The enduring legacy of President Ronald Reagan was on full display in his childhood home of Dixon, Illinois, last week where the town turned out for a parade ahead of the “midwest” premiere of Reagan , starring Dennis Quaid, Jon Voight, Penelope Ann Miller, Kevin Dillon, and Nick Searcy. Breitbart News was on the ground at the Young America’s Foundation -sponsored premiere, and caught up with Quaid, who stars as America’s 40th president in a biopic that dramatizes Reagan’s role in leading the revival of America out of economic malaise and the downfall of the Soviet Union that ended the Cold War. “His legacy still reverberates today and it will a hundred years from now,” Quaid said on the red carpet.
The A-lister, known for his roles in films The Right Stuff, The Parent Trap, I Can Only Imagine, American Underdog and the The Longriders, also said there are “a lot of parallels” politically between the rise of Reagan to the White House, in 1979 and 1980, and today. “We have hostages over in the Middle East just like then, but nobody talks about the ones now,” the actor explained. “We had 20 percent interest rates back then and we had inflation, you know, there was a lot going on that was very similar.
And the country was kind of in a Malaise — Jimmy Carter in his own words said — and Reagan, you know it was a different kind of ‘woke,’ and he woke us all up and made us remember what a great nation this is and what a privilege it is to be a citizen..