Word: speech
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Constitutional Convention -- evoked echoes of classics that had been uncorked as far back as the 1980 campaign. His claim that "we don't have deficits because people are taxed too little ((but)) because Big Government spends too much" was almost word for word out of his 1986 speech -- and out of countless campaign speeches over the years. The assertion that soldiers "once again wear their uniforms with pride" was in his 1982 State of the Union, among other places...
...this was January 1987, not 1986 or 1985. This time he was speaking as the leader of an Administration deeply wounded by revelations that he had been trading arms to Iran for hostages, and for the first time he was addressing Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. The speech may not have been the make- or-break, last chance to reassert his leadership, which is how some aides (and much of the press) had been overbilling it. But it was an important chance to demonstrate that he was taking charge of the Iranscam mess and to advance imaginative...
...domestic matters, the President in a written message pushed as a main theme the "quest for excellence." But in the speech he backed it up mainly by exhortation rather than specific proposals. For example, a plan to insure the elderly against the expense of catastrophic illness is supposed to be a cornerstone of his 1987 legislative program. Yet so far the President has been unwilling or unable to resolve a dispute within his Administration on what type of plan to propose...
...Younger conservative House members came to the chamber determined to whoop it up for a beleaguered President -- the more so because some had been warned by Republican Leader Robert Michel, who had seen an advance copy of the address, that "it ain't going to be much of a speech." The Young Turks leaped to their feet clapping and shouting at the most routine lines, pretty much forcing senior Republicans to join...
These strategies were mirrored in two competing drafts of the State of the Union speech. One, written by Presidential Assistant Dennis Thomas, consisted mostly of a laundry list of legislative proposals. The conservatives, led by Speechwriter Anthony Dolan, contributed an unsolicited draft that took a sharply aggressive line: it would have committed the President to push for a constitutional convention to draft a balanced-budget amendment. Reagan rejected both and chose a third draft written by Ken Khachigian, a former White House speechwriter who was called back from California for this effort. Though Khachigian's lyrical prose is well suited...