The Gipper Could Write Speeches Too

Ronald Reagan sure had a bright team of writers to draft his unique words, but now we've got proof that the Gipper was pretty good on his own when it came to tuning up those speeches. It's a rare hand-edited text of one of Reagan's most famous and memorable addresses: "The Great Communicator's" 1988 goodbye at the Republican National Convention. Our friend Bill Panagopulos of Alexander Autographs, the auction house of Americana and political memorabilia, says it's the first annotated Reagan speech he's ever seen, and he's including it in his June 16-17 live auction at alexautographs.com. The price could hit $8,000. It appears that some of Reagan's famous lines were among his edits, like why America is great: because it has 200 flavors of ice cream. The edits also reveal the beginnings of Reagan's Alzheimer's: misspellings, misplaced punctuation, and labored handwriting.