Avsnitt
-
Send us a text
This might be the most fun episode we ever produced. As we look back at George H. W. Bush , Pro wrestling fan. With the help of Charleston Post and Courier articles written by their star reporter Mike Mooneyham, we will examine the Bush connection to the world of Professional wrestling and especially his fondness for wrestling's greatest athlete, "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair.
We will hear about Bush's friendship with promoter Paul Boesch, his lifelong connection to "Chief" Ed "Wahoo" McDaniel, and his later friendship with "The Big Cat" Ernie Ladd. We will also hit the trail , in 1992, on the whistlestop tour that took George Bush through the Carolinas, with the biggest sports star of them all, Ric Flair.
It was at a rally in Spartanburg S.C. where our Host, Randal Wallace, was able to maneuver himself up near the front with a little help from Martha Bishop, the sister of our Senator Strom Thurmond, so he would be nearly front row for the rally at the Train Depot, that would feature not only the President, but Governor Carrol Campbell, Lieutenant Governor Bob Peeler, Senator Strom Thurmond, Congressional Candidate Bob Inglis, and our host's childhood sports hero, Ric Flair. To this day, as you will hear, it remains Wallace's favorite memory of any in his over 45 years in politics.
Unfortunately, we couldn't find any footage from the Spartanburg rally, but we do have some examples of George Bush out on his 1992 whistle-stop tour, and we do have some later moments from the 2008 Presidential campaign where Ric Flair would return to the trail to campaign for Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
It was at the event for Huckabee in Myrtle Beach that our host again became the focus of attention as he stood with a folder full of wrestling magazines hoping to get them autographed by Ric Flair, at the Huckabee rally, while serving as the Rudy Giuliani Horry County Chairman. It made the news, in two articles in the Sun News political blog Poli-tick-Tock. We will look back at that blog too, and feature the Columbia Mike Huckabee Rally with Chuck Norris and Ric Flair.
As you will hear, Hulk Hogan and Donald Trump were actually not the first Pro wrestler and President to headline a Presidential campaign event!!
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
In this special edition of our podcast we will be looking at the highly acclaimed best selling book written by former Ronald Reagan Speech writer Ken Khachigian.
The book offers an insiders view of not one President but two Presidents, both giants in our long long struggle against the forces of Communism in the Cold War. The two Presidents were two of history's giants, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Few people have had as close an insiders look as Ken Khachigian has had with the inner workings of any White House, much less two of them. Plus, he was with Richard Nixon in San Clemente after Nixon was forced from office in the wake of the horribly unfair Watergate Scandal. Khachigian was one of the five staffers Nixon had who would help him prepare his Memoirs and rebuild his life and career.
From there Khachigian would move on to the 1980 campaign of Ronald Reagan becoming his chief Speech writer and the man who would pen some of his most memorable moments, from his 1980 Inaugural Address, to the address at the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany as the President dug himself out of a controversy that had its origins in the war 40 years before.
This book offers intimate portraits of Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, and mentions several lesser known figures we have talked about throughout our many seasons on the air such as Earl Butz, and most recently Stu Spencer who just passed away at age 97.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS by Ken Khachigian is a must read and we are very thankful for the opportunity to showcase it here on our broadcast.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
Send us a text
The day after the Presidential debate, Hillary and Bill Clinton had a rally in Richmond , Virginia. The feeling of momentum shifting in their direction was certainly evident but the race would prove to be far from over.
This is that rally in its entirety as the Clinton campaign kicks off its run toward the finish line.
George Bush would be heading out on a whistlestop tour across the the South and we would see him in South Carolina in Spartanburg, an event our host was lucky to have attended and he will be sharing that with us in the next episode.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
This is the famous Vice Presidential Debate. It would feature a fiery set of exchanges between Vice President Dan Quayle and Senator Al Gore. The two men served in the Senate together and knew each other quite well. The gloves will come off and as that happens the third man on the stage , retired Admiral James Stockdale, was often reduced to being a bystander.
It was a shining moment for Dan Quayle, who in my opinion, won this debate against Al Gore. It was the strongest moment for Quayle in either campaign. Al Gore does well too and if you follow the adage "do no harm," Gore was successful. It is also a campaign debate that shows why a novice can be truly handicapped by their lack of experience in politics. Admiral James Stockdale was a brilliant man, a former educator, and President of a University, a war Hero, a POW, and a formidable man. But you would never have known it based on the performance you will hear in this debate.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
In this first of several episodes where we will be looking at the Presidential Debates, both in this series in 1992, and the coming Dole series in 1996, we will look back on the first Townhall debate held in a Presidential election year.
This was playing to Bill Clinton's strength. It would also play to George Bush's weakness. Bush appears at times to be bored with the format and looks at his watch several times. All the while Bill Clinton runs a masterclass on empathy and connection with the audience. He would walk up to them, repeat the questions, and use the old tried and true sales method of "feel, felt, and found" to pull the audience in.
You can hear it all here in this episode, as we look back on this debate in its entirety.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
He's Back!!!!
After a nearly three month absence in the 1992 Presidential race, Ross Perot decides to jump back in to the race. The truth is he probably never really ever left it. All I can say about whomever's tactical decision it was to have him withdraw in the first place needed to have their head examined. It ranks, in my opinion, as one of the stupidest decisions in the history of campaign politics. The fact is he could have won instead he would prove to be a dramatic spoiler, at least for George Bush.
The debate is still out as to what would have happened had Perot not been in the 1992 race. Some experts say the polling does not back up the assertion that he cost Bush the election, I don;'t know the answer to that, I tend to think it was one of many mountains Bush needed to climb but I still blame the Special Prosecutor for tanking the 1992 Bush campaign. (but that is for a later episode) But still, Perot went from being a potential winner to gargantuan nuisance.
In this episode we look at Perot's dramatic reentry, and we preview the historic three way debates that would so captivate the nation bringing in big ratings over the next couple of weeks. We will let you hear one of them in its entirety too in our next episode.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
As September draws to a close, we listen in on two rallies, and an introduction from a political rising star who will go on to be a big player in the next three decades.
At Governor Bill Clinton's rally in San Francisco we introduce you to the former Mayor and the 1992 candidate for the U. S. Senate, Dianne Feinstein. Then Bill Clinton will address the rally
Then President Bush will campaign in St. Louis, Missouri. We will conclude the month of September with George H. W. Bush firing up the crowd in Missouri. As for the first time he decides to take the gloves off and give Governor Clinton a dose of his own negative campaigning.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
In this episode we tune in to two different rallies as both candidates are barnstorming the nation to make their case to as many people as they can get in front of in 1992.
President Bush is campaigning in the heartland of Missouri while Governor Bill Clinton is on the west coast in Oregon. We will tune in to the local coverage in both states as we hear the reactions of the crowds as the campaign starts to heat up in late September.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
Here is a chance for you to hear Governor Bill Clinton doing what he does best. It is a campaign rally at Montgomery College in Rockville Maryland.
This episode allows you to hear him on the stump as he delivers his campaign speech in its entirety.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
The SS United States once sailed mightily across the Atlantic. She set the transatlantic sailing speed record , which still stands today, only using 2/3 of her power.
She was once majestic, powerful, and one of the most luxurious vessels of its time.
But time has passed. The jet airplane cut transatlantic travel from days to hours. The need for such sea faring vessels disappeared and with in just a few short years the SS United States was mothballed, her furnishings sold, her interior gutted, and she sat at port for a half century as the elements took their toll.
She is now headed for Florida to become an artificial underwater reef. A project that will almost certainly rejuvenate life into this lonely vessel at the bottom of the sea.
As we commemorate the SS United States historic place on the high seas and watch her slow sail from Philadelphia to Mobile, Alabama to be prepared for sinking. We thought now was a perfect time to reflect on it all as we watch her final sail before she sinks into history and moves on to its new chapter under the sea.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
To start off the fall campaign in early September 1992, Bill Clinton arrives at the Detroit Economic Club to talk about his economic plan and how it will affect Michigan. He will take a few jabs at the incumbent President in the process too.
Here you can hear Bill Clinton doing what he does best, give a detailed policy speech and make it interesting while also campaigning. He was really good at it as you will hear.
This is the Economic speech in its entirety.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
We start in this episode the look at late August and all of September as the two major figures in the race battle it out for the only time all alone.
Starting with this episode we will feature rallies of both President Bush and Governor Bill Clinton. This episode will look back at President Bush as he starts out in Connecticut and then heads to Florida. You will get to hear the President on the stump from a rally recorded and shared on Facebook by a person filming with a camcorder. This is as grass roots as you can get.
Plus you will hear from the local and national news outlets as they report it all live on the campaign trail.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
It is time to kick off the fall campaign. In this first month of campaigning we get the only time the two principles in the race faced each other head to head. Ross Perot would rejoin the fray in October. So, in the next few episodes we let you watch the 1992 campaign unfold between President George H. W. Bush and Governor Bill Clinton, in the only time period in which they had the stage to themselves.
Bill Clinton will start out with a commanding lead over Bush but it is a lead that continues to shrink with every passing day. Having brought James Baker back in to manage the campaign you will see George Bush become more focused and with it the Presidents poll number begin to rise. That will be true all the way through the rest of the campaign until we have a neck and neck race at the end of October of 1992.
In this episode we will listen in on where the race stood at the start and hear two rallies very early on as Bush addresses a crowd in Oxford, Mississippi, and Bill Clinton talks to a meeting of the AFL-CIO.
As we kick off the beginning of the most exciting election in my lifetime.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
In this special edition we honor two very different but very special people, Stuart Spencer and Bob Ueker.
Stuart Spencer was an advisor to Ronald Reagan going back to his earliest days in politics. He helped guide Reagan to the California Governor’s Mansion and then on to the White House. In the time between, he also ended up working with President Gerald Ford to fend off a challenge from Reagan in 1976, and helped Ford almost win reelection only losing by a point to former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Spencer would go on to be a major advisor to Reagan throughout the rest of Reagan’s career and he established political consulting as a viable profession. He passed away in January at age 97.
Bob Ueker, was known far and wide as Mr. Baseball. He was the broadcaster for decades for the Milwaukee Brewers and the star of TV commercials for Miller Lite Beer and the TV show "Mr. Belvedere". Bob Ueker was famous for his ability to make people laugh and was a regular guest on "The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson", we try to share some of that with you in this episode . Bob Ueker passed away in January he was 90 years old.
This is an episode honoring two very different people but both of whom were great at what they did.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
The tension is in the air on the final night of the Republican National Convention in 1992. The speech is do or die for President George H.W. Bush. It occurs just a week after he has brought back in his top advisor James Baker. He needs to show focus and the will to win.
He does what he had to do and comes out of the Convention having shrunk the Clinton lead but still behind.
We will head out from here into a tough fall campaign. A campaign that would produce some of the most exciting moments of any election in our nation's history.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
In this episode we take you through the events of three of the days of the Republican National Convention as George Bush prepares to take the stage and address the nation.
He is greeted by hecklers at a Houston event who snuck in as reporters from an AIDS activist group. But the President and the crowd handle it fairly well. Despite all the issues that seemed to have beset the campaign and the convention, the message and the record George Bush had to run on was finally taking hold and the giant lead Bill Clinton had was starting to shrink.
This is also the end of an era of long speeches by former Presidents at least on the Republican side of the aisle. In this episode, we hear the last prime time address given by former President Gerald Ford as he compares the scenario the party faces in 1992 to the last successful Democrat to argue it was time for change, Jimmy Carter, during the election he lost by a whisker in 1976.
Plus, this election actually produced a very unlikely star, the much maligned Vice President of the United States, Dan Quayle. It is often forgotten that starting with this convention speech, Dan Quayle actually did an outstanding job campaigning for re-election through out all of the 1992 campaign. In fact, I have often wondered how it would have gone had he been head to head with Bill Clinton given how well he did do in 1992. That story has often been obscured by the election loss of the Bush/Quayle ticket later in the year. You will get to hear both the Quayle video and his convention speech in this episode.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
This is a speech delivered just barely in Primetime that slipped into the 11pm hour. Arguably the single biggest mistake ever made by schedulers in the history of prime time political conventions.
It is from day 1 of the 1992 Republican National Convention. It was a convention that had a lot of political battles in it between the conservative wing and the establishment wing of the Republican Party. Our nominee was in serious trouble , ands many members of Congress stayed away rather than allow themselves to be pictured in attendence. You could say it was one of those situations where if it could go wrong it did in 1992.
However, this speech was the single best speech I have ever heard. I remember being mesmerized by it and by the man who made it. This was the last prime time address given by former President Ronald Reagan. It is everything you would ever want in a speech by the greatest leader of the era. Optimistic, visionary, and inspiring, it had everything a young person, like me who had just turned 21 the day before, could ever want to be inspired by.
That was the magic of Ronald Reagan, if you are too young to remember it, or if you have forgotten that night, here is your chance to relive it again, as it occured in Houston, Texas. As Peter Jennings said when it was over "It is easy to see how Ronald Reagan held such sway over the American people for so long"
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
In this episode we tune in to the first days of the 1992 Republican National Convention. We will go first to the morning session and hear from a list of Republican candidates for Congress as they try to "Bounce the House" after the Democrats get themselves in gulfed in a house banking scandal where several of the members bounced hundreds of the thousands of dollars in checks on the House bank.
We will hear from former Congressman Tommy Hartnett who challenged my State's long time Senator Ernest Hollings in 1992. It was the first race where I was selected to chair the campaign at my little college in Greenwood S.C. While I never met Mr. Hartnett, I had a lot of fun, and enjoyed listening to him and Ernest Hollings battle it out with thick Charleston, South Carolina accents. This is the first of a couple of episodes that will feature this 1992 Senate Race.
Then we will hear from former candidate Pat Buchanan as he electrifies the convention with a tough , conservative speech about the culture wars in America. It was , often, very accurate in substance, but it gave a much meaner look to conservatism than the man who would walk on to the podium just after him and out of prime time. That speech will be what our next episode will cover; the man who put a smiling face on American Conservatism, Ronald Reagan.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
This special Edition of our podcast , is a look back at two of our favorite motion pictures, "Casablanca" , and "Havana", just in time for "Casablanca" to be making its reappearance on the Silver Screen over the next week at theaters all across the nation.
The Flashback Theater Series will be featuring the picture at various theaters around the country (At Stone Theaters at the Market Commons, for those here in the Myrtle Beach S.C. area) on February 9, 12, and Valentine's Day February 14th. We cannot urge you enough to go see it on the big screen if you have never done so, or if you want to see it again. There is nothing like it.
In this episode , we have looked all over to find source material that could tell the unlikely story of this movie, made in utter chaos, with actors who did not believe in the story, and did not want to be making the movie, writer's actually rewriting and creating the story as they went along, day by day, during the production, and creating this movie that did not even have a settled end, when it was finished. But somehow out of that chaos came a cinematic masterpiece that has left only one question to debate....Is it the greatest movie ever made? or is it just one of the greatest movies ever made? No one even dares say its not great.
It is also a movie that has been imitated several times but no one as of yet has ever been able to replicate its magic, though one movie came the closest even if it failed at the box office, and we will take sometime to look at that movie too, "Havana", directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Elena Olin, Robert Redford and Raul Julia.
We share them both with you , just as Casablanca is about to return to the big screen, on this Valentine's Week and also because they , along with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, served as the inspiration of our own Host's new novel that will be out near the end of 2025 or at the start of 2026.
We hope you enjoy our special edition and if you want to learn about Flashback Cinema check it out at https://www.flashbackcinema.net/ and please also drop by www.RandalWallace.com too to keep up with all the news from us here at the podcast too.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! -
Send us a text
It is just days before the Republican National Convention and the campaign of George H. W. Bush is losing, badly. It appears unfocused and seems to be reacting to events instead of controlling them or leading them. The worsening economy has the argument for change being made by Bill Clinton stronger with each passing day. Finally, Ross Perot decided to withdraw and did so on the last night of the 1992 Democratic National Convention delivering for Governor Clinton an enormously huge audience to listen to his acceptance speech.
One of the problems is that George Bush is without two of his most trusted political advisors. Lee Atwater, the native South Carolinian, who had helped guide Bush to the Presidency had died of brain cancer, and James Baker, his former campaign manager, had moved on to the job of Secretary of State. Bush needed them badly and he finally went to James Baker and asked him to take over the campaign for that final stretch.
James Baker was, as James Carville once said of him, "the Joe Montana of American Politics" (Montana is a widely heralded Super Bowl MVP Quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers) Baker arrived in Washington D.C. when his friend George Bush had moved from Texas in the early 1970s. He got a job working for President Gerald Ford in 1975. He then moved over and almost pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in political history moving Ford from 33% points down to only losing by one in 1976 to Jimmy Carter. He took Bush from an asterisk in the polls to almost wrestling away the 1980 nomination from Ronald Reagan, he then helped guide the Reagan Presidency in its first term, was Secretary of State to Bush as they soft landed the Cold War, and now Bush was calling him back in to pull off yet another miracle and get him re-elected to the Presidency.
As you will see, it almost worked, if not for the Sinister forces of a Special Prosecutor. Here is the story of James Baker stepping back in to take over the 1992 campaign of George H. W. Bush, on the eve of the 1992 Republican National Convention.
Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!! - Visa fler