Ronald Reagan’s career-making speech still shines 50 years on

by Sam Leith, October 27, 2014

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What were the great turning points of the cold war? You could make a case that one was 50 years ago on Monday when Ronald Reagan gave a speech, “A Time For Choosing”, in support of the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

The speech – or The Speech, as it became known – helped make Reagan’s political career. Shortly afterwards he was nominated to run for governor of California – which led on to the White House, the partnership with Margaret Thatcher, detente with Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika(“reform” in Russian), impromptu wall-demolition in Germany, and all that jazz.

So what made “the Great Communicator” such a great communicator? There are abundant examples in this speech. Wherever you stand on Reaganomics, that is a lucid, cogent and fiercely persuasive statement of the case for small government and market freedoms, and a refusal to accommodate with communism.

One thing any business communicator can learn from is how it deals with statistics. It is packed, at least in the first half, with facts and figures: a nightmare in unskilled hands. They are given persuasive life by Reagan. Here is folksy style; philosophical wit; and above all a clever use of metaphor – which provides an easily grasped interpretation for the statistics.

The most quoted passage is the pivot: “You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down – [up to] a man’s old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

Here, introduced with that seductive “you and I” (inviting us into collusion against “they”), is a spatial metaphor: reframing right versus left as up versus down. And – with his ant heap image.

Also, instead of attacking the Democrats as a threat, he treated them as idiots who missed the point of a greater threat. His sonorous high style was reserved for the communist menace; the Democrats, he made fun of them. That’s far deadlier.

In a splendid reductio ad absurdum(reduction to absurdity), he quoted an optimist on the $298bn hole in the Social Security budget: “He said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble.”

Another jewel: “For three decades, we’ve sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.” One more: “Well, the trouble with our Democrat friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

What did this brilliant speech do for Goldwater? He lost the election by miles. People concluded that someone had the vision thing; and that someone was Reagan rather than Goldwater. Which offers an extra lesson: don’t – figuratively speaking – pick a bridesmaid who’s much prettier than the bride.

artofpersuasion@ft.com