Five candidates can plausibly imagine themselves taking the oath of office. “Left hand on the Bible, right hand in the air,” Rubio told his supporters, pantomiming the scene, inviting them to imagine it. Ted Cruz went further, specifying the very Bible verse that his finger would rest on: 2 Chronicles 7:14. The same one, of course, as Ronald Reagan.
Context:
12 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him: “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people,
Ronald Reagan & Ted Cruz’s verse:
14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Jesus’s view of drought in Matthew 5:44-46
44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
.. Cruz works in a very narrow range—he is either a crusader for the religious right in the culture wars or a crusader for the libertarian right in the anti-government wars—but he knows all of its dimensions. Yesterday, adapting to the place, he emphasized the libertarianism.
Giving Obama His Due
But on the night of Reagan’s final State of the Union speech in 1988, when he boasted that “one of the best recoveries in decades” should “send away the hand-wringers and doubting Thomases,” the economic numbers were not as good as those on Obama’s watch.
At no time in Reagan’s eight years was the unemployment rate lower than it is today, at 5 percent — and this after Obama was handed the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. Reagan lauded a federal deficit at 3.4 percent of gross national product. By last fall, Obama had done better than that, posting a deficit of 2.5 percent of G.D.P.
.. But it may also be that the country was not ready for a transformational president; rather than sweep away the last racial barrier, his years in office showed just how deep-rooted the sentiment behind those barriers remains.
Candidates Reagan & Bush-41 Discuss Illegal Immigration in 1980 Debate
The candidates are asked a question about the children of Illegal Immigrants attending public schools in 1980(!).
Donald Trump Is Reagan’s Heir
Trump is running on essentially the same message as Reagan. Reagan insisted that America’s problems were not as complicated or intractable as everyone seemed to think. “For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension,” Reagan said at his 1967 inauguration as governor of California. “Well, the truth is, there are simple answers—there are not easy ones.” He made a similar statement in his famous 1964 speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater, and he never wavered from it. The simple answer was to be tough—tough on cutting the budget, tough on domestic protesters, and above all, tough on the world stage. Reagan’s 1980 foreign-policy slogan promised “peace through strength.” He told audiences, “We have to be so strong that no nation in the world will dare lift a hand against us.”
.. When a Washington Postreporter asked him recently if he had encountered any campaign issue that turned out to be more complex than he initially thought, he wouldn’t take the bait. “This is not complicated, believe me,” Trump maintained.
.. The message—that simple solutions exist, but other leaders lack the strong will to implement them—was a central aspect of Reagan’s appeal and is key to understanding the Trump phenomenon. But in the long term it won’t pay off for Trump as it did for Reagan because of two major differences between the 1980 election and the 2016 election: the opposing candidates and the voters’ mood.
Reagan’s message worked beautifully against Jimmy Carter in 1980 because it drew on their differences. Carter’s speeches as president emphasized that there were no simple solutions—restoring America’s confidence and prosperity, he said, would take years of hard work and sacrifice (most memorably, he told people to turn down their thermostats and drive less). It was very refreshing for voters to hear someone saying the opposite.
.. And even if Trump were running against a Jimmy Carter, his task would be much harder than Reagan’s, for in 1980 the public’s mood verged on desperation. Events in Iran and Afghanistan dealt a serious blow to the confidence and pride of a supposed superpower still reeling from the humiliation of leaving Vietnam to the communists. Of even greater concern to most voters, the economy was in shambles, with real GDP shrinking at an alarming rate and inflation soaring to nearly 15 percent (the highest figure since the aftermath of World War II).
.. A recent poll found that 86 percent of Republican voters believe the country is on the wrong track, compared to 67 percent of independents and 48 percent of Democrats.