Thursday, February 3, 2010

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement Paying Tribute to President Ronald Reagan
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Mr. President, I rise for a moment to join my colleagues in paying tribute to the late Ronald Reagan, President of the United States--a great conservative leader of our country and an inspiration to many, many Americans.

I want to dedicate my remarks to a lady named Kathie Miller. Kathie works for me here in Washington. She has loved Ronald Reagan since the day he came on the scene and can probably quote him verbatim much better than I can. He had a meaningful impact on her life, and so I dedicate these remarks to her today.

My speech will be about two events I happened to attend where Ronald Reagan was speaking and the impact of those events not only on me but on everybody else who was there, and actually on the future of our country. One took place in 1975, when he was beginning his pursuit of the nomination for the Presidency of the United States. Gerald Ford was still President at that time and Ronald Reagan was running for the nomination for a full term.

Ronald Reagan came to Cobb County, GA. Cobb County, GA, is where I live. It is a very Republican county right now, but in 1975 it was not a very Republican county. In fact, there was only one elected official in the entire county who was a Republican, out of literally 100 or more who were Democratic officials.

Ronald Reagan came to the civic center in Cobb County, and an unanticipated thing happened, not by plan, certainly, not by the generation of politicians, but a crowd so large came to hear him that the fire marshals shut the building down. This is a very good-sized, 4,000-seat auditorium. People came to hear a positive message about America.

I was fortunate enough, because I had been in politics a little bit, to be able to get in that room and listen to his speech. In 1975, for America, it was not the most prosperous of times. In fact, a lot of the things we have been suffering through these last couple of years we went through in 1974 and 1975. We had a difficult housing market, higher interest rates, higher unemployment, and things of that nature.

So this former actor came to Cobb County and he lit a fire under everybody, and not necessarily about him but about ourselves. He uplifted people who needed uplifting and he did it with a message of a belief in ourselves, a belief in our country, pride in America, and defense through strength. Those messages were so clearly Ronald Reagan. It inspired me. And it inspired me so much that I hoped he would get that nomination and be elected President of the United States. But he failed. He did not get the nomination. Ultimately, Gerald Ford got it, not Ronald Reagan. But Ronald Reagan didn't go home and pout. He did not stop participating. He didn't drop out. He set his sights on the 1980 Republican nomination for President of the United States, and history reflects that he achieved it. He won it, and it was 8 great years for our country, 8 great years with a man who could inspire and who could lead.

I have oftentimes said that two of the truly great Presidents we have had--John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan--had something in common. They were from different parties, but they could stand before a group of people and make a speech about a subject they didn't agree with and, by the time they finished, they got a standing ovation. So, first, they were great communicators. Second, they were committed to a safe and prosperous America. They were hawks on defense. They confronted our enemies straight up, as Kennedy did with Khrushchev and President Reagan did. Third, and most important, they reduced taxes and brought prosperity to the economy of the United States.

The second occasion I met Ronald Reagan was an interesting one. It was in the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta, where professional basketball was played at the time. The coliseum seats 16,000 people. I was then the minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and was elected to be the MC of a program that featured Senator Mack Mattingly, running for reelection from Georgia, but the keynote speaker was Ronald Reagan. In fact, he flew from Washington to Atlanta to make that speech and then went to Reykjavik, Iceland where he confronted Gorbachev and Brezhnev and the Russians and he stood for peace through strength, and a strong buildup of forces in America so we could be a strong country that could defend ourselves, not a weak country subservient to anybody else.

In that auditorium of 16,000 people, he stood up before them and did the same thing he did in the auditorium in 1975. He inspired them to believe in their country, inspired them to believe in what was right, and inspired them to believe in peace through strength. And when he left, everybody was uplifted.

I think when Ronald Reagan left the Presidency in 1988, we would all agree our country was uplifted. It was a period of prosperity and a period of strength, and it was a renaissance of the American spirit. That is the test of true leadership. So I am honored and privileged to join many of my colleagues on the floor today to pay tribute to the memory and the commitment of Ronald Reagan, President of the United States.