed: "It was simply a flagrant example of miscasting." Reagan was tanking, and his conservative backers panicked. Their bold experiment was about to fail. Then a friend suggested that the campaign enlist the expertise of two behavioral psychologists. Kenneth Holden and Stanley Plog agreed to take the job only if they could have three full days alone with Reagan. The candidate and his backers agreed, and the three men disappeared into a Malibu beach house. Those three days remade the b...
One week after Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for governor of California, the San Francisco Chronicle gibed: "It was simply a flagrant example of miscasting." Reagan was tanking, and his conservative backers panicked. Their bold experiment was about to fail. Then a friend suggested that the campaign enlist the expertise of two behavioral psychologists. Kenneth Holden and Stanley Plog agreed to take the job only if they could have three full days alone with Reagan. The candidate and his backers agreed, and the three men disappeared into a Malibu beach house. Those three days remade the bumbling political neophyte into an articulate, confident politician whose devastating command of the issues shredded the opposition. Holden and Plog remained by Reagan's side throughout the Republican primary campaign and the general election. They fed him information about California's problems, taught him how to handle the press, and helped refine his positions, all whilebattling factions within the campaign team that seemed determined to sabotage their own man. Not everyone who voted for Reagan supported his positions, but voters preferred his honesty and forthrightness to the waffling of other politicians. Reagan won the governorship by a landslide. Holden and Plog had shaped an actor into a governor and got to know firsthand the man who would become the nation's fortieth president. Featuring never before seen photos, here is the untold story of how they did it.
