Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're doing
something a little different. We're firing up
the time machine, but we aren't going to a battlefield
or a royal court. We're going to a living room.
It's October 27, 1964. You've got your TV dinner,
you turn on the set, maybe looking for a sitcom
or the evening news, and instead you find a Hollywood
actor staring right down the barrel of the camera
lens. And he's not selling soap. And he's definitely
not promoting a movie. He's pleading. He's talking
about ant heaps and a rendezvous with destiny.
Yeah. And by the time he finishes 30 minutes
later, the political trajectory of the United
States has just, you know, fundamentally shifted.
Even if nobody in that living room has any idea.
It really is cinematic, isn't it? Yeah. We're
talking, of course, about Ronald Reagan. And
the speech is formally titled A Time for Choosing.
In political circles, nobody really calls it
that. No, they don't. They just call it the speech.
The speech. Right. Capital T, capital S. As if
it's the only one that ever really mattered.
Which, you know, that gives you a sense of the
weight this thing carries. It's not just some
campaign stop. It's a foundational document for
modern American conservatism. Right. But our
mission today isn't just to look at the rhetoric.
We need to unpack this massive head -scratching
paradox. I love a good paradox. Lay it on me.
Okay. So we have this speech. It's delivered
for a specific candidate, Barry Goldwater, who
then proceeds to lose the election in one of
the biggest landslides in American history. A
total wipeout. And yet the guy giving the speech,
Reagan, arguably ends up winning the presidency
16 years later because of this specific failure.
That is the part that just blows my mind. It's
like the opening act stole the show so hard that
the headliner flopped, but the opening act got
a record deal a decade later. That's a great
way to put it. We've got a stack of sources here,
historical accounts, biographies, the speech
text itself from the archives. And I have to
say, looking at these notes, almost everything
I thought I knew about where this speech happened
was wrong. You are not alone in that. There is
so much mythology surrounding a time for choosing.
The legend has sort of overwritten the facts.
OK, so let's unpack that mythology first, because
I had this mental image and I think a lot of
our listeners might, too, of Reagan standing
at a podium at the Republican National Convention
in San Francisco. The big stage. Yeah. The crowd
is going wild. Balloons are dropping. Confetti
is everywhere. And he's nominating Barry Goldwater.
That's the movie scene in my head. And that is
the classic example of the Mandela effect in
politics. If you look at the historical record,
that is simply not what happened. Really? Yeah.
Reagan wasn't the keynote speaker at the convention.
He didn't even nominate Goldwater. So he wasn't
even the hype man. Nope. That honor actually
went to Everett Dirksen. And it was Richard Nixon
who introduced Goldwater before his acceptance
speech. Reagan wasn't really a central player
in the convention hall itself. So if he wasn't
at the convention, where was he? He was on your
television set. But in a much more intimate context,
A Time for Choosing was actually a pre -recorded
television program. It aired on NBC just days
before the election. Pre -recorded. OK, that
changes the vibe entirely. Yeah. It wasn't him
feeding off a live crowd of thousands in an arena.
Yeah. It was him in a studio. Exactly. And that
distinction is crucial. Critics at the time,
they often dismissed Reagan as just an actor.
But that training was exactly why this worked.
He understood the intimacy of the medium. He
wasn't shouting to the back row of a stadium.
He was making eye contact with you. He knew how
to work the camera to make it feel like a one
-on -one conversation. That's a skill set that
career politicians in 1964 didn't necessarily
have. They were used to stump speeches. Reagan
was used to close -ups. Precisely. And here is
a nugget of irony for you. The program was titled...
Rendezvous with Destiny. Rendezvous with Destiny.
That sounds incredibly dramatic, almost Shakespearean.
It is. But what's fascinating is that title,
that specific phrase, was originally used by
Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1936 acceptance
speech. Wait, FDR. The Democrat. The very same.
So Reagan, the future icon of conservatism, is
lifting his title from FDR, the architect of
the New Deal. Wow. You have to remember, Reagan
was a Democrat for a huge chunk of his life,
right? He voted for FDR. Four times. He did.
So here he is repurposing his former liberal
hero's language to dismantle the very state machinery
that FDR built. He's flipping the script, quite
literally. That is bold. It's like using the
other team's playbook to beat them. But despite
the grand title and the eventual legendary status
of the speech, the sources say Reagan himself
was not feeling very confident at the time. Far
from it. In his autobiography, An American Life,
he really opens up about that night. He didn't
go to bed thinking, nailed it, I'm the great
communicator. He recalled going to bed literally
thinking, I hope I haven't let Barry down. It
really humanizes him, doesn't it? We see the
statue now, but back then, he was just a guy
stepping into a very serious arena, hoping he
hadn't messed up the gig. He was insecure about
it. And honestly, the stakes were incredibly
high. We need to set the scene for 1964 because
it was a heavy time in America. Yeah, let's not
shout about that. This isn't a peaceful era.
Not at all. I mean the country is still reeling
from the Kennedy assassination less than a year
prior. The civil rights movement is in full swing.
The Cold War is absolutely raging. There is a
lot of fear in the air. And there's a growing
conversation about the size of government, too,
with LBJ's Great Society ramping up. Exactly.
The welfare state is expanding. And Reagan's
core argument in the speech was a direct response
to that. It was a clear call for smaller government.
But, and this is key, he doesn't just say taxes
are too high. He goes much deeper. He gets philosophical.
He appeals to the philosophy of the founding
fathers. His whole argument was structured around
the idea that a government cannot control the
economy without well without controlling people.
That's a strong linkage. He's saying economic
freedom and personal freedom are basically the
same thing. Right. He asserted that when a government
sets out to control the economy it must inevitably
use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.
Force and coercion. He was not mincing words.
No. And this brings us to the most famous metaphor
of the speech. This is the part that I think
really redefined the political map for a lot
of people. Oh, absolutely. Usually when we talk
politics, we talk left versus right. That's the
spectrum. You're on one side or the other. But
Reagan gets up there and says, yeah, you're looking
at it wrong. He rejects the premise entirely.
He says, and I'm quoting here, you and I are
told we must choose between a left or right,
but I suggest there is no such thing as a left
or right. There is only an up or down. Up or
down. It's so simple, but it totally reframes
the argument. So how does he define up? Up is
defined as man's age -old dream, the maximum
of individual freedom consistent with law and
order. Okay. And down. This is where his rhetorical
flair really kicks in and where you see that
Cold War anxiety surfacing. He describes down
as the ant heap of totalitarianism. The ant heap.
That is such a visceral image. It's not just
bad government. It's dehumanizing. It makes you
think of mindless drones working for the collective.
Exactly. It strips away individuality. And that's
what makes the up versus down framing so powerful.
It changes the debate from, you know, what should
the budget be to do you want to be a free human
being or an ant in a heap? It raises the stakes
to a moral level. It's brilliant branding, whatever
you think of the politics. And if we connect
this to his rhetoric, you see a lot of what's
called antithesis. Contrasting ideas placed side
by side. Freedom versus totalitarianism. Up versus
down. Man versus the ant. Right. And the sources
note his tone was notably serious. He wasn't
cracking a lot of jokes here, which is interesting
because we remember him later for the one liners.
The grandfatherly vibe. But here he sounds grave.
He was using rhetorical questions to convey gravity.
He was signaling to the audience, I know I'm
an actor from Hollywood, but I take this deadly
seriously. So the speech airs. He talks about
the ant heap. What happens immediately? The cash
register certainly started ringing. The speech
was a fundraising juggernaut. It raised $1 million
for the Goldwater campaign. Okay, we need to
pause on that. A million dollars in 1964. Give
us some context. It's a staggering amount of
money. We're talking something in the neighborhood
of $10 million in today's purchasing power. Wow.
Generated from a single TV spot. And most of
it was small donations. It proved that Reagan
could move the needle in a way the establishment
politicians couldn't. So he proved he had the
magic touch. But here's the electoral irony.
Despite that flood of cash, Barry Goldwater lost.
And he didn't just lose. He got crushed. It was
a demolition. LBJ won in a landslide. Goldwater
carried only six states. So if you judge the
speech by its stated Goldwater elected, it was
a catastrophic failure. Right. And usually if
you're the face of a campaign that loses by historical
margins, you're done. Your career is over. But
for Reagan, it was the opposite. The speech cleared
the deck for him. The Republican establishment
was in ruins lying in the rubble of that landslide.
And standing there, pretty much alone and unscathed,
was Ronald Reagan. Because the donors and the
voters remembered the speech, not just the candidate.
Exactly. Almost immediately after this, he was
asked to run for governor of California. And
he wins that one, doesn't he? He does. He wins
the 1966 election. You can draw a direct line
from that TV broadcast in October 64 to the governor's
mansion in 66. And eventually to the White House
in 1980. Yes. And this is where we have to talk
about that observation by George Will, the columnist.
It really explains this whole paradox. I love
this quote. It's such a mic drop moment for history.
George Will said. Goldwater won the election
of 1964. It just took 16 years to count the votes.
It just took 16 years to count the votes. That
gives me chills. So he's saying the ideas that
Reagan planted in 64, they didn't win the day
right then, but they started a slow burn. Exactly.
It suggests that political victories aren't always
immediate. Sometimes you're winning the argument
long before you win the election. Reagan planted
a flag. He defined what modern conservatism would
look like. The country wasn't ready by 1964.
No, but the seed was planted, and it grew slowly
through the chaos of the late 60s and the 70s
until it finally bloomed in 1980. Well, why wasn't
the country ready then? If the speech was so
good, why did voters reject the message so hard?
That's a great question. You have to look at
the critical reception. Stephen F. Hayward, a
Reagan biographer, noted that at the time, many
critics found the speech Too emotional. Some
thought I was too alarmist. Too emotional. That's
interesting. Usually politicians are criticized
for being too stiff. Right. But remember the
era. This was the era of the technocrat. You
had the best and the brightest in Washington
who believed you could solve problems with spreadsheets.
Reagan coming in with this passionate, almost
apocalyptic rhetoric. For some moderates, it
just felt unhinged. So his greatest strength,
his emotion, was also his weakness in that specific
moment. At the time, yes. But Hayward argues
that even if critics rolled their eyes, the ideas
eventually proved irresistible to enough voters.
The country just needed to catch up to the anxiety
Reagan was articulating. And the vacuum he was
filling matters, too. The country was looking
for strong leadership. The world felt unstable.
And he was validating the fear some people had
about the growing welfare state. He was articulating
a clear alternative. And the press noticed. It
wasn't just donors. No, the political observers
saw it, too. David Broder from The Washington
Post. And Broder was a titan of political journalism.
He compared the debut to William Jennings Bryan's
cross of gold speech. And the cross of gold speech
is legendary. It's the gold standard pun intended
for convention speeches. It instantly made Bryan
the nominee. So comparing Reagan to Bryan was
saying this guy just electrified the political
landscape. He's a generational talent. And that
leads right to the nickname. This speech is credited
with earning Reagan the moniker, the great communicator.
Which stuck with him for the rest of his life.
And among his admirers, the speech became so
iconic that they just, they dropped the title.
They just started calling it the speech. Like
the Godfather or the Beatles. No qualifiers needed.
If you know, you know. Precisely. You know. What
strikes me about this whole story is the resilience
of it. Reagan goes to bed thinking he let Barry
Goldwater down. Goldwater gets crushed. By all
metrics, that should be a failure. But instead,
it's the origin story of a two -term president.
It shows that in politics, authenticity, and
clarity, that up versus down clarity can outlast
a bad news cycle or even a lost election. It's
about the long game. The very long game. 16 years,
as George Will noted. I want to throw something
out there for you to chew on regarding this long
game. Because we live in an era of viral clips
and 30 -second sound bites. We check social media
to see who's winning the day. Right. We live
in the economy of attention measured in seconds.
This was a 30 -minute pre -recorded speech of
pure policy and philosophy. And if you look at
the metrics of 1964, it failed. Goldwater lost.
Today, if a consultant put out a 30 -minute video
and the candidate lost by 20 points, that consultant
would be fired. They'd never work in this town
again. You're absolutely right. But Reagan wasn't
playing for the news cycle. Consciously or not,
he was building a movement. He was laying a foundation.
It reminds me of a metaphor I've heard about
cathedrals versus tents. A tent goes up fast.
It's useful for the night, but it comes down
just as fast. A cathedral takes a lifetime to
build, but it stands for centuries. That is a
perfect analogy. Reagan's rhetoric in this speech
was cathedral building. He was defining the up
and down for a generation. And that definition
held. I mean, you can hear echoes of the speech
in political arguments happening right now, 60
years later. The ant heap argument hasn't gone
away. No, it hasn't. The tension between individual
liberty and collective security is the eternal
debate. So we've gone from a nervous actor to
a fundraising record breaker to the governor's
mansion. It really is a time for choosing. that
ended up choosing him. That's a poetic way to
put it. Before we wrap up, I want to leave the
listener with the final provocative thought.
We've talked about how this speech failed to
win the election but won the era. The delayed
victory. Right. So ask yourself this. In our
world of instant gratification, are we even capable
of recognizing this kind of success anymore?
If a leader today gave a speech that wouldn't
pay off for 16 years, would we even have the
attention span to notice? Or would we just scroll
past it because it didn't trend immediately?
That is a question worth pondering. Does true
influence operate on a timeline that we just
aren't patient enough to see anymore? Are we
too busy looking for tents to notice the cathedrals
being built? Something to think about next time
you're scrolling. A huge thank you to our listeners
for joining us on this deep dive into political
history. It's been a pleasure. We'll see you
on this one. Keep diving.