Seizing the Moment
Memorable presidential speeches are few and far between. But Ronald Reagan's words in Berlin two decades ago will live on
Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, blended a lyrical spirituality with the nation's yearning for peace and healing amid the bloody Civil War. "With malice toward none," Lincoln said, "with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Franklin Roosevelt, in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, reassured shaken Americans that they could overcome the Depression if they kept their courage. "So, first of all," FDR said, "let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1961, called a new generation of idealists to action: "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans...And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."
Gerald Ford, in a speech to the nation Aug. 9, 1974, called for national reconciliation after the resignation of Richard Nixon. "My fellow Americans," Ford said, "our long national nightmare is over."
George W. Bush, in a spontaneous moment on Sept. 14, 2001, rallied America after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Bush grabbed a bullhorn when rescue workers shouted that they couldn't hear him as he stood on the rubble of Ground Zero in New York. "I can hear you," Bush declared. "The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."
Republican pollster Frank Luntz, author of Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, says the key is for a president to be "aspirational." Adds Luntz: "It has to be a time of crisis because our guard is down...We aren't Republicans or Democrats. We are Americans. It has to be a presidential moment where everyone is paying attention, a shared experience. Most important of all, the people have to believe it and have to believe they (the presidents) believe what they are saying."
Peter Robinson, the former White House speechwriter who wrote the "tear down this wall" address and is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, told U.S. News the inside story of that event. As is so often the case with major addresses, the president's advisers didn't see eye to eye. Reagan's aides talked to outside experts on East-West relations who almost universally advised him not to stir up any trouble or embarrass the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, on his Berlin stop. Specifically, the experts said, don't mention the wall at all. One senior diplomat even suggested that Germans had gotten used to the barrier and it didn't really bother them anymore.
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