True Reagan by James Rosebush

Author:James Rosebush
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Presidents & Heads Of State
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2016-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

Using Emotion Economically

There were times Reagan was moved to tears, although he typically held those in check. This conveyed that he was emotional or moved about what he was saying or about the details surrounding an event, but that he had the strength to control the emotion. He knew that expressing emotion reveals the speaker’s vulnerability in a positive way and helps unite the audience with him. Yet he also knew that tears can evoke weakness, too, as some unfortunate politicians have learned the hard way.

When in doubt, Reagan exercised restraint. He knew that there is a distinction between the audience being moved by the words spoken, and an undisciplined focus on the individual speaker and his own problems, memories, or connections to an event, or situation. Tears, as sincere as they might be, could also be considered a sign of instability.

There was a great deal of emotion in evidence when Reagan attended the June 1984 fortieth anniversary of D-day at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, France. Reagan was of the age when he himself might have actually landed on French soil that horrific day—and he could have, if he had not been kept from action due to very poor eyesight. His love of country and respect for his countrymen who fought there all came together at that celebration. I had the privilege of advancing this trip and also accompanying Nancy Reagan when she was invited to be the honored guest at the thirty-eighth anniversary of D-day, two years before the President would attend. There is no more haunting site than the Allied cemeteries in Normandy, indelibly marking the human costs of WWII and the fight against tyranny by what the television journalist and author Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation.

The location, the presence of the other heads of state, and the festivities themselves produced an ample amount of emotion and Reagan’s remarks solemnly reflected that. His speech has been titled, “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc,” and it was especially but not exclusively dedicated to a few of the veterans who traveled to be present at the anniversary ceremony. These were the men who fought at Omaha Beach in a group called the Rangers, 225 strong at the launch of the invasion, with ninety survivors at the end of the first day of fighting. Reagan spoke directly to them as well as to a broader audience when he said, in part:

“Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs?… We look at you and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that

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