Let me take you back to another Aug. 15 so as to put to bed a meme prevalent on the Right today — namely, the idea that the only way to win politically is to be mean and to be willing to go low against opponents. The meme is claptrap.

When then-President Ronald Reagan approached the podium of the Republican National Convention 36 years ago, his vice president, the elder George Bush, trailed Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis by 17 points in 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.