I'm about to commit speechwriter sacrilege and reveal the secret formula to all of Ronald Reagan’s most powerful speeches.
But first, let’s address the elephant in the room: conservatives’ lugubrious mood heading into the 2008 presidential election. Ask yourself this question: which Republican delivered the last speech you watched or read that surged with spine tingling, foot-stomping excitement while crackling with core conservative values?
No, I mean other than Ronald Reagan.
Was it John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani? Probably not. And that’s the point.
Conservatives’ current gloom is, in part, a symptom of a perceived “eloquence gap” among the top Republican presidential contenders. Moreover, it is a sign that somewhere amid the Donkey Party’s 2006 congressional stampede, Republican rhetoric got knocked off-key and is in desperate need of tuning.
Looking across history’s arc of great Republican speeches, one finds that they all contain three key themes—three communicative “pillars”—that when combined create powerful and enduring messages that transcend time.
The first pillar is an unyielding espousal of individualism and self-sufficiency. While trying to capture the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Teddy Roosevelt delivered his sterling ode to individualism in his April 10, 1899, stellar speech, "The Strenuous Life." Imagine if a GOP candidate spoke like this:
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. It is hard to fail, but is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.
These are words elephants can march to. Individualism ignites conservatives.