This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By William Watson, May 23, 2024
It was at the end of the second and final presidential debate in 1980 that Ronald Reagan introduced the yardstick that has measured incumbents’ achievements ever since. (That debate, incidentally, was Oct. 28, just seven days from the election — no time to overcome a lousy performance: they played high-risk politics in those days.)
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Reagan asked the 80.6 million people watching. “Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions ‘yes’, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for. If you don’t agree, if you don’t think that this course that we’ve been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have.”
I like the “whom you will vote for” (not who) and the fact that he doesn’t say “vote for me” or “vote for President Carter” but assumes all that doesn’t need spelling out. “I could suggest another choice that you have”: It was very gentlemanly, unlike the braying and hectoring we’ll be treated to June 27 when Joe Biden and Donald Trump “debate” on CNN.
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