Another State of the Union address is in the books. These have been partisan affairs for decades, but in last night's speech Joe Biden made no pretext that this was anything but a pure campaign speech. On the other hand, I feel obliged to note that his predecessor -- the man Biden repeatedly lambasted Thursday night, albeit not by name -- couldn't even muster a nonpartisan speech on Inauguration Day. So there you have it.
This doesn't mean that the exercise was meaningless. Many Republicans have been saying that in terms of his mental acuity, the current president is, well, one taco short of a combination plate. It seems the president passed that test, which should provide some measure of relief to loyal Americans of any party or faction.
Also, today is Friday, the day of the week when I pass along a quotation meant to be uplifting or educational. Today's words of wisdom come from two U.S. presidents, the current incumbent and a Republican commander in chief who also had to bat away concerns about his age and mental adroitness to win reelection. (Ronald Reagan pulled it off, too, and then some.)
On June 8, 1982, President Ronald Reagan appeared before British members of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster to explain his vision of the status of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the bloc of nations under its control, he said, were in the throes of "a revolutionary crisis" within its own borders. The system, he added, was nearly bankrupt.
"It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of human history in denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens," Reagan proclaimed at Westminster. "It is also in deep economic difficulty."
Reagan rhetorically tossed back at the Soviets the old Leon Trotsky boast, by proclaiming that he believed "freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history." This was not "containment" Reagan was discussing, but ultimate triumph over Soviet-style communism.
But it was the following year when Reagan really walked into the foreign policy china shop and began clumsily breaking things, or so it was portrayed. It was March 8, 1983 -- 41 years ago today -- in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals.
The president warmed to his task gradually, prefacing the gist of the speech with ruminations about his own religious faith and the animating beliefs of the nation's Founding Fathers.
The most memorable passages of the address had little to do with that, however. Reagan believed that the "nuclear freeze" movement then sweeping the West was misguided and dangerous: that it not only undermined his hopes of real nuclear reductions by both sides, but was also based on a false moral equivalency between the United States and its adversaries. Reagan would have none of it. He referred to the Soviet Union as "the focus of evil in the modern world," and made news -- and history -- with this passage:
"So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware of the temptation of pride -- the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil."
The "evil empire" speech engendered mass hysteria from Reagan's critics, and even some of his friends. With the advantage of four decades' hindsight, Ronald Reagan was proven correct in both his predictions and his perceptions, and his boldness hastened the demise of that empire. But totalitarian impulses were not permanently excised from Russia when the Cold War ended, nor from the hearts of would-be autocrats around the world and here at home. Only last night, President Biden was warning about the dangers in Eastern Europe -- and reprising another tough Ronald Reagan speech about Russia and its leaders. Observant conservatives were quick to point out last night that Biden wasn't a fan of Reagan's famous challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev at Germany's Brandenberg Gate. But better late than never, I say.
Here is what Biden said last night.
"It wasn't that long ago when a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, thundered ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' Now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin: ‘Do whatever the hell you want.' My message to President Putin, who I've known for a long time, is simple: We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down."
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon
