WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.200 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're doing 00:00:02.200 --> 00:00:04.599 something a little different. We're firing up 00:00:04.599 --> 00:00:08.380 the time machine, but we aren't going to a battlefield 00:00:08.380 --> 00:00:11.140 or a royal court. We're going to a living room. 00:00:11.220 --> 00:00:14.759 It's October 27, 1964. You've got your TV dinner, 00:00:14.859 --> 00:00:16.559 you turn on the set, maybe looking for a sitcom 00:00:16.559 --> 00:00:19.960 or the evening news, and instead you find a Hollywood 00:00:19.960 --> 00:00:22.699 actor staring right down the barrel of the camera 00:00:22.699 --> 00:00:26.059 lens. And he's not selling soap. And he's definitely 00:00:26.059 --> 00:00:29.179 not promoting a movie. He's pleading. He's talking 00:00:29.179 --> 00:00:33.479 about ant heaps and a rendezvous with destiny. 00:00:33.780 --> 00:00:36.000 Yeah. And by the time he finishes 30 minutes 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:38.359 later, the political trajectory of the United 00:00:38.359 --> 00:00:40.979 States has just, you know, fundamentally shifted. 00:00:41.079 --> 00:00:43.340 Even if nobody in that living room has any idea. 00:00:43.539 --> 00:00:45.899 It really is cinematic, isn't it? Yeah. We're 00:00:45.899 --> 00:00:47.560 talking, of course, about Ronald Reagan. And 00:00:47.560 --> 00:00:51.240 the speech is formally titled A Time for Choosing. 00:00:52.719 --> 00:00:54.700 In political circles, nobody really calls it 00:00:54.700 --> 00:00:56.359 that. No, they don't. They just call it the speech. 00:00:56.560 --> 00:00:59.939 The speech. Right. Capital T, capital S. As if 00:00:59.939 --> 00:01:01.520 it's the only one that ever really mattered. 00:01:01.740 --> 00:01:03.700 Which, you know, that gives you a sense of the 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:05.459 weight this thing carries. It's not just some 00:01:05.459 --> 00:01:08.280 campaign stop. It's a foundational document for 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:11.140 modern American conservatism. Right. But our 00:01:11.140 --> 00:01:13.280 mission today isn't just to look at the rhetoric. 00:01:13.359 --> 00:01:17.700 We need to unpack this massive head -scratching 00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:20.379 paradox. I love a good paradox. Lay it on me. 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:22.790 Okay. So we have this speech. It's delivered 00:01:22.790 --> 00:01:26.269 for a specific candidate, Barry Goldwater, who 00:01:26.269 --> 00:01:28.969 then proceeds to lose the election in one of 00:01:28.969 --> 00:01:31.269 the biggest landslides in American history. A 00:01:31.269 --> 00:01:34.810 total wipeout. And yet the guy giving the speech, 00:01:35.069 --> 00:01:37.890 Reagan, arguably ends up winning the presidency 00:01:37.890 --> 00:01:40.670 16 years later because of this specific failure. 00:01:40.909 --> 00:01:43.030 That is the part that just blows my mind. It's 00:01:43.030 --> 00:01:46.069 like the opening act stole the show so hard that 00:01:46.069 --> 00:01:48.269 the headliner flopped, but the opening act got 00:01:48.269 --> 00:01:50.290 a record deal a decade later. That's a great 00:01:50.290 --> 00:01:52.599 way to put it. We've got a stack of sources here, 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:54.920 historical accounts, biographies, the speech 00:01:54.920 --> 00:01:57.319 text itself from the archives. And I have to 00:01:57.319 --> 00:02:00.519 say, looking at these notes, almost everything 00:02:00.519 --> 00:02:02.760 I thought I knew about where this speech happened 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:05.819 was wrong. You are not alone in that. There is 00:02:05.819 --> 00:02:09.300 so much mythology surrounding a time for choosing. 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:11.580 The legend has sort of overwritten the facts. 00:02:11.900 --> 00:02:14.460 OK, so let's unpack that mythology first, because 00:02:14.460 --> 00:02:17.460 I had this mental image and I think a lot of 00:02:17.460 --> 00:02:20.039 our listeners might, too, of Reagan standing 00:02:20.039 --> 00:02:22.159 at a podium at the Republican National Convention 00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:25.539 in San Francisco. The big stage. Yeah. The crowd 00:02:25.539 --> 00:02:28.159 is going wild. Balloons are dropping. Confetti 00:02:28.159 --> 00:02:31.620 is everywhere. And he's nominating Barry Goldwater. 00:02:31.819 --> 00:02:33.960 That's the movie scene in my head. And that is 00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:37.139 the classic example of the Mandela effect in 00:02:37.139 --> 00:02:39.419 politics. If you look at the historical record, 00:02:39.560 --> 00:02:41.780 that is simply not what happened. Really? Yeah. 00:02:42.020 --> 00:02:44.319 Reagan wasn't the keynote speaker at the convention. 00:02:44.500 --> 00:02:46.659 He didn't even nominate Goldwater. So he wasn't 00:02:46.659 --> 00:02:49.219 even the hype man. Nope. That honor actually 00:02:49.219 --> 00:02:51.759 went to Everett Dirksen. And it was Richard Nixon 00:02:51.759 --> 00:02:54.900 who introduced Goldwater before his acceptance 00:02:54.900 --> 00:02:57.620 speech. Reagan wasn't really a central player 00:02:57.620 --> 00:03:00.120 in the convention hall itself. So if he wasn't 00:03:00.120 --> 00:03:02.240 at the convention, where was he? He was on your 00:03:02.240 --> 00:03:05.219 television set. But in a much more intimate context, 00:03:05.639 --> 00:03:08.340 A Time for Choosing was actually a pre -recorded 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:11.319 television program. It aired on NBC just days 00:03:11.319 --> 00:03:13.060 before the election. Pre -recorded. OK, that 00:03:13.060 --> 00:03:15.400 changes the vibe entirely. Yeah. It wasn't him 00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:19.080 feeding off a live crowd of thousands in an arena. 00:03:19.180 --> 00:03:22.020 Yeah. It was him in a studio. Exactly. And that 00:03:22.020 --> 00:03:24.300 distinction is crucial. Critics at the time, 00:03:24.319 --> 00:03:26.360 they often dismissed Reagan as just an actor. 00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:28.960 But that training was exactly why this worked. 00:03:29.080 --> 00:03:31.819 He understood the intimacy of the medium. He 00:03:31.819 --> 00:03:34.139 wasn't shouting to the back row of a stadium. 00:03:34.379 --> 00:03:37.319 He was making eye contact with you. He knew how 00:03:37.319 --> 00:03:39.539 to work the camera to make it feel like a one 00:03:39.539 --> 00:03:41.879 -on -one conversation. That's a skill set that 00:03:41.879 --> 00:03:44.539 career politicians in 1964 didn't necessarily 00:03:44.539 --> 00:03:47.500 have. They were used to stump speeches. Reagan 00:03:47.500 --> 00:03:49.699 was used to close -ups. Precisely. And here is 00:03:49.699 --> 00:03:52.479 a nugget of irony for you. The program was titled... 00:03:52.620 --> 00:03:54.860 Rendezvous with Destiny. Rendezvous with Destiny. 00:03:54.960 --> 00:03:57.180 That sounds incredibly dramatic, almost Shakespearean. 00:03:57.240 --> 00:04:00.639 It is. But what's fascinating is that title, 00:04:00.699 --> 00:04:02.979 that specific phrase, was originally used by 00:04:02.979 --> 00:04:05.560 Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1936 acceptance 00:04:05.560 --> 00:04:08.599 speech. Wait, FDR. The Democrat. The very same. 00:04:08.740 --> 00:04:11.919 So Reagan, the future icon of conservatism, is 00:04:11.919 --> 00:04:14.740 lifting his title from FDR, the architect of 00:04:14.740 --> 00:04:16.879 the New Deal. Wow. You have to remember, Reagan 00:04:16.879 --> 00:04:19.459 was a Democrat for a huge chunk of his life, 00:04:19.540 --> 00:04:22.720 right? He voted for FDR. Four times. He did. 00:04:22.839 --> 00:04:25.660 So here he is repurposing his former liberal 00:04:25.660 --> 00:04:29.379 hero's language to dismantle the very state machinery 00:04:29.379 --> 00:04:32.040 that FDR built. He's flipping the script, quite 00:04:32.040 --> 00:04:34.839 literally. That is bold. It's like using the 00:04:34.839 --> 00:04:36.819 other team's playbook to beat them. But despite 00:04:36.819 --> 00:04:40.220 the grand title and the eventual legendary status 00:04:40.220 --> 00:04:42.759 of the speech, the sources say Reagan himself 00:04:42.759 --> 00:04:45.379 was not feeling very confident at the time. Far 00:04:45.379 --> 00:04:48.180 from it. In his autobiography, An American Life, 00:04:48.339 --> 00:04:51.189 he really opens up about that night. He didn't 00:04:51.189 --> 00:04:53.209 go to bed thinking, nailed it, I'm the great 00:04:53.209 --> 00:04:55.850 communicator. He recalled going to bed literally 00:04:55.850 --> 00:04:58.490 thinking, I hope I haven't let Barry down. It 00:04:58.490 --> 00:05:00.170 really humanizes him, doesn't it? We see the 00:05:00.170 --> 00:05:02.129 statue now, but back then, he was just a guy 00:05:02.129 --> 00:05:04.850 stepping into a very serious arena, hoping he 00:05:04.850 --> 00:05:06.910 hadn't messed up the gig. He was insecure about 00:05:06.910 --> 00:05:08.610 it. And honestly, the stakes were incredibly 00:05:08.610 --> 00:05:11.410 high. We need to set the scene for 1964 because 00:05:11.410 --> 00:05:13.709 it was a heavy time in America. Yeah, let's not 00:05:13.709 --> 00:05:15.250 shout about that. This isn't a peaceful era. 00:05:15.720 --> 00:05:18.560 Not at all. I mean the country is still reeling 00:05:18.560 --> 00:05:20.920 from the Kennedy assassination less than a year 00:05:20.920 --> 00:05:23.680 prior. The civil rights movement is in full swing. 00:05:23.939 --> 00:05:27.329 The Cold War is absolutely raging. There is a 00:05:27.329 --> 00:05:29.310 lot of fear in the air. And there's a growing 00:05:29.310 --> 00:05:31.370 conversation about the size of government, too, 00:05:31.470 --> 00:05:34.310 with LBJ's Great Society ramping up. Exactly. 00:05:34.529 --> 00:05:38.649 The welfare state is expanding. And Reagan's 00:05:38.649 --> 00:05:41.430 core argument in the speech was a direct response 00:05:41.430 --> 00:05:43.970 to that. It was a clear call for smaller government. 00:05:44.310 --> 00:05:47.250 But, and this is key, he doesn't just say taxes 00:05:47.250 --> 00:05:49.850 are too high. He goes much deeper. He gets philosophical. 00:05:50.209 --> 00:05:52.129 He appeals to the philosophy of the founding 00:05:52.129 --> 00:05:54.730 fathers. His whole argument was structured around 00:05:54.730 --> 00:05:56.750 the idea that a government cannot control the 00:05:56.750 --> 00:05:59.810 economy without well without controlling people. 00:05:59.970 --> 00:06:02.350 That's a strong linkage. He's saying economic 00:06:02.350 --> 00:06:04.430 freedom and personal freedom are basically the 00:06:04.430 --> 00:06:06.730 same thing. Right. He asserted that when a government 00:06:06.730 --> 00:06:09.350 sets out to control the economy it must inevitably 00:06:09.350 --> 00:06:12.490 use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. 00:06:12.629 --> 00:06:15.709 Force and coercion. He was not mincing words. 00:06:16.300 --> 00:06:19.139 No. And this brings us to the most famous metaphor 00:06:19.139 --> 00:06:21.620 of the speech. This is the part that I think 00:06:21.620 --> 00:06:23.699 really redefined the political map for a lot 00:06:23.699 --> 00:06:26.019 of people. Oh, absolutely. Usually when we talk 00:06:26.019 --> 00:06:28.319 politics, we talk left versus right. That's the 00:06:28.319 --> 00:06:30.600 spectrum. You're on one side or the other. But 00:06:30.600 --> 00:06:33.019 Reagan gets up there and says, yeah, you're looking 00:06:33.019 --> 00:06:34.800 at it wrong. He rejects the premise entirely. 00:06:35.850 --> 00:06:38.730 He says, and I'm quoting here, you and I are 00:06:38.730 --> 00:06:40.949 told we must choose between a left or right, 00:06:41.069 --> 00:06:44.110 but I suggest there is no such thing as a left 00:06:44.110 --> 00:06:47.170 or right. There is only an up or down. Up or 00:06:47.170 --> 00:06:50.250 down. It's so simple, but it totally reframes 00:06:50.250 --> 00:06:53.149 the argument. So how does he define up? Up is 00:06:53.149 --> 00:06:57.430 defined as man's age -old dream, the maximum 00:06:57.430 --> 00:06:59.889 of individual freedom consistent with law and 00:06:59.889 --> 00:07:03.430 order. Okay. And down. This is where his rhetorical 00:07:03.430 --> 00:07:05.389 flair really kicks in and where you see that 00:07:05.389 --> 00:07:07.750 Cold War anxiety surfacing. He describes down 00:07:07.750 --> 00:07:11.509 as the ant heap of totalitarianism. The ant heap. 00:07:11.550 --> 00:07:13.230 That is such a visceral image. It's not just 00:07:13.230 --> 00:07:15.610 bad government. It's dehumanizing. It makes you 00:07:15.610 --> 00:07:17.649 think of mindless drones working for the collective. 00:07:18.589 --> 00:07:21.230 Exactly. It strips away individuality. And that's 00:07:21.230 --> 00:07:23.490 what makes the up versus down framing so powerful. 00:07:23.709 --> 00:07:26.029 It changes the debate from, you know, what should 00:07:26.029 --> 00:07:28.470 the budget be to do you want to be a free human 00:07:28.470 --> 00:07:31.509 being or an ant in a heap? It raises the stakes 00:07:31.509 --> 00:07:34.529 to a moral level. It's brilliant branding, whatever 00:07:34.529 --> 00:07:36.569 you think of the politics. And if we connect 00:07:36.569 --> 00:07:38.769 this to his rhetoric, you see a lot of what's 00:07:38.769 --> 00:07:42.300 called antithesis. Contrasting ideas placed side 00:07:42.300 --> 00:07:45.779 by side. Freedom versus totalitarianism. Up versus 00:07:45.779 --> 00:07:48.720 down. Man versus the ant. Right. And the sources 00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:52.339 note his tone was notably serious. He wasn't 00:07:52.339 --> 00:07:54.220 cracking a lot of jokes here, which is interesting 00:07:54.220 --> 00:07:56.680 because we remember him later for the one liners. 00:07:56.680 --> 00:07:59.779 The grandfatherly vibe. But here he sounds grave. 00:07:59.980 --> 00:08:03.160 He was using rhetorical questions to convey gravity. 00:08:03.259 --> 00:08:05.379 He was signaling to the audience, I know I'm 00:08:05.379 --> 00:08:07.540 an actor from Hollywood, but I take this deadly 00:08:07.540 --> 00:08:10.160 seriously. So the speech airs. He talks about 00:08:10.160 --> 00:08:12.720 the ant heap. What happens immediately? The cash 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.139 register certainly started ringing. The speech 00:08:15.139 --> 00:08:18.079 was a fundraising juggernaut. It raised $1 million 00:08:18.079 --> 00:08:20.540 for the Goldwater campaign. Okay, we need to 00:08:20.540 --> 00:08:23.300 pause on that. A million dollars in 1964. Give 00:08:23.300 --> 00:08:25.860 us some context. It's a staggering amount of 00:08:25.860 --> 00:08:27.839 money. We're talking something in the neighborhood 00:08:27.839 --> 00:08:30.839 of $10 million in today's purchasing power. Wow. 00:08:30.980 --> 00:08:34.559 Generated from a single TV spot. And most of 00:08:34.559 --> 00:08:36.860 it was small donations. It proved that Reagan 00:08:36.860 --> 00:08:38.700 could move the needle in a way the establishment 00:08:38.700 --> 00:08:42.000 politicians couldn't. So he proved he had the 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:44.759 magic touch. But here's the electoral irony. 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:48.720 Despite that flood of cash, Barry Goldwater lost. 00:08:49.679 --> 00:08:52.769 And he didn't just lose. He got crushed. It was 00:08:52.769 --> 00:08:56.129 a demolition. LBJ won in a landslide. Goldwater 00:08:56.129 --> 00:08:59.070 carried only six states. So if you judge the 00:08:59.070 --> 00:09:02.809 speech by its stated Goldwater elected, it was 00:09:02.809 --> 00:09:05.389 a catastrophic failure. Right. And usually if 00:09:05.389 --> 00:09:07.470 you're the face of a campaign that loses by historical 00:09:07.470 --> 00:09:10.230 margins, you're done. Your career is over. But 00:09:10.230 --> 00:09:12.669 for Reagan, it was the opposite. The speech cleared 00:09:12.669 --> 00:09:14.730 the deck for him. The Republican establishment 00:09:14.730 --> 00:09:17.409 was in ruins lying in the rubble of that landslide. 00:09:17.450 --> 00:09:20.250 And standing there, pretty much alone and unscathed, 00:09:20.250 --> 00:09:22.789 was Ronald Reagan. Because the donors and the 00:09:22.789 --> 00:09:25.009 voters remembered the speech, not just the candidate. 00:09:25.250 --> 00:09:27.950 Exactly. Almost immediately after this, he was 00:09:27.950 --> 00:09:30.149 asked to run for governor of California. And 00:09:30.149 --> 00:09:32.409 he wins that one, doesn't he? He does. He wins 00:09:32.409 --> 00:09:36.840 the 1966 election. You can draw a direct line 00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:40.879 from that TV broadcast in October 64 to the governor's 00:09:40.879 --> 00:09:43.460 mansion in 66. And eventually to the White House 00:09:43.460 --> 00:09:46.539 in 1980. Yes. And this is where we have to talk 00:09:46.539 --> 00:09:48.779 about that observation by George Will, the columnist. 00:09:48.820 --> 00:09:50.940 It really explains this whole paradox. I love 00:09:50.940 --> 00:09:53.179 this quote. It's such a mic drop moment for history. 00:09:53.379 --> 00:09:56.230 George Will said. Goldwater won the election 00:09:56.230 --> 00:10:00.090 of 1964. It just took 16 years to count the votes. 00:10:00.250 --> 00:10:02.570 It just took 16 years to count the votes. That 00:10:02.570 --> 00:10:04.970 gives me chills. So he's saying the ideas that 00:10:04.970 --> 00:10:07.769 Reagan planted in 64, they didn't win the day 00:10:07.769 --> 00:10:10.590 right then, but they started a slow burn. Exactly. 00:10:10.669 --> 00:10:12.889 It suggests that political victories aren't always 00:10:12.889 --> 00:10:14.990 immediate. Sometimes you're winning the argument 00:10:14.990 --> 00:10:18.059 long before you win the election. Reagan planted 00:10:18.059 --> 00:10:20.860 a flag. He defined what modern conservatism would 00:10:20.860 --> 00:10:22.519 look like. The country wasn't ready by 1964. 00:10:23.059 --> 00:10:26.039 No, but the seed was planted, and it grew slowly 00:10:26.039 --> 00:10:28.720 through the chaos of the late 60s and the 70s 00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:31.980 until it finally bloomed in 1980. Well, why wasn't 00:10:31.980 --> 00:10:34.059 the country ready then? If the speech was so 00:10:34.059 --> 00:10:36.220 good, why did voters reject the message so hard? 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:38.519 That's a great question. You have to look at 00:10:38.519 --> 00:10:41.700 the critical reception. Stephen F. Hayward, a 00:10:41.700 --> 00:10:44.799 Reagan biographer, noted that at the time, many 00:10:44.799 --> 00:10:47.860 critics found the speech Too emotional. Some 00:10:47.860 --> 00:10:51.000 thought I was too alarmist. Too emotional. That's 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:53.039 interesting. Usually politicians are criticized 00:10:53.039 --> 00:10:55.279 for being too stiff. Right. But remember the 00:10:55.279 --> 00:10:57.840 era. This was the era of the technocrat. You 00:10:57.840 --> 00:10:59.580 had the best and the brightest in Washington 00:10:59.580 --> 00:11:02.259 who believed you could solve problems with spreadsheets. 00:11:02.639 --> 00:11:04.919 Reagan coming in with this passionate, almost 00:11:04.919 --> 00:11:08.240 apocalyptic rhetoric. For some moderates, it 00:11:08.240 --> 00:11:10.620 just felt unhinged. So his greatest strength, 00:11:10.720 --> 00:11:13.919 his emotion, was also his weakness in that specific 00:11:13.919 --> 00:11:16.980 moment. At the time, yes. But Hayward argues 00:11:16.980 --> 00:11:19.440 that even if critics rolled their eyes, the ideas 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:22.200 eventually proved irresistible to enough voters. 00:11:22.659 --> 00:11:25.080 The country just needed to catch up to the anxiety 00:11:25.080 --> 00:11:27.759 Reagan was articulating. And the vacuum he was 00:11:27.759 --> 00:11:29.940 filling matters, too. The country was looking 00:11:29.940 --> 00:11:32.179 for strong leadership. The world felt unstable. 00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:35.000 And he was validating the fear some people had 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:37.820 about the growing welfare state. He was articulating 00:11:37.820 --> 00:11:40.500 a clear alternative. And the press noticed. It 00:11:40.500 --> 00:11:42.860 wasn't just donors. No, the political observers 00:11:42.860 --> 00:11:45.600 saw it, too. David Broder from The Washington 00:11:45.600 --> 00:11:48.519 Post. And Broder was a titan of political journalism. 00:11:48.740 --> 00:11:51.860 He compared the debut to William Jennings Bryan's 00:11:51.860 --> 00:11:54.840 cross of gold speech. And the cross of gold speech 00:11:54.840 --> 00:11:57.480 is legendary. It's the gold standard pun intended 00:11:57.480 --> 00:12:01.080 for convention speeches. It instantly made Bryan 00:12:01.080 --> 00:12:04.100 the nominee. So comparing Reagan to Bryan was 00:12:04.100 --> 00:12:06.179 saying this guy just electrified the political 00:12:06.179 --> 00:12:08.820 landscape. He's a generational talent. And that 00:12:08.820 --> 00:12:11.799 leads right to the nickname. This speech is credited 00:12:11.799 --> 00:12:15.159 with earning Reagan the moniker, the great communicator. 00:12:15.220 --> 00:12:17.080 Which stuck with him for the rest of his life. 00:12:17.139 --> 00:12:19.860 And among his admirers, the speech became so 00:12:19.860 --> 00:12:22.679 iconic that they just, they dropped the title. 00:12:22.700 --> 00:12:24.820 They just started calling it the speech. Like 00:12:24.820 --> 00:12:28.539 the Godfather or the Beatles. No qualifiers needed. 00:12:28.639 --> 00:12:31.679 If you know, you know. Precisely. You know. What 00:12:31.679 --> 00:12:33.480 strikes me about this whole story is the resilience 00:12:33.480 --> 00:12:36.059 of it. Reagan goes to bed thinking he let Barry 00:12:36.059 --> 00:12:38.740 Goldwater down. Goldwater gets crushed. By all 00:12:38.740 --> 00:12:40.580 metrics, that should be a failure. But instead, 00:12:40.659 --> 00:12:42.500 it's the origin story of a two -term president. 00:12:42.840 --> 00:12:45.740 It shows that in politics, authenticity, and 00:12:45.740 --> 00:12:49.059 clarity, that up versus down clarity can outlast 00:12:49.059 --> 00:12:52.299 a bad news cycle or even a lost election. It's 00:12:52.299 --> 00:12:55.139 about the long game. The very long game. 16 years, 00:12:55.279 --> 00:12:57.399 as George Will noted. I want to throw something 00:12:57.399 --> 00:12:59.620 out there for you to chew on regarding this long 00:12:59.620 --> 00:13:02.850 game. Because we live in an era of viral clips 00:13:02.850 --> 00:13:05.990 and 30 -second sound bites. We check social media 00:13:05.990 --> 00:13:08.490 to see who's winning the day. Right. We live 00:13:08.490 --> 00:13:10.690 in the economy of attention measured in seconds. 00:13:11.110 --> 00:13:14.269 This was a 30 -minute pre -recorded speech of 00:13:14.269 --> 00:13:16.830 pure policy and philosophy. And if you look at 00:13:16.830 --> 00:13:20.730 the metrics of 1964, it failed. Goldwater lost. 00:13:21.149 --> 00:13:24.230 Today, if a consultant put out a 30 -minute video 00:13:24.230 --> 00:13:26.870 and the candidate lost by 20 points, that consultant 00:13:26.870 --> 00:13:28.970 would be fired. They'd never work in this town 00:13:28.970 --> 00:13:31.820 again. You're absolutely right. But Reagan wasn't 00:13:31.820 --> 00:13:34.039 playing for the news cycle. Consciously or not, 00:13:34.139 --> 00:13:36.220 he was building a movement. He was laying a foundation. 00:13:36.620 --> 00:13:38.200 It reminds me of a metaphor I've heard about 00:13:38.200 --> 00:13:40.779 cathedrals versus tents. A tent goes up fast. 00:13:40.899 --> 00:13:42.980 It's useful for the night, but it comes down 00:13:42.980 --> 00:13:45.500 just as fast. A cathedral takes a lifetime to 00:13:45.500 --> 00:13:48.240 build, but it stands for centuries. That is a 00:13:48.240 --> 00:13:51.190 perfect analogy. Reagan's rhetoric in this speech 00:13:51.190 --> 00:13:54.850 was cathedral building. He was defining the up 00:13:54.850 --> 00:13:57.389 and down for a generation. And that definition 00:13:57.389 --> 00:13:59.950 held. I mean, you can hear echoes of the speech 00:13:59.950 --> 00:14:02.769 in political arguments happening right now, 60 00:14:02.769 --> 00:14:05.049 years later. The ant heap argument hasn't gone 00:14:05.049 --> 00:14:07.970 away. No, it hasn't. The tension between individual 00:14:07.970 --> 00:14:10.389 liberty and collective security is the eternal 00:14:10.389 --> 00:14:13.710 debate. So we've gone from a nervous actor to 00:14:13.710 --> 00:14:15.909 a fundraising record breaker to the governor's 00:14:15.909 --> 00:14:18.450 mansion. It really is a time for choosing. that 00:14:18.450 --> 00:14:20.750 ended up choosing him. That's a poetic way to 00:14:20.750 --> 00:14:22.649 put it. Before we wrap up, I want to leave the 00:14:22.649 --> 00:14:24.350 listener with the final provocative thought. 00:14:25.309 --> 00:14:27.529 We've talked about how this speech failed to 00:14:27.529 --> 00:14:29.929 win the election but won the era. The delayed 00:14:29.929 --> 00:14:33.149 victory. Right. So ask yourself this. In our 00:14:33.149 --> 00:14:36.629 world of instant gratification, are we even capable 00:14:36.629 --> 00:14:38.830 of recognizing this kind of success anymore? 00:14:39.289 --> 00:14:41.669 If a leader today gave a speech that wouldn't 00:14:41.669 --> 00:14:44.379 pay off for 16 years, would we even have the 00:14:44.379 --> 00:14:47.100 attention span to notice? Or would we just scroll 00:14:47.100 --> 00:14:49.179 past it because it didn't trend immediately? 00:14:49.500 --> 00:14:52.659 That is a question worth pondering. Does true 00:14:52.659 --> 00:14:55.299 influence operate on a timeline that we just 00:14:55.299 --> 00:14:58.279 aren't patient enough to see anymore? Are we 00:14:58.279 --> 00:15:00.980 too busy looking for tents to notice the cathedrals 00:15:00.980 --> 00:15:02.759 being built? Something to think about next time 00:15:02.759 --> 00:15:05.019 you're scrolling. A huge thank you to our listeners 00:15:05.019 --> 00:15:07.419 for joining us on this deep dive into political 00:15:07.419 --> 00:15:09.559 history. It's been a pleasure. We'll see you 00:15:09.559 --> 00:15:10.539 on this one. Keep diving.