Frank Donatelli, who leads McGuireWoods Consulting’s federal government practice in its Washington, D.C., office, co-authored a touching remembrance of his former boss, President Ronald Reagan, published Oct. 19 in the Wall Street Journal.
The Quiet Grace of Ronald Wilson Reagan, co-written with Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, recalls the 40th president as an unfailingly polite man who was gentle with people — regardless of their partisan leanings — while tough-minded on public policy priorities.
Donatelli was political director in the Reagan White House and worked on all of Reagan’s presidential campaigns.
In a 2016 campaign season filled with biting rhetoric from the presidential nominees, the op-ed evokes Reagan’s thoughtfulness. In 1981, while convalescing from an assassination attempt that nearly killed him, nurses were shocked one day to find the president on his hands and knees in his hospital room cleaning up some water he had spilled. “The leader of the free world was wiping the floor so no one else would have to do it,” the authors wrote.
They added, “Reagan believed in the politics of addition, not subtraction. He looked for ways to add to his support by exuding optimism and preaching growth policies. He wanted to unify, not divide.”
WSJ subscribers can read the full column here.