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today — namely, the idea that the only way to win politically is to be mean and to be willing to go low against opponents. Thein the polls. Reagan’s address that night, his last-ever great political speech — he made good speeches afterward, but of a more unifying or elegiac nature — jump-started what had seemed like a moribund campaign. Bush ended up winning in a 426-111 Electoral College landslide.
What emerged was a tour de force, combining Reagan the uniting visionary with Reagan the policy advocate and promoter of his vice president to finish the job. Whether sitting in the New Orleans Superdome that night, at least in the parts where the sound system wasn’t bad, or watching on TV, listeners were treated to a Reagan classic.
“When our children turn the pages of our lives,” he said, “I hope they’ll see that we had a vision to pass forward a nation as nearly perfect as we could, where there’s decency, tolerance, generosity, honesty, courage, common sense, fairness, and piety.” And Reagan was genuinely a sentimentalist, too. Two days before his first inauguration, he confessed that at a ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang so beautifully that he was crying — and that he worried if he could “keep his eyes dry” during the inauguration itself.
Yet with this evidence of the biggest political winner of all being a kind and decent man, too many on the Right insist that anger and vicious tactics are a necessary political feature. The myth is that the main reason Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney lost in 2008 and 2012, respectively, was that they were “too nice.” Nonsense. McCain had a big heart in many ways, but he was wildly irascible and willing to play hardball against anyone.
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