Ronald Reagan: Remarks at the Republican National Convention

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Although Reagan usually delivered his best speeches when relying on a written text, he gave one of his most inspiring talks when he spoke extemporaneously at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. Reagan addressed the convention on August 19, 1976, just a day after he had narrowly lost his party's presidential nomination to President Gerald R. Ford. Reagan decided to challenge Ford for the nomination in 1976 because he doubted the strength of Ford's conservative convictions. Reagan and Ford waged a vigorous battle in the primaries and at state conventions, and the victor was uncertain until the delegates voted in Kansas City. After accepting the nomination, Ford invited Reagan to address the convention. Some observers thought that the speech would be Reagan's valedictory—a farewell to presidential politics, since, at age sixty-five, he would be too old to make another bid for his party's presidential nomination.

Reagan begins with a call for Republicans as well as Democrats and independents to rally behind the platform his party had adopted. He praises the platform for its “bold, unmistakable colors, with no pastel shades.” The colors appealed to him because his campaign staff had chosen many of them. In order to promote party unity, the Ford forces had made concessions on many issues, or platform planks, that were important to Reagan. In this speech, Reagan asserts that these positions provide a clear alternative to the liberal views that Democrats had embraced since the 1930s.

Reagan next uses his experience of writing a letter for a time capsule as a way of discussing two issues that were vital to him and many of his conservative supporters. The first is individual freedom, which he maintains—as he had in “A Time for Choosing”—had eroded while Democrats controlled Congress and the White House. The second is the danger of nuclear war. Reagan warns of the risks to “the civilized world” that arise from the nuclear missiles that “the great powers have poised and aimed at each other.” Implicit in his discussion is his concern about the threat to U.S. security that the Soviets posed, as well as his uneasiness with the doctrine of mutual assured destruction that protected Americans from nuclear war. According to this doctrine, neither Soviets nor Americans would launch a nuclear attack because each one knew that its adversary would have sufficient strength to retaliate. Reagan thought that there should be a more reliable way of preventing all-out war than the vulnerability of millions of people to nuclear devastation.

He explains the importance of the issues of freedom and defense by connecting the decisions that Americans were making in 1976 to future generations. He often said that Americans were custodians of values that they had inherited from the Founders of their republic. In this speech, he reminds his fellow citizens that their choices will have consequences a century later. He wonders whether the Americans who will open the time capsule will “look back with appreciation” because “we met our challenge” by preserving individual liberty and averting “nuclear destruction.”

In closing, Reagan appeals to Republicans to carry their message to the American people. On the surface, he seems to be urging Republicans to elect their candidates, including Ford, in November. Yet conservatives who supported Reagan heard a very different message, one that Reagan surely intended. They believed he was calling on them to carry their principles to victory within the Republican Party. His final quotation, from General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of U.S. forces during most of the Korean War, implies that conservatives should not be content with compromises. Reagan's remarks inspired conservatives to work even harder to secure the nomination and election of candidates who embraced their ideas. Reagan's stirring presentation also suggested that he had not closed the door to one more campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Before he left Kansas City, Reagan told some convention delegates that he and his wife, Nancy, were not going back to California to “sit on our rocking chairs and say, That's all for us'” (Reagan, 1990, p. 203). This speech, then, provided hope for a conservative movement that was gaining power in the Republican Party and to those who wanted Reagan to lead it to victory.