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‘Morning again in America’: Nation remembers anniversary of Ronald Reagan elected as 40th POTUS

November 4, 2022 | | Print Article

With so much of America’s future on the line in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections, the nation is taking a moment on Friday to mark the anniversary of the election of one of the country’s most popular presidents, Ronald Regan, who, as many still see it, rescued the country from the disastrous Democratic policies of former President Jimmy Carter, lifted its citizens from the depths of destroyed morale, and welcomed back “morning again in America.”

The iconic conservative leader made his political bones as governor of California — an almost unthinkable thought to Millenials currently living under the rule of the nation’s progressive poster boy, Gavin Newsom.


According to Fox News, which is paying tribute to Reagan just days before Americans again head to the polls, the former actor “outwitted the American political elite to reach the Oval Office.”

And the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum writes that his “triumph capped the rise of the new right/conservative wing of the Republican Party and ushered in a new era of governing.”

“Reagan served as arguably the first true conservative U.S. president in over 50 years,” the Library explains. “[He] advanced domestic policies that featured a lessening of federal government responsibility in solving social problems, reducing restrictions on business, and implementing tax cuts.”

What’s more, many historians believe his bold foreign policy brought down the Soviet Union and, according to Fox News, “largely ended communism as a viable political philosophy on the global stage.”

So what, one wonders, would Reagan have to say about the current state of the nation he loved so much?

While we can’t know for certain, one need only to look at the speech he gave in 1980 when accepting the Republican Party’s nomination in Michigan.

In many ways, it could have been written yesterday.


(Video: YouTube)

“Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us,” he said. “We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.”

The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership–in the White House and in Congress–for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.

My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves. Those who believe we can have no business leading the nation.

I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose. We have come together here because the American people deserve better from those to whom they entrust our nation’s highest offices, and we stand united in our resolve to do something about it.

We need rebirth of the American tradition of leadership at every level of government and in private life as well. 

 

In a decisive trouncing, Reagan won 44 states compared to Jimmy Carter’s six, and took 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 49.

In its biography of the much-loved leader, WhiteHouse.gov states, “Voters troubled by inflation and by the year-long confinement of Americans in Iran swept the Republican ticket into office.”

Running on a pro-American, “It’s Morning Again in America” ad campaign, Reagan went on to win re-election in 1984, in a landslide victory over Democrat Walter Mondale, who only managed to win in his home state of Minnesota.

Among GenXers — the last generation to remember the Berlin Wall and the U.S.S.R. — Reagan’s Cold War fight against the Soviet Union and all things communist was legendary.

In 1983, he famously proclaimed the Soviet Union to be the “Evil Empire,” and when, in 1987, he publicly told Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” the ensuing chills from a populace that never imagined they would again see a united Germany circled the pre-internet globe.

Less than a year after he left office, the wall came tumbling down.

According to former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — a close ally to Reagan during his time in office — the iconic President “achieved the most difficult of all political tasks: changing attitudes and perceptions about what is possible.”

“From the strong fortress of his convictions,” Thatcher wrote, “he set out to enlarge freedom the world over at a time when freedom was in retreat — and he succeeded.”

Melissa Fine
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