It's ironic that today would have been the 97th birthday of Ronald Wilson Reagan. He was by far the best president of my lifetime. Almost every day of this miserable presidential campaign I wish he was still around. Here's his "A Time for Choosing" speech before the 1964 presidential election. It's a long clip, but one of the gems starts at about 2:30, and goes for just over a minute. Enjoy!
I hate to make you watch this next clip, but I was struck by the contrast between what Reagan believed about the role of government, and the beliefs of one of today's candidates. Don't watch all of this. It's too painful. But go forward to about 4:05.
We've come a long way. But not in the right direction...
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When I was in fourth grade, our teacher, on election day, thought it would be 'fun' if our class had a mock election. I raised my hand, before it started, and said 'Do we have to vote for Ford or Carter?'. He was a little taken back and said, 'Well, who do you want to vote for?'. I said, "Reagan'. I remembered him as our governor a few years earlier and I remembered watching him battle with Ford for the nomination. (Yes, I was dorky enough at age 10 to be watching presidential conventions).
So the teacher agreed to put Reagan on our ballot and it turns out that in our class of about 20-some kids, Reagan won!
So, we were four years ahead of our time.
On a side note: my first 'fake' presidential vote was for Reagan. My first 'official' one, in 1984, was also for Reagan!
P.S. Richard, why didn't you tell these people about the time you almost got us arrested when we went to see Reagan accept that taxpayer award before his daughter spoke?
It was shortly after some nut had run onstage and smashed an award. Maureen was running for congress in my district, so I got invited to hear her speak. We went just to see Reagan and got there early and sat in the front row. A secret service guy was about 5 feet away and Richard, being the 'genious' he can be, said rather loudly, 'so which one of us is going to break the award?"
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