covet freedom. An important corollary to Reagan’s invocation is that he believed that a leader who recognized this special call needed to encourage fellow Americans to respond to this challenge to lead the free world.
This was a constant theme in a 1980 presidential campaign that arguably began for Reagan with a speech on February 6, 1977—his sixty-sixth birthday—before the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of his favorite venues. In retrospect, this was one of his most revealing prepresidential speeches. The address launched a premise he carried through 1980: It was the Soviet Union, not America, which should hang its head in shame. America was a source of brightness, whereas the USSR was a source of darkness—literally, he told his audience:
It isn’t very often you see a familiar object that shocks and frightens you. But the other day I came across a map of the world created by Freedom House…. It is an ordinary map, with one exception: it shows the world’s nations in white for free, shaded for partly free and black for not free.
Almost all of the great Eurasian land mass is completely colored black, from the western border of East Germany, through middle and eastern Europe, through the awesome spaces of the Soviet Union, on to the Bering Strait in the north, down past the immensity of China, still further, down to Vietnam and the South China Sea—in all that huge sprawling, inconceivably immense area…. If a visitor from another planet were to approach earth, and if this planet showed free nations in light and unfree nations in darkness, the pitifully small beacons of light would make him wonder what was hidden in that terrifying, enormous blackness.
We know what is hidden: Gulag. Torture. Families—and human beings—broken apart. No free press, no freedom of religion. The ancient forms of tyranny revived and made even more hideous and strong through what Winston Churchill once called “a perverted science.” Men rotting for years in solitary confinement because they have different political and economic beliefs, solitary confinement that drives these unfortunate ones insane and makes the survivors wish for death.
Only now and then do we in the West hear a voice, from out of that darkness. Then there is silence—the silence of human slavery. There is no more terrifying sound in human experience; with one possible exception. Look at that map again. The very heart of the darkness is the Soviet Union.13
America, on the other hand, “must always stand for peace and liberty in the world and the rights of the individual,” said Reagan, and “must form sturdy partnerships with our allies for the preservation of freedom.” Presaging his Westminster Address five years later, Reagan told CPAC categorically that “the United States has to immediately reexamine its entire view of the world and develop a strategy of freedom.” He used the word “freedom” five times in the next six paragraphs of the speech, stating unequivocally that America must develop a strategy to spread freedom, as this is the “moral way” and “we can never go wrong if we do what is morally right.” America must speak the “truth” and “cannot be the second best superpower” militarily.14 He finished the rousing speech with the classic ending for all his CPAC speeches, an ending which would come to define the patriotic ideology of his 1980 presidential campaign: “Then with God’s help we shall indeed be as a City Upon a Hill with the eyes of all people upon us.”15
RESTORING MORALE
The unbridled optimism expressed in the City Upon a Hill image was central to Reagan’s goal of restoring American morale. Henry Kissinger, who called it an era of national humiliation, stressed that what Reagan tried to turn around was “very significant.”16 ABC’s Jeff Greenfield agreed that the exmovie actor’s project was “Reagan’s biggest challenge.”17 In his memoirs, Reagan captured the essence of this fundamental objective:
During the summer and fall of 1980, there were many problems facing our nation: the tragic neglect of our military establishment, high unemployment and an ailing economy, the continuing expansion of Communism abroad, the taking of the hostages in Iran. But to me none was more serious than the fact America had lost faith in itself. We were told there was a “malaise” in our nation and America was past its prime; we had to get used to less, and the American people were responsible for the problems we faced.
We were told we would have to lower our expectations; America would never again be as prosperous or have a bright a future as it once had.
Well, I disagreed with that…. We had to recapture our dreams, our pride in ourselves and our country, and regain that unique sense of destiny and optimism that had always made America different from any other country in the world.
If I could be elected president, I wanted to do what I could to bring about a spiritual revival in America.
I believe—and I intended to make it a theme of my campaign—that America’s greatest years were ahead of it, that we had to look at the things that had made it the greatest, richest, and most progressive country on earth in the first place, decided what had gone wrong, and then put it back on course.18
Indeed from the very start of his campaign, Reagan expressed this desire, articulating to the public with every appearance the conviction that this was a country on the brink of a rebirth of greatness. When Ronald Reagan formally announced his 1980 candidacy on November 13, 1979, his words were unmistakable: he proclaimed that he could restore the “American spirit”—with “God’s help.”19
Soon, this campaign theme was so clear that the cover of Time on March 10, 1980 had an artist’s rendering of Reagan’s face at a rally that included a hard-hat-wearing man hoisting a sign that read, “Reagan: Let’s Make America Great Again,”20 a slogan which quickly came to embody the campaign message. Not only did the line work its way into campaign paraphernalia (a popular 1980 campaign button featured a picture of a smiling Reagan with those exact words: “Let’s Make America Great Again”), but Reagan began ending many of his stump speeches with lines like, “So help us God, we will make America great again.”21
This issue of morale and many others were front and center in a key March 17, 1980 address by Reagan to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. As he had since the GE days, Reagan wrote this speech himself—a rare handwritten draft of which was only recently found.22 Written on March 13, and the first of two important foreign-policy speeches he gave in Chicago that year,23 Reagan titled the text, “‘State of the Union’ Speech.”
In this first Reagan “State of the Union,” he argued that regaining U.S. prestige was fundamental to a fruitful foreign policy: “Confronted by so many pressing crises, we would all like to find quick solutions. What can be done, tomorrow, to free our diplomats in Tehran? What can be done now to turn back the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?” He provided his answer: “We can neither solve these present crises, nor cope with graver, future ones, unless we regain a reputation of reliability toward our allies.”24 To regain that reputation, said Reagan, America had to purge the Vietnam syndrome eroding its prestige and ability to act in foreign policy. Here is an excerpt from his unedited draft:
We never sought the leadership of the free world but no one else can provide it. And without our leadership there can be no peace in the world. It is time we purged ourselves of the Vietnam syndrome that has colored our thinking for too long a time. Speaking at Notre Dame U. 5 months after he had assumed office Pres. Carter said; “we are free of the inordinate fear of communism which led to the moral poverty of Vietnam.”
Possibly Vietnam was the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when 50,000 Young Americans make the ultimate sacrifice to defend the people of a small defenseless country against the Godless tyranny of communism that is not an act of “moral” poverty. It is in truth a collective act of moral courage.25
Working from this draft framework, he began the lengthy speech by blasting the Soviet Union as “an imperialist power whose ambitions extend to the ends of the earth,” which “has now surpassed us in virtually every type of weapon. The Soviets arrogantly warn us to stay out of their way.” And how did America respond?
