Free Reagan's Revolution by Craig Shirley

how they could run a successful campaign. Both of them were deeply impressed with his grasp of politics.
    Early in the interview process, I gave up on asking key Reagan campaign staffers to diagram an “organizational chart” for the campaign. Most simply rolled their eyes or let out a derisive laugh. As Peter Hannaford said, “There was no campaign chart. Everybody simply gravitated to what they liked to do best.” More important than any management chart, they were caught up in the swirl of history. The events they were involved in were bigger and more consequential than anyone knew at the time, save the principal character at the center of this maelstrom: Ronald Wilson Reagan.
    Not everyone agreed to be interviewed, including Bob Hartmann and Al Haig. Not everyone could be interviewed, and some I decided not to interview, including Clarke Reed. I came to this conclusion after speaking to many about his actions in Mississippi and concluded that all I would get out of Reed would be “spin.” Reed broke his word to Reagan’s people, and no amount of discussion can change this.
    The Republican Party was undergoing dramatic changes, some of which would have happened without Reagan. Nonetheless, he brought to the fore issues and a direction that would eventually change the party, the country, and the world. The GOP was being reborn as a political movement based on, as Reagan said in 1964, “maximum freedom consistent with law and order.” This was the essence of the “constitutional libertarian” philosophy.
    Like thousands of others, Reagan’s speech inspired me. Not to say that I didn’t have a lifelong commitment to conservatism. My parents were charter members of the New York State Conservative Party, beginning in 1962. They were foot soldiers in Upstate New York, and they dragged my brother and me to every political event you could imagine. They attended every Conservative state convention as delegates. Fundraisers for Barbara Keating, Paul Adams, John Jaquith, Jim Buckley, and others became a rite of passage for New York conservatives at the Shirleys’ modest suburban home in Syracuse.
    In 1965, my father arrived home with a record album and made my brother and me sit down and listen to it. When it was over, Dad exclaimed, “This man Reagan himself should be President!” The recording was of Reagan’s speech the previous October for Barry Goldwater entitled Rendezvous With Destiny . My father was also the first registered Conservative in the state of New York, having gone to the Board of Elections the night its status had been granted and waited for hours until the office opened.
    As the head of the Onondaga County Conservative Party, he organized an annual summer outdoor fundraiser, which both Bill and Jim Buckley often attended. It was in 1966 when Bill showed up in a seersucker sport jacket. It was the first time I had ever seen such a jacket, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever beheld.
    Every night over dinner our family had extended political debates and discussions ranging from the Vietnam War to the environment to race relations to unions. They went on and on. Here, my brother and I developed our conservative philosophies through argument and discussion. In 1970, my mother ran for the county legislature against the incumbent liberal Republican and a run-of-the-mill Democrat. Although she did not win, she took enough votes away from the Republican to deny him re-election—and that was the point. The GOP could not take conservatives for granted any longer. Also, she was the first Conservative running for office in all of New York to be endorsed over her opponents by a major daily newspaper, the Syracuse Herald Journal . When my father passed away in 1977, he was running for the school board on the Conservative and Republican lines. By 1977, Republicans were finally beginning to understand.
    When I got back to college in the fall of 1976, I volunteered on the Ford campaign in Springfield,