News - The ‘American sound’

To many Americans, including me, Ronald Wilson Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th century. To others, he was an uncaring, uninvolved communist-baiter.

But what made this man, who is being eulogized as a great president even by former adversaries including Mikhail Gorbachev, such a formidable leader?

To everyone — every American and freedom-loving person around the world — I would point simply to two paragraphs of one of Reagan’s many speeches as capturing the essence of this man — and of this nation — as no other excerpts from the millions of words he spoke and wrote during his long public career can. The words aren’t pulled from one of the former president’s best-known speeches, such as the one calling the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire,” or the one in which he challenged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

The words I’ve selected are part of Reagan’s second Inaugural Address, given in January 1985. At that time, coming off a phenomenally successful first term and a crushing election defeat of Walter Mondale, Reagan justifiably could have dwelled on the great military and economic strides his administration had made in its first four years. He could have lorded it over his opponents. He didn’t. Instead, he summed up his first term and laid the groundwork for his second by speaking of what he called the “American sound.”

To Ronald Reagan, the American sound wasn’t the thunder of our country’s industrial might, which he had reinvigorated. It wasn’t the roar of our military might, which he had rebuilt. It wasn’t the ka-chang of America’s booming economy, which his policies had loosed.

To Reagan, the American sound was profound but quiet — a decent, hope-filled sound, deep in the American heart, not trumpeted from her lips. He truly believed it was the sound of freedom granted to us by God, not by the hand of man. Our 40th president encapsulated the American sound for himself, for all Americans, and for all freedom-loving people of the world, in these moving words:

“Now we hear again the echoes of our past: a general falls to his knees in the hard snow of Valley Forge; a lonely president paces in the darkened halls, and ponders his struggle to preserve the Union; the men of the Alamo call out encouragement to each other; a settler pushes west and sings a song, and the song echoes out forever and fills the unknowing air.

“It is the American sound. It is hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent, and fair. That’s our heritage; that is our song. We sing it still. For all our problems, our differences, we are together as of old, as we raise our voices to the God who is the Author of this most tender music. And may He continue to hold us close as we fill the world with our sound — sound in unity, affection, and love — one people under God, dedicated to the dream of freedom that He has placed in the human heart, called upon now to pass that dream on to a waiting and hopeful world.”

The thing that made Ronald Reagan different from recent national leaders is that he understood and used the power of the spoken word to touch people’s minds and hearts. Although he used technology to deliver his words to millions, the medium was not the message. It was the power of words.

He was not a sound-bite president. He did not deliver speeches, as have other recent presidents, that were simply strings of buzz words, each delivered with appropriate but hollow emphasis, followed by the requisite pause for applause.

While Reagan’s speeches certainly contained their share of applause lines, the speeches that enveloped those applause lines were real speeches. And Reagan could deliver those words in a fashion that made the audience think about what he was saying.

John F. Kennedy probably was the only other modern president who recognized the power of the spoken word and possessed the sense of eloquence and timing to deliver such speeches. Both are remembered for inspiring the nation much more than other recent presidents.

But Reagan will continue to be remembered for the substance of his presidency. He turned around virtually every policy of his predecessor — economic, tax, diplomatic and military — by instituting programs that are still being felt and measured today, 20 years later.

His unique blend of strong principles, an uncanny sense of timing, the boldness to override even his most trusted advisers, and the phenomenal ability to reach over the media, the bureaucracy and every other obstacle placed in his way, to directly touch the American people — all that is what made Ronald Reagan such a hero to conservatives, and a worthy adversary to many liberals.

Former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Georgia, was appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia during the Reagan administration. He can be reached at bob.barr@creativeloafing.com.