Most of my peers starting voting in the early 1980s, thus, we knew very little about the early formative years of Ronald Reagan. In a new treatise entitled “The GE Years: What Made Reagan Reagan“, the author explains the evolution of Reagan from a Democrat to a staunch conservative.
I knew that Reagan had been a leader and organizer of California’s “Labor for Truman” and he served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, which opposed “Right-to-Work” laws. I for one didn’t realize that Ronald Reagan worked for GE for eight years… When Reagan joined GE in 1954, he served as host of the General Electric Theater on television.
Ronald Reagan developed a vision of America during his GE years. He learned to reduce his views to a few simple precepts and, as he entered politics, he went over the heads of party leaders, using the banquet circuit and television to present his powerful message. Reagan referred to his GE years as his “post-graduate education in political science” and observed that “it wasn’t a bad apprenticeship for someone who’d someday enter public life.”