Mike's America: Reagan's Last Campaign

Readers in the comments section may have noticed the photograph at right which I took during President Reagan's last campaign. The year was 1988 and the scene was my hometown of Bowling Green, Ohio.

A few weeks before, Frank Lavin, the Director of the White House Political Office, asked the staff for suggestions on where the President should campaign. I remembered a highly succesful trip to Bowling Green in 1984 when President Reagan was running for re-election and said the President might enjoy coming back.

Imagine my surprise a few days later when the Director informed me that the President would return to my hometown and that I would be the point man for the trip.

Part of my duties involved outlining topics for the President to address in his remarks and providing them as guidance to the speechwriting staff. The speech we crafted is available in full here.

Since the Bush/Quayle campaign was paying for the trip, we were told that the President could "take off the gloves" and give a rousing partisan speech that would use the "L" word and make clear the contrast between conservative Republican principles for government and our liberal opponents.

Much of what the President said is still true today. Here are a few excerpts:

Remarks at a Republican Campaign Rally in Bowling Green, Ohio
Reagan Library transcript
October 19, 1988

President Reagan: ...Wasn't he right when he said the opposition is over there in left field, they're out of the mainstream of American politics, and their policies can only be described by the dreaded ``L'' word: liberal, liberal, liberal? [Applause]

Now, from top to bottom, from President to Congress to local office, especially here in Ohio, this is what is at stake: This election this year is a referendum on liberalism. Yes, the choice before the American people this year is just as clear as it was in 1980 and 1984. A choice between, on the one hand, policies of tax and spend; economic stagnation; international weakness, accommodation, and from Grenada to Libya, always, always ``blame America first''; and on the other hand, the policies of limited government; economic growth; individual opportunity; a strong defense; firmness with the Soviets; and always, always, ``I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.''

When we took office 8 years ago, America was in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We turned that around, and since our expansion began, we've created over 18 million new jobs, reduced the unemployment rate to a 14-year low, and presided over the greatest flowering of new businesses and new technology in the history of the world. As a matter of fact, for every business that closes in America, six new ones open. And today a greater proportion of our potential work force is employed than ever before in the history of the United States of America.
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We and our NATO allies stood firm in the face of Soviet missiles pointing at the heart of Europe and Asia. And Mr. Gorbachev got the message. He did business because he knew we meant business. And we still mean business.

But none of this, my friends, none of this could have happened if the liberals had their way. There would have been no INF treaty or rollback in Afghanistan or democratic revolutions around the globe. They opposed rebuilding our military defenses. They opposed the deployment of the missiles in Europe to counter the Soviet threat. They opposed the liberation of Grenada. They opposed the raid on terrorist Libya. They oppose our policy of helping freedom fighters advance the cause of liberty around the world. George and I did all those things, and I tell you proudly right now: We'd both do every single one of them over again.
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You know, I'm a former Democrat. And it's often said that the once-proud Democratic Party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman is dead and gone; that the Democratic Party has been taken over by the left; that the departure from the mainstream, which we began to see at the 1968 convention, now defines the party at the national level, especially the liberal leadership in Congress. But there's something you should know: the party of F.D.R. and Harry Truman couldn't be killed.

The party that represents people like you and me, that represents the majority of Americans, that party hasn't disappeared. The fact is, we are stronger than ever. You see, the secret is that when the left took over the leadership of the Democratic Party, we took over the Republican Party. We made the Republican Party into the party of working people; the family; the neighborhood; the defense of freedom; and, yes, ``one nation under God.'' So, you see, the party that so many of us grew up with still exists, except today it's called the Republican Party. And I'm asking all of the traditional mainstream Democrats to come home and join me.
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[T]he liberal leadership in Washington has replaced the idea of checks and balances with a philosophy of adversarial government. Now when they lose in the national election, they fight a political guerrilla war for the next 4 years to block the policies that the American people have chosen at the ballot box.
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[L]iberal Democrats in control of Congress is a certain formula for governmental gridlock and political paralysis.
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You see, the opposition has gotten so far away from the mainstream, it's tilting so far to the left, that they're about to take the biggest tumble since Humpty-Dumpty fell off the wall -- [laughter] -- and I don't think they'll put the pieces back together again. So, that's what's on the line this year and why the thousands of you here today -- every one of you -- has a responsibility to get the truth out all across the Buckeye State.