A TALE OF TWO SPEECHES

As we watched the Super Tuesday speeches of Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Nikki Haley earlier this week, we couldn’t help thinking of Ronald Reagan and how his candidacy might be perceived today.

Reagan was clear where he stood on the issues, but he had a sunny optimism that made voters believe in his vision even if they might not have been able to see it yet. He had a disarming smile, a self-deprecating sense of humor, and a heartfelt depth of patriotism and love of country.

The man who became the nation’s 40th president in 1980 never would have given the speech Trump did on a night when he became practically assured of being the Republican nominee for president in November.

On a night when a candidate might have used soaring rhetoric, themes around the future of a country that can do anything and invitational words that reach out to the Democrats and independents that he will need to be reelected, the nation’s 45th president talked about a country that’s a “joke,” one that’s “sad in so many ways,” one at which the world was laughing and “taking advantage of us,” one that is “very divided,” and, in several ways, a “Third World country.”

Oh, we know. A polished address that offers an optimistic vision is not Trump’s style. He prefers to jab, to hit, to talk off script.

But something we feel deep inside is that if the person who wants to lead the nation calls out the best that is within us, if he tells us the greatest country in the world can be even better, if we believe he believes what he is telling us, we buy into it.

Reagan was that way. Bill Clinton, with Fleetwood Mac’s incessant “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” playing behind him, cast a vision. Barack Obama, with the “hope and change” message, conducted his 2008 campaign that way.

Trump, on the other hand, rarely smiles (unless he unleashes the occasional fake grin), always seems on the verge of anger and describes an America where “we’ve never had anything like it,” where “the worst things are happening,” and where if he loses “we’re not going to have a country left.”

The problems he talked about were real, but the solutions were simplistic and not fleshed out. He would “have the greatest economy in the history of the world,” make the country “energy dominant,” would “pay off our debt,” would “close our borders” and “deport a lot of bad people,” and would “drill, baby drill.”

Sure, Trump told supporters the other night “we’re going to have unity,” we’re going to “make it like it should be” and we’re “going to take back our country,” but the phrases felt stilted, lacked depth and were without heart.

Elsewhere in the country, Haley was ending her campaign for the presidency but expressing the appreciation for what she’d been through and what the country still can be.

She didn’t gloss over what needed to be changed (a national debt that will “crush our economy,” smaller government “is necessary for our survival,” “Congress is dysfunctional and getting worse” and “our world is on fire because of America’s retreat”), but she described how her campaign had been “grounded in the love for my country,” how “only in America” could her immigrant mother vote for her daughter as president, and how she had “seen our country’s greatness.”

Haley, further, was gracious in congratulating Trump — though he has referred to her in recent days as “birdbrain” — and hoped he would earn the support of those who haven’t supported him in the primaries.

“We must bind together as Americans,” she said. “We must turn away from the darkness of hatred and division. … At best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away.”

Haley then told supporters she would end her campaign as she began it with a quotation from the book of Joshua: “Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid; do not be discouraged; for God will be with you wherever you go.”

It was Reagan-esque and just the type of speech one would hope for from someone who is your party’s nominee.

However, she is not likely to be that, and Trump — with his dystopian vision — is.

Yet, we, as Americans, have a choice of how we see the country. May it be with thankful, optimistic eyes and not vengeful, pessimistic ones.