Obama Echoed Reagan in D-Day Speech

President Obama's speech commemorating D-Day was a memorable event, but it lacked the power and majesty of the best D-Day address of all, Ronald Reagan's oration on June 6, 1984. Reagan showed the power of a president to shape history and inspire millions, and to use a historic moment to illustrate American values for the world.

Speaking Saturday at a U.S. cemetery near Omaha Beach where more than 9,000 white headstones mark the graves of fallen U.S. troops, Obama used the 65th anniversary of the Normandy invasion to note that "D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century. At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of circumstances, the men who thought themselves ordinary found it within themselves to do the extraordinary." 

Obama added: "As we face down the hardships and struggles of our time and arrive at that hour for which we were born, we cannot help but draw strength from those moments in history when the best among us were somehow able to swallow their fears and secure a beachhead on an unforgiving shore.... Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman. It has always been up to us."

He noted that Stanley Dunham, his grandfather, arrived in Normandy six weeks after D-Day and fought in Germany with Gen. George Patton's army, and he introduced Charles Payne, his great-uncle, who also fought in Germany and traveled to the Normandy site from Chicago for Obama's speech.

But Obama was mostly echoing Reagan, who etched D-Day into the consciousness of new generations. Atop the wind-swept cliffs that had been scaled by 225 Army Rangers whom he called "the boys of Pointe du Hoc" 40 years earlier, Reagan used all his dramatic skills to climb the heights of oratory in what many historians regard as one of the best presidential speeches ever. What Reagan did was to recognize the emotional power that D-Day retained in Americans' hearts. He seized the moment with evocative words, impressive delivery, and use of a magnificent venue. In the process, he left many in the audience, including a number of those boys from 1944, weeping and deeply moved.

Clearly conveying the remarkable details of the attack, Reagan said, "The air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon.... The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb.... In seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms."

In his most memorable passage, Reagan looked at the surviving Rangers in the audience and declared, "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war."