Reagan's Farewell Address

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"I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."

Ronald Reagan
Jan. 11, 1989

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Twenty–five years ago tonight, Ronald Reagan delivered his farewell address to the nation, a little more than a week before he was to hand over the presidency to his successor, Vice President George H.W. Bush.

As I have mentioned here before, I was not a Reagan fan during his presidency — or at any time in his lifetime. We rarely saw eye to eye on anything, and I never voted for him, but it is beyond historical dispute that he was popular with other voters. In the last 30 years, only Reagan has received the overwhelming endorsement of the American people in a presidential election. No other victorious nominee — in either party — has ever come close.

(In fact, few have ever exceeded the 58% of the popular vote Reagan received in 1984 — and none have matched it since he did it. Richard Nixon got nearly 61% in 1972; so, too, did FDR in 1936 and Warren Harding in 1920, and Lyndon Johnson got slightly more than 61% in 1964. Herbert Hoover nearly matched Reagan's share of the popular vote in 1928.)

Historically, presidential farewell addresses are rather rare. Typically, they are made by two–term presidents, at least in modern times — Bill Clinton gave one and so did George W. Bush. One–term presidents usually don't give farewell addresses (although Jimmy Carter did give a farewell address in 1981), nor do presidents who die in office — for at least one very obvious reason.

Unless one counts Nixon's address announcing to the nation that he would resign the next day (or his speech to the White House staff before his departure for California the next day), Reagan's farewell address was the first by a two–term American president in nearly 30 years. Nixon, after all, was elected to two terms as president; he just didn't complete his second term.

Next to a president's memoirs, I guess a farewell address is a president's best — and, officially, last — opportunity to justify his actions in office. Unfortunately, most outgoing presidents can't resist the temptation to indulge in some last–minute self–promotion.

The farewell addresses that I have found to be the most memorable are the ones in which the president focused on the nation's achievements more than his own or spoke of the challenges the nation still faced and tried to impart some wisdom.

George Washington may have delivered the finest of the presidential farewell addresses, which was appropriate, given that he set the standard for so many facets of the presidency. Washington spoke of the presidency's "arduous trust."

Dwight Eisenhower, the last two–term president to give a farewell address before Reagan, memorably warned of the influence of the "military–industrial complex" on public policy.

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In his "aw, shucks" way, Reagan spoke in his farewell address of the nickname "The Great Communicator" that had been given to him.

"I wasn't a great communicator," he insisted, "but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow; they came from the heart of a great nation — from our experience, our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries."

He said he was willing to accept the label "Reagan Revolution" for what had occurred on his watch, but he gave credit for his presidency's achievements to the American people.

"I've had my share of victories in the Congress," Reagan said, "but what few people noticed is that I never won anything you didn't win for me. They never saw my troops, they never saw Reagan's regiments, the American people. You won every battle with every call you made and letter you wrote demanding action."

Before closing, Reagan spoke of "the men and women of the Reagan Revolution."

"My friends: We did it," Reagan said. "We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all."

The Reagan Revolution

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"As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people."

John Adams

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Today, less than 48 hours after a crimson tide swept over the land, it seems appropriate to recall the events of Nov. 4, 1980.

Some called it the Reagan Revolution.

But that was an analogy, of course. There was no revolution as we understand the word. No Paul Revere's ride. No Old North Church. No Lexington and Concord. No Valley Forge. No Redcoats. No Minutemen.

Just millions of Americans armed with nothing more than a ballot.

But it is often mentioned as a transformational election, and there seems to be no doubt that it marked a departure from the past. Two years ago, Kenneth Walsh of U.S. News & World Report said the 1980 election was one of the 10 most consequential elections in American history.

Walsh's conclusion seems beyond dispute. The 1980 election had a profound influence on how things have been done in America for the last 30 years.

In 1980, most Christian fundamentalists were conservative, but neither party had really tapped into their potential at the polls — in large part, I suspect, because their conservatism was rooted more in social than economic issues or foreign policy. They responded to subjects like abortion and prayer in school — and, later, gay marriage and flag burning — but they didn't concern themselves much with trade issues or foreign relations.

Until 1980, it seemed, no one thought to exploit Christian fundamentalists for political purposes. Then Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority joined forces, and American politics would be different for the next quarter of a century.

Speaking of analogies ...

In politics, sports analogies abound. Always have.

So I guess it is only appropriate that the 1980s — the decade in which Mike Tyson became the poster boy for the quick knockout — began with a decisive — and controversial — presidential election.

The 1980 campaign was bizarre from the beginning. Even before the beginning. Precisely one year before the voters went to the polls, the hostage crisis in Iran began as Islamist extremists took over the American embassy in Tehran and proceeded to hold 52 Americans hostage for more than a year.

And the worst economy in my lifetime — until the last three years — complicated matters for President Carter.

I always believed the hard times of the late 1970s and early 1980s were brought on by the adjustment from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy. I felt Carter had the misfortune of being in the White House when the chickens came home to roost — and he paid the price for policies that were not his.

I was never an economics major, but I still believe that.

Anyway, Election Night 1980 is burned into my memory.

I was in college at the time, majoring in journalism at the University of Arkansas. I was enrolled in reporting, which was taught by a man named Roy Reed, whose professional experience included years of writing for the New York Times and the Arkansas Gazette.

As Election Day drew closer, Roy apparently was approached by someone in county government who needed some college students to come to the county courthouse on Election Night and help compile the vote totals that came in via telephone from the polling locations in the county.

My memory is that state law required polling places to close at 7:30 p.m., but anyone who was still in line at that time could be allowed to vote so there was a 30–minute window between the state–mandated closing time and the time when polling places could begin tabulating their votes. That was to allow those last voters to vote without seeing or hearing any results — and thus being unduly influenced in any way.

Well, the volunteers (of whom I was one) were told to arrive at the courthouse by 8 p.m. and take their places (as I recall, we had gone through a dry run a few nights before so everyone knew where he or she needed to be). I was living about a 10–minute drive from the courthouse, but I wanted to get there early so I planned to leave home around 7:30.

Astonishingly, at 7:15 p.m. Central time, as I was finishing my dinner and preparing to change my clothes before leaving for the courthouse, I saw NBC projecting victory for Ronald Reagan.

That was controversial (dare I say revolutionary?) at the time because NBC took the unprecedented step of using exit polling data to make its projections — and decisively beat the other two networks to the punch in calling the race that night.

About an hour and a half later, as I sat in the courthouse, taking calls from polling places, I could see a TV set in the corner of the room and I could hear Carter conceding defeat.

I can't tell you how amazed I was. As John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw recall in the attached clip, the presidential race went late into the evening four years earlier before any of the networks projected that Carter had defeated Gerald Ford.

That was the nation's most recent national experience in electing a president, and that had been a drawn–out Election Night. Everyone was expecting the same four years later; after all, opinion polls through most of the 1980 campaign had shown a tight, volatile race.

The lead fluctuated that fall, and there was a general sense, in that last week of the campaign, that Reagan had helped his cause with his debate performance against Carter and that Carter had not helped his cause in their debate, but no one — not even the most optimistic Reagan supporter or the most pessimistic Carter supporter — anticipated what happened 30 years ago tonight.

I recall seeing the latest news magazines a few days before the election, and they were focused on what might happen if, because of the presence of independent candidate John Anderson on the ballot, no one received enough electoral votes to be elected president and the matter had to be decided by the House of Representatives.

That didn't happen, of course. Anderson didn't receive a single electoral vote, but he did affect the 1980 campaign in unexpected ways.

Originally, the League of Women Voters intended to sponsor a series of debates like the ones between Carter and Ford in 1976, but problems arose with Anderson, who was turning out to be an attractive option for Republicans who weren't sure about Reagan and Democrats who didn't care for Carter. He was polling quite well in the early fall, and many states were considered too close to call as a result.

Because Anderson appeared to be so popular, there was a movement to include him in the presidential debates. Carter refused to participate in a three–person debate; Reagan refused to participate without Anderson.

Anderson and Reagan met in a debate in September, when Anderson was drawing a Perot–like 20% in public opinion polls. Observers thought Anderson would outshine Reagan, but his performance fell far short of expectations, and he plummeted in the polls.

A couple of weeks before the election, the Carter and Reagan camps agreed to a single, one–on–one debate, and the two met in Cleveland about a week before the voters went to the polls.

Reagan was generally regarded as the winner of the debate, but polls continued to show a tight race.

(Anderson, incidentally, was kind of a cross between Barack Obama and Ross Perot. A Midwestern Republican who ran against Reagan in the primaries, his independent candidacy energized young Americans, particularly many of the college students I knew, who were alienated by Carter and distrustful of Reagan, and he attracted liberals who had supported Ted Kennedy against Carter in the primaries and just couldn't support the president in the general election.)

No one was prepared for a 44–state landslide, and I got the sensation that evening — although I was busy with other things and could not devote as much attention to the TV coverage as I would have liked — that lots of people were making things up as they went along.

"Carter did not have a good job rating and was not personally popular," wrote Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa in "The Almanac of American Politics 1982."

"[B]ut no one expected that he would be beaten by 10% by a 69–year–old former governor; no one expected that the Democratic Party would lose control of the Senate."

Carter's decision to concede so early was criticized by many Democrats afterward. Some suggested that, by conceding so early, Carter discouraged late voters in the West (where the polls had not yet closed) from voting, possibly depriving some Democrats of votes that could have enabled them to win races they ultimately lost.

(In my personal research of the vote totals in the races in the West, I found little, if any, indication that this was true.)

But Carter defended his decision in his White House memoir, "Keeping Faith."

"I did not want to appear a bad loser," he wrote, "waiting until late at night to confirm what everyone already knew."

It wasn't immediately clear that night, but it was the worst defeat for an incumbent president since Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover in 1932. And it was the most one–sided loss for any incumbent in a race where only two candidates received electoral votes.

The Republicans, apparently sensing victory, began warning voters early that fall of an "October surprise." I guess they were fearful that the Democrats might work out a last–minute deal with the hostage takers in Iran and secure the release of the Americans in time to reap some political benefits.

Perhaps such suspicions were based on rumors from seemingly reliable sources, but, in the end, no "surprise" occurred. The hostages remained in captivity until January, after Reagan took office.

The very suggestion of an "October surprise" seems to have struck Carter as ludicrous. He never mentioned it in his memoirs.