Ronald Reagan: “A Time for Choosing”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

On October 27, 1964, millions of viewers saw a familiar figure in an unfamiliar role when Reagan appeared that evening on the National Broadcasting Company television network urging voters to support the Republican nominee for president, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Most Americans who knew Reagan as an actor did not realize that he had become increasingly involved in politics during the previous decade as he toured the country as a corporate spokesperson for GE. In speeches at meetings of business associations and civic organizations on what he called “the mashed potato circuit,” Reagan extolled the success of big business and warned of the dangers of big government (Reagan, 1965, p. 263). His speeches reflected GE's corporate philosophy, but the views were Reagan's own as he moved away from the liberal Democratic positions he had embraced when he arrived in Hollywood. In 1964, after Reagan had given a speech at a Goldwater fund-raising event in Los Angeles, a group of wealthy Republican campaign contributors asked whether he would be willing to repeat his remarks on national television. Reagan agreed, and he gave the speech once more before an audience of Republicans who gathered in the network's studio.

Reagan begins by telling his audience that the Goldwater campaign has not provided him with a text; his words and ideas are his own. Reagan had actually given a version of this speech dozens of times before as he toured the country for GE. Because he disliked flying, Reagan often traveled by train to his speaking engagements and used that time to read extensively, refine his ideas, and incorporate new arguments and anecdotes into his talks. By 1964 “the Speech,” as he called it, was polished, his delivery poised, and his message persuasive to conservative audiences. “A Time for Choosing” explains why voters should support Goldwater for president, but it makes that case by summarizing the main political principles that Reagan adopted as he became a conservative.

Reagan tries to encourage voters to back Goldwater by using himself as an example of a lifelong Democrat who had recently switched parties. He tells his audience that Democratic policies had created an illusory peace and a false prosperity. He insists that high taxes, budget deficits, and the eroding value of the dollar threaten the health of the economy. Reagan also maintains that because of the cold war struggle with the Soviet Union and its allies, “we're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars.” He asserts that the United States is a beacon of hope to people around the world who yearn for liberty and a refuge for those who seek to escape the oppression of Communist dictatorships.

As he often did in his speeches or writings, Reagan connects these specific issues to a fundamental principle. The most important question that the American people face in the election of 1964, Reagan declares, was not whom they should support for president—Goldwater or the Democratic nominee, President Lyndon B. Johnson. At issue was whether Americans could preserve “the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.” The alternatives Reagan poses are stark: either up to the dream of “the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.” There is no middle ground. Reagan was calling attention to what he believed were the dangers of liberal reform programs, which had become common in American life since the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many Americans supported the New Deal and its successors, such as Johnson's Great Society, because these programs protected them against economic hardships or improved their quality of life. Yet Reagan maintains that liberals, however well intentioned, were trading liberty for security and following the “downward course” toward totalitarianism. Their programs required a powerful “centralized government,… the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize.” Reagan thinks it is time for choosing. Either “we believe in our capacity for self-government or … 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 then offers a variety of examples of government regulatory and reform programs that had gone awry. He had learned from his years on the “mashed potato circuit” that such vivid examples helped persuade listeners to accept his arguments. The examples and statistics supported his contention that big government is inefficient, wasteful, and dangerous. Reagan maintains that the architects of many federal programs had forgotten something that the Founders keenly understood—“that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as efficiently as the private sector of the economy.” He discusses programs that grow ever larger, such as those to aid foreign nations, to illustrate what he claims are the difficulties of controlling big government. “A government bureau,” he declares, “is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.” Reagan also believed that new government powers came at the expense of personal liberties, and claims here that “proliferating bureaus and … regulations” have endangered constitutional safeguards and threatened private property. Once more he returns to his main theme that liberal proponents of government regulation had started the country down the road to Socialism. “Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment,” he asserts.

Reagan next charges that the advocates of big government at home threatened American security abroad. Just as liberal domestic policies were leading the United States toward Socialism, liberal international policies were increasing the danger of “surrender” in the cold war. In the final paragraphs of his address, Reagan tries to turn the tables on critics of Goldwater and other hardline anti-Communists who insisted that the United States should take strong action, including the use of nuclear weapons, to defeat Communist foes. Reagan instead maintains that the real threat to national security comes from liberal advocates of social welfare programs who desired an accommodation with the Soviet Union that was tantamount to appeasement. That charge was inflammatory, since appeasement is a word that evokes memories of Western leaders who tried to limit the expansion of Nazi Germany in the 1930s by meeting some of Adolf Hitler's demands for the territory of neighboring countries. Reagan refused to accept the legitimacy of Communist rule, and he insists that there must not be any agreement aimed at reducing cold war tensions that compromises the chances for freedom of those people “enslaved behind the Iron Curtain.” Once more he connects current policy issues to the principles of the Founders when he approvingly quotes Alexander Hamilton: “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.”

Even though he raises gloomy and even frightening prospects, Reagan, as he usually did, ends his speech on a note of optimism. What set him apart from many other conservatives of the 1960s was his faith that the American people would make the right choices and that their strength and wisdom would ultimately prevail. Reagan looked to the past to provide hope for the future. He closes by borrowing from the famous phrases of two presidents. The first is from Franklin D. Roosevelt, who told the American people during the grim days of the depression, in 1936, that they had “a rendezvous with destiny.” The second is from Abraham Lincoln, who wrote in 1862 that during the Civil War, the Union was “the last best hope of earth.”

Reagan's speech was a hit. It produced a flood of contributions to the Goldwater campaign in the week before the election. Those donations and Reagan's spirited appeal for votes, however, could not keep Goldwater from losing in a landslide to President Johnson. Because Goldwater carried only six states and just 39 percent of the popular vote, many observers thought the conservative movement had suffered a disastrous defeat. Yet because he had demonstrated that he was thoughtful, articulate, personable, and engaging, Reagan attracted the attention of some wealthy Republicans in California who were certain that he could carry his conservative message to victory. In 1966 Reagan made his first run for public office, winning election as governor of California. Many of the proposals that made him popular with California voters, such as reducing taxes, cutting welfare costs, and protecting private property, were the same ones he had emphasized in his 1964 speech. Overall, then, “A Time for Choosing,” turned out to be a remarkably successful speech not for Goldwater, but for Reagan.