Jeane Kirkpatrick - Reagan's Cabinet

Reagan's Cabinet

This piece came to the attention of Ronald Reagan through his National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen. Kirkpatrick then became a foreign policy adviser throughout Reagan's 1980 campaign and presidency and, after his election to the presidency, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, a position she held for four years. She had never been around a Republican before. On the way to her first meeting with him, she told Allen, "Listen, Dick, I am an AFL-CIO Democrat and I am quite concerned that my meeting Ronald Reagan on any basis will be misunderstood." She asked Reagan if he minded having a lifelong Democrat on his team; he replied that he himself had been a Democrat till age 51, and in any event he liked her way of thinking about American foreign policy.

She was one of the strongest supporters of Argentina's military dictatorship following the March 1982 Argentine invasion of the United Kingdom's Falkland Islands, which triggered the Falklands War. Kirkpatrick had a "soft spot" for Argentina's President Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, and favored neutrality rather than the pro-British policy favored by the Secretary of State Alexander Haig. The administration ultimately decided to declare support for the British, thus forcing her to vote yes to UN resolution 502.

At the 1984 Republican National Convention, Kirkpatrick delivered the "Blame America First" keynote speech, which re-nominated Reagan by praising his administration's foreign policy while excoriating the leadership of what she called the "San Francisco Democrats"—the Democrats had just held their convention in San Francisco—for the party's shift away from the hawkish policies of former Democratic presidents such as Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy to a more strident anti-war position that the left-wing of the Democratic Party had pushed since Vietnam. It was the first time since the 1952 speech from Douglas MacArthur that a non-party member had delivered the Republican convention keynote address.

Kirkpatrick, a member of the National Security Council, did not get along with either Secretary of State Haig or his successor, George Schultz. She disagreed with Schultz most notably on the Iran-Contra affair, in which she supported skimming money off arms sales to fund the Contras. Kirkpatrick and Schultz actually came to physical violence in their disagreement over whether to find extra funding for Nicaraguan contras, with Schultz telling Kirkpatrick that it was an "impeachable offense." Kirkpatrick wished to be Secretary of State or head of the National Security Council, which did not help either. Shultz threatened to resign if Kirkpatrick was appointed National Security Adviser. Kirkpatrick was more closely allied with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and head of the CIA, William J. Casey.