The 50th Anniversary of 771 Words: Ronald Reagan's 1976 Convention Remarks

I was a young boy on the cusp of my teens when Ronald Reagan gave one of the most important speeches of his life. While speaking to the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, Reagan asked a powerful question: What would people of the future think if they opened a time capsule in 100 years? Would they believe Americans had met the challenges of the moment?

Reagan’s speech came at the climax of a close-fought campaign against incumbent unelected president Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination. For his part, Ford, a long-serving Michigan congressman, had stepped in to become vice president in 1973 after Vice President Spiro Agnew had to resign because of a bribery scandal dating back to his time as governor of Maryland. Ford then ascended to the presidency when Richard Nixon himself resigned the next year due to the Watergate scandal. This meant that while Ford was the incumbent, Reagan—who had been governor of California and had unsuccessfully run for the Republican presidential nomination against Nixon in 1968—felt that he, not Ford, was equally qualified to lead the party.

Ford defeated Reagan in the New Hampshire primary and then ran off a string of victories to build a big early lead. But Reagan battled back with a victory in North Carolina and picked up the momentum. Going into the August convention, the candidates were neck and neck; Ford had a slight lead in delegates but had not achieved the necessary majority. Thus, the 1976 convention was full of drama and would be the last Republican convention with the contest undecided going in.

Given the power of incumbency, the Reagan people knew they had to shake up the race in order to stave off defeat in Kansas City. Unfortunately for Reagan, the strategy they came up with, pre-selecting Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate, failed. The liberal Republican alienated Reagan’s conservative base and helped Ford over the top. Ford won the nomination on the first ballot by a margin of just 117 votes—1,187 to 1,070.

117 votes. 5.18%.

Reagan had run a very bitter campaign against Ford and did not expect to give any sort of speech at the convention. The two candidates had met after the ballot and agreed that he would not appear when Ford accepted the nomination. According to senior Reagan aide Charlie Black, “Ford asked Reagan to speak to the convention, and Reagan said, ‘No. You’re going to win. It’s your night. It’s your show.’” As a former actor, he understood both who had top billing and that there was only ever one spotlight performance.

In fact, the Reagan team thought they were off the hook on the convention’s big final night. Black, his wife, and Reagan’s daughter Maureen were all having a drink at a bar across the street and not even in the convention hall. They were watching on TV as Ford ended his acceptance speech—which some reporters characterized as “the best speech he ever gave”—with an unexpected invite to Reagan, saying, “Hey, Ronnie, bring your lovely wife Nancy down and maybe say a few words to the convention.” At this, Black looked at his drinking companions and said, “You have got to be kidding.”

Ford had sent his aide Bryce Harlow to ask Reagan to speak, saying, “It would be a terrible thing for the Republican Party if Ronald Reagan left the convention hall without speaking to the delegates.” Reagan tried to decline the invitation. Footage of the event shows Reagan, in his skybox, shaking his head “no” to Ford’s invitation and making constant admonitions against leaving his seat. Nancy Reagan can be seen on television clearly saying, “Ronnie, don’t go.” But Ford was insistent, believing it was important to unite the GOP going into the general election contest. If it was hard enough to refuse an invitation from the President of the United States, the crowd got involved, chanting “We want Ron!” Reagan, reluctantly, came down to the stage.

The unexpected events meant that Reagan would give one of his most important and memorable speeches with almost no preparation. As Black recalled, “He went totally off the cuff.”

After some initial niceties about Ford and the distinguished guests milling about behind him on the platform, Reagan highlighted one of his victories at the convention. The GOP platform had his stamp on it. Reagan said that “the Republican Party has a platform that is a banner of bold, unmistakable colors with no pale pastel shades.” Then Reagan moved to his main subject. He said that he’d been invited to write a letter for a time capsule that would be opened in Los Angeles in 2076, at America’s tercentenary.

He explained that he’d initially thought the assignment would be easy but soon realized the challenge. As Reagan saw it, the domestic problems of the day, as important as they were, would be subsumed by other issues. The existential issue that the people of 2076 would be looking back to was whether America would have survived its struggle against Soviet communism in the Cold War. As Reagan put it, “And suddenly it dawned on me; those who would read this letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge.” He wondered: “Will they look back with appreciation and say, ‘Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom? Who kept us now a hundred years later free? Who kept our world from nuclear destruction?’ ”

After posing these important questions, Reagan finished with a resounding conclusion. He told those assembled in the hall that “This is our challenge” and that “We must go forth from here united, determined. And what a great general said a few years ago is true: There is no substitute for victory.”

Only 771 words constituted that speech, and it lasted less than six minutes, but it caused a sensation. One journalistic wag joked that it was the only convention in history with two acceptance speeches. Another recalled that “The crowd went wild. They just—they were moved.” A Convention attendee noted that “the applause was thunderous.” Bob Dole, who had just been selected as the nominee for vice president, noted that Reagan “just had them in the palm of his hand.”

The unexpected events meant that Reagan would give one of his most important and memorable speeches with almost no preparation.

Unfortunately for President Ford, the crowd might have loved Reagan a just little too much. There was a sentiment among the delegates that they had “nominated the wrong man.” A volunteer with Ford’s youth group “The Presidentials,” recalls that “I don’t really remember questioning if Ford was the right man exactly beforehand, but Reagan’s speech was just one of those that caught your breath.” Ford had erred in insisting that Reagan speak, as his remarks clearly upstaged the nominee’s. For a Youth for Reagan activist, said the speech was “the defining moment of the convention.” Ford may have given the best speech of his life, but Reagan gave the best speech of the convention.

We can never know if Reagan would have beaten Jimmy Carter that fall, but his upstaging of Ford at the Republican convention set the stage for his next act. Ford’s political career was over after his 1976 loss, but Reagan’s was not. The Gipper returned in 1980, defeated Carter, and took up the challenge he articulated, winning the Cold War.

In retrospect (especially in today's cynical media environment conditioned by vicious sound bites spawned by a deeply divided polity), Reagan's words might sound innocent, naive, even high in aspiration but low on "specifics." But that impromptu speech was never designed to appeal to the pretentious chattering classes and the pseudo-intellectual talking heads whose elitist vantage points entirely missed the point. He was seeking to bind up the wounds of a demoralized party shattered by Watergate. As such his aim was to engender hope, make the party believe again that victory (no matter how unlikely) was still possible. Fast forward twelve years later Barack Obama proclaimed after securing the 2008 Democratic Party nomination that, "...I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless...This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal..."

Who sounds more like a dreamer?

Today, exactly half a century after that August 19th, 1976 speech, we are halfway into Reagan’s 50-year challenge. As a human race we made it through this period, in large part due to Reagan’s courage and resolve. As he told his National Security Adviser Richard Allen, his strategy for taking on the Soviet Union was simple: “We win. They lose.” Reagan put his trust in freedom, unleashed the American economy, and defeated Soviet tyranny.

America won the battle against Soviet totalitarianism, but the fight to safeguard liberty and civilization continues.

With 50 years left before the U.S.’s tercentenary, the questions Reagan asked will challenge every American generation. Will their country continue to carry the message of freedom to the world? Will Americans unite to prevent terrorists and rogue states from getting nuclear weapons and destroying the civilized world? Will democratic nations under the American umbrella outlast the coalition of autocracies that reject individual liberty? Ronald Reagan may no longer be with us, but his message endures: the endless pursuit of the ideal of America must always continue.