Reagan Has His Rendezvous With Destiny

[Hawk1981]

During the 1964 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, who had recently become politically active in his support of Republicans, traveled and gave speeches in support of Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee. In the last weeks before the election Reagan delivered his "A Time for Choosing" speech as part of a pre-recorded television program Rendezvous with Destiny.

Transcending partisanship and appealing to his audience by portraying his views as common sense, he positioned himself above mere partisan arguments. Rather than rely on slogans or abstract arguments, Reagan turned to vivid story telling and anecdotes about people to relate to the people in his audience.

There are shades of the Reagan to come with an anecdote criticizing a welfare mom and exhortations for 'law and order'.

Reagan staked out the claim for populist support for the right and attacked policies of the Democratic administration as being elitist with its ever expanding administrative government. He introduces the idea in this speech that big government opposes the interests of all Americans, and does not divide the country along class lines or into the typical interest groups, "This is the issue of the election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government, or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Reagan concludes his speech with an emotional appeal that borrows phrasing from Churchill, Lincoln and Patrick Henry, "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."

An audience that was used to seeing the optimistic and gregarious Reagan from film and television was introduced to the new serious and comparatively angry politician. He had only been a Republican for two years, having identified with liberal causes for much of his life as a registered Democrat. With one speech he became the most attractive Republican in America.

Though Goldwater lost this race, Reagan found a growing swell of support that would launch his political career and elect him Governor of California two years later.

 

[Hawk1981]

Following the presidential election of 1964, Reagan revised his theme of moral vigilance against communism to a demand for “law-and-order.” In the midst of confrontations between University of California-Berkeley students, campus police, and college administrators over the right to engage in political speech on campus property, candidate for California governor Reagan espoused the viewpoint that intellectual freedom came second to law-and-order. The California University system, he charged was dominated by “a minority of malcontents, beatniks, and filthy-speech advocates” and that students have a choice to “observe the rules or get out.” He demanded the resignation of UC chancellor Clark Kerr. Although Reagan had never held elective office before running for governor, his message was embraced by the same California voters who would later become Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” of quiet, law-abiding citizens who were fed up with the antics of radical students.

As the 1966 governor’s race approached, Governor Pat Brown misread the demographic shift in California. Northern California’s influence was diminished as white, Midwestern and Southern immigrants coming to Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange County were attracted to Reagan’s message. On Election Day, Reagan beat Brown by almost 1 million votes, becoming California’s 33rd Governor.

Richard Nixon took advantage of Reagan’s new formulation of addressing “law-and-order” and state’s rights to win over moderate, yet unsettled voters in the South (often referred to as Nixon’s “Southern strategy”) and the Midwest. This strategy helped Nixon finally win the presidency in 1968, and paved the way for Reagan in 1980.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The American Taliban is thinking, "A thousand years of darkness? Sign me up!"