On a single night 30 years ago this month, when a faltering presidential campaign desperately needed a boost, a youngish senator and an old president gave two of the greatest political convention speeches ever — stressing themes and sensibilities Americans today risk foolishly abandoning.
For President Ronald Reagan, it was the first in a series of valedictory speeches. For John McCain, known as a war hero and energetic senator but not yet a political heavyweight, it was a commencement into the very top ranks of national politics. For three decades since, their mutual themes remained an admirable touchstone of McCain’s life.
The mood as the Republican National Convention opened in New Orleans that day was profoundly nervous. Behind the scenes, campaign manager Lee Atwater had been raging all weekend, feeling the pressure of Vice President George H. W. Bush’s 17-point poll deficit to Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis, the Democratic nominee. If Bush lost, the Reagan mission would have remained unfinished, and momentum toward toppling the Soviet Empire surely lost.
Into that maw stepped McCain. With the convention desperately needing a rocket-lift speech to open prime time proceedings, the senator delivered. To be in the convention hall that night, for both McCain and Reagan’s speeches, was to experience the warmth of political and patriotic uplift as a rare and treasured gift.
McCain’s speech is most remembered for his now-familiar story of fellow POW Mike Christian, beaten to a pulp by Communist captors for the sin of sewing an American flag into his prison shirt, only to start re-sewing a new flag into his shirt as soon as the beatings stopped.
“He was not making that flag because it made Mike Christian feel better,” McCain said. “He was making that flag because he knew how important it was for [his fellow captives] to be able to pledge our allegiance to our flag and our country.”
Of course, it’s easy for people to feel patriotic when hearing such stories. But other parts of the speech were equally important. Particularly, McCain strongly defended Reagan’s policies of supporting freedom against despots around the world, from Central America to the Philippines, Poland and Afghanistan.
“We are a great country — the most wonderful in the world,” he said. “A beacon of hope for millions who live in darkness and despair.”
Minutes later, Reagan picked up McCain’s theme, and added to it.
America, he said, is “a magnet for the world: for those who dodged bullets and gave their lives coming over the Berlin Wall and others, only a few of whom avoided death, coming in tiny boats on turbulent oceans. This land, its people, the dreams that unfold here and the freedom to bring it all together — well, those are what make America soar, up where you can see hope billowing in those freedom winds.” And: “We do not shirk from our duties to preserve freedom so it can unfold across the world for yearning millions.”
Perhaps just as important, Reagan said, were our values and behaviors: “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.”
Both our political class and, alas, too many citizens today seem to think that decency, tolerance, generosity, honesty, and piety in the common square are unimportant, and perhaps even impediments to progress. They are wrong, though, and Reagan was right. Our principles and values, not merely our might, make America great.
And, mercurial temperament aside, those are the principles — standing against despots and for freedom at home and abroad, respectfulness and ultimate decency in the public square — which McCain embodied, and spoke of, throughout his career.
In his great speech upon returning to the Senate after his cancer diagnosis, and again in his farewell note released Monday, McCain stressed those themes.
“America has made a greater contribution than any other nation to an international order that has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history,” he said, sounding Reaganesque, in the first. “We have been the greatest example, the greatest supporter, and the greatest defender of that order. We are a blessing to humanity.”
In the farewell note, McCain wrote: “We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world…. [And, domestically,] we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country, we will get through these challenging times.”
In 1988, Reagan and McCain spoke both of what unified Americans and what made us a light for the world. McCain died while still carrying those ideals, high upon the hill.
Some forget: Those aren’t just namby-pamby ideals, but also winning ones. On the morning of Aug. 15, 1988, the Bush campaign appeared dead in the water. By the time McCain and Reagan finished speaking that night, it was revived and moving toward landslide victory — over Dukakis and, because of it, over the autocratic Russian hegemon as well.
Lord help us remember those lessons.
Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former associate editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner, and is the author of “The Accidental Prophet” trilogy of recently published satirical, literary novels.
