Free Republic

Suck it up In way, it has to be one of the toughest speeches he’s ever given. No one wants to show up and face the music after you’ve lost, although he can take some solace in the fact that he personally never lost. But his side did, and to the extent Hillary based her campaign on the idea that she wanted to continue his legacy, he lost big-time. And yet, when you’re on the losing side, in many ways the pressure’s off. All you have to do is show a basic modicum of grace and people give you credit...

Get Carter by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 04, 2009 When Jimmy Carter made an unsuccessful bid for reelection as president, even Democrats couldn’t say for sure why they were voting for him. Nearly three decades later, he is treated as an elder statesman. “When he left office in 1981, rejected for a second term, his approval rating in the Gallup poll was a dismal 34 %,” Susan Page reported in USA Today on January 30, 2009. “Since then, however, he has won the Nobel Prize, built houses with Habitat for Humanity, observed elections abroad, written almost two dozen books and,...

President Bush's public approval ratings are at an all-time low. It's difficult to imagine how he could improve them dramatically with just about 18 months left in office. But I do believe there is one speech he could make that would instantly increase his popularity by 50 percent to 100 percent. It's a speech he will never give. Here is a rough draft of the text: "My fellow Americans, I come before you today to admit a mistake and correct our course. "I have made my case for comprehensive immigration reform as the proper way to address concerns over our...

In 1993, one-time Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote a letter to the former president. Having become frustrated with the revisionist history that swirled around the president’s historical standing, Noonan asked him if he was worried about his future standing with historians. Reagan replied: “I’m more than willing to submit my actions to the judgment of time. Let history decide. It usually does.” On June 5, 2004, the nation observed the passing of Ronald Reagan into the annuals of history. But history has a way of being defined and redefined with the passage of time. Our judgment of it proceeds accordingly....