MY SAY: RONALD REAGAN AFTER WATERGATE
There has been so much polluted water over the bridge since those days. In revisiting the scandal and President Nixon’s resignation, I am reminded of a few things:
First: Nixon was elected twice, proving that losers can rebound, even when he ran against a popular figure like Hubert Humphrey by people who were tired of the socialism bound “great society” agenda of Lyndon Johnson. And in 1972 he won in a landslide against George McGovern.
Richard M. Nixon (I) Republican 520 46,740,323 Electoral votes 520
George McGovern Democratic 17 28,901,598 Electoral votes 17
Second: When he resigned we got Gerald Ford- sort of a parenthesis in America’s list of Presidents.
Third: And most relevant. In 1976 Ronald Reagan lost in the Republican Primary by a fraction to incumbent Gerald Ford who went on to lose the general election to Jimmy Carter.
These were his words at the Republican convention that formally nominated Gerald Ford in 1976:
“If I could just take a moment; I had an assignment the other day. Someone asked me to write a letter for a time capsule that is going to be opened in Los Angeles a hundred years from now, on our Tricentennial.
And suddenly I thought to myself if I write of the problems, they will be the domestic problems the President spoke of here tonight; the challenges confronting us, the erosion of freedom that has taken place under Democratic rule in this country, the invasion of private rights, the controls and restrictions on the vitality of the great free economy that we enjoy. These are our challenges that we must meet.
And then again there is that challenge of which he spoke that we live in a world in which the great powers have poised and aimed at each other horrible missiles of destruction, nuclear weapons that can in a matter of minutes arrive at each other’s country and destroy, virtually, the civilized world we live in.
And suddenly it dawned on me, those who would read this letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge. Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here.
Will they look back with appreciation and say, “Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom, who kept us now 100 years later free, who kept our world from nuclear destruction”?
And if we failed, they probably won’t get to read the letter at all because it spoke of individual freedom, and they won’t be allowed to talk of that or read of it.
This is our challenge; and this is why here in this hall tonight, better than we have ever done before, we have got to quit talking to each other and about each other and go out and communicate to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than we have ever been, but we carry the message they are waiting for.
We must go forth from here united, determined that what a great general said a few years ago is true: There is no substitute for victory, Mr. President.”
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