The Patriot Post® · Rest in Peace, Mike
Editor’s note: This column is written by author and former columnist Bill Steigerwald.
News of the death of my old friend Michael Reagan went viral this week — justifiably.
When it was announced on Jan. 4 Mike had died of cancer at the age 80, many of his fans, friends and former colleagues went to X and Facebook to offer their condolences and praise him.
Former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson spoke for many who knew Mike when he called him “warm, engaging and ‘normal’” — “a man of simple and total decency.”
Many who posted on social media shared fond memories of working with Mike in talk radio or on Republican political campaigns.
My working relationship with Mike was much different. For the last 13 years, up until two weeks ago, he and I collaborated on this column. Every week.
On Thursday mornings — at 7:30 his time — Mike would call me in Pittsburgh from his home in Los Angeles. Usually, as we talked, he’d be banging around in his kitchen, merrily grinding the coffee he’d take to his wife Colleen each morning.
We’d talk for half an hour about the hot political issues, world events and Republican talking points of the day — ObamaCare, Trump, Biden, covid mandates, the Democrats’ destruction of California — and decide on a topic.
I’d record our conversation and we’d eventually produce a column that Cagle would send out to its hundreds of customers. By my rough count, we did this 650 times.
The last time was on Christmas Day, when we wrote about an encounter Mike’s wife Colleen had with a post office clerk who couldn’t read cursive.
Mike was the Hollywood-raised son of a historic conservative president and a super-loyal member of the Republican Party. I was a Ron Paul-libertarian from Pittsburgh. But we actually had a lot in common.
We were about the same age — he was always two years older. We both had adult kids and long-running marriages. I had even lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, at one point just a few blocks from his home in Toluca Lake.
We both still played golf and followed sports, though based on his tweets he was a borderline fanatic when it came to college football. We both complained about the dishonesty and failures of the mainstream liberal media.
He and I got along so well, even the emergence of Donald Trump didn’t cause us problems.
Mike didn’t endorse him in the 2016 Republican primary. But when Trump became the presidential nominee, he did what his father would have done — he supported the GOP’s choice and campaigned for him enthusiastically.
Mike’s recurring message to President Trump — who once sent him a copy of a column he liked with a signed thank you note — was basically to keep doing what he was doing but please learn when to just shut up.
In our Thursday conversations, Mike was always as ready to laugh as rail about the latest dumb thing Biden or Trump did or said. Though he shared some of his increasingly serious medical problems with me, even then he stayed upbeat.
Those 650 op-ed columns we wrote are a blur to me now, but I know they were as lively and feisty as we could make them.
Some recent headlines give a sense of what they were about — “Australia’s fake gun control,” “Shutdown the shutdown hysteria,” “Charlie Kirk, RIP” and “Make peace like sausage — in private.”
For the last 13 years my Thursdays have been Michael Reagan days. It’s going to be hard to get used to not hearing his voice.
I’ve always told my liberal friends what a nice guy Mike was and that since 2013 I had spoken with him more than anyone else except my wife.
I only wish that I had gone through with my plan to fly to LA someday and meet my friend in person.
Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, was an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation.
Bill Steigerwald is an author and former columnist who lives near Pittsburgh.