“As we ended our last séance, Lyndon raised the issue of a drafting committee,” offered Barack. “My first thought was that he was getting ahead of the game. We still have five presidencies to review. And yet . . .”
“Did you just call this a séance?” asked Dutch.
“I did. What else would you call five living presidents and eight deceased ones talking to each other?”
“Statesmen?”
“That defines a dead politician,” interjected Harry. “It was to be my epitaph, a sarcastic one, from the striped-pants boys over at the State Department, especially after I recognized the state of Israel over their objections and machinations.”
“Harry and Dutch may be joking but there’s a serious point to consider. Whatever final document we come up with cannot be issued in all our names. Only the living presidents can go before the cameras and make our case for the American dream. As statesmen, they can capture the attention of a divided nation,” declared Dick.
“Does that mean you’ll be part of the drafting committee?” asked Lyndon.
“Yes, but . . .”
“But what?”
“The drafting committee should consist of six members so we can work by consensus, not by a majority vote.”
“So you have given this more thought,” offered Lyndon.
“Ideally, the drafters would span the generations and bridge our partisan divide,” continued Dick. “For example, Ike and I were the first post–World War II generation of Republican presidents, Gerry and Dutch belonged to the second generation, and George and W are part of the third.
“When we discussed this over the weekend, Ike thought I should take the lead on the drafting committee. Gerry and Dutch flipped a coin. So Dutch ‘won.’ After a few snide asides, W volunteered.”
“Are we faced with a fait accompli?” queried Barack.
“Worse,” answered Bill. “The Republicans ran with Lyndon’s idea, and now they have their bitterest partisans lined up and ready to go. They probably already have their term sheet written.”
“Since you outnumber us seven to six, we felt the need to set the rules of engagement on our terms,” replied Dick.
“Give me a break! If you count the man upstairs, it’s seven to seven,” argued Bill.
“We don’t count him as one of us,” retorted Dutch. “He’s an outlier—a mix of the worst of our politics and the worst of yours. And he’s the one man in America that could bring the thirteen of us together.”
Seeing his idea going up in smoke, Lyndon dove into the fray. “Hold on. What Dick and his colleagues suggest makes sense. We ought to go three by three onto this ark. And the Democrats around the table ought to put our heads together and come up with three volunteers that span our own generational divide.”
“The generational divide doesn’t make sense for us,” argued Franklin. “Harry, Jack, and I barely used the phrase at all. Jimmy used it sparingly. But Lyndon built his Great Society around ‘the dream’. Eventually, if we ever get past this silly debate over process, we will find that Bill and Barack used ‘the American dream’ in nearly twelve hundred speeches.
“We Democrats don’t need to caucus. The men most directly involved in expanding the use of that phrase—Lyndon, Bill, and Barack—should serve as our members on the drafting committee.”
“Any objections?” asked Barack. “Hearing none, the drafting committee will consist of Dick, Dutch, and W for the Republicans and Lyndon, Bill, and myself for the Democrats.
“Now let’s return to our regular programming. Gerry is scheduled to discuss Dutch’s usage, and if there’s still time, Jimmy will start in on George. If not, his sermon will be next week.
“Fair warning. After tonight, we have ten sessions left before our time together expires. Given our expansive use of the phrase, at least one evening, if not two, should be dedicated to Bill’s, W’s, and my speeches. That leaves four sessions for us to debate the drafting committee’s report, reach unanimity on our final document, and agree on how and when it should be released for the maximum impact.
“Gerry, having faced Dutch in the 1976 Republican primaries, can you offer the table any insights into his approach to the American dream?”
“Let me be perfectly clear: Ronald Reagan ran against four of us—Richard Nixon in 1968, George Bush and Jimmy Carter in 1980, and my ‘accidency’ in 1976,” Gerry said. “Had it not been for Dutch’s challenge to a sitting Republican president, I might have beaten Jimmy. But I’ve buried that axe.”
“Deep between his shoulder blades?” asked Harry.
“No, I liked the guy. He read his scripts with élan. His ‘aw shucks’ image wasn’t an act. He took the presidency seriously, and the American dream to a higher level.
“During his first years in office, Dutch focused exclusively on ‘how to save the American dream we all love.’ 1 He sought to ‘provide incentives for greater economic growth . . . restore strong productivity . . . reduce inflation . . . produce millions of jobs . . . [and] a larger gross national product and a healthy Dow Jones average.’ 2 Even with inflation running nearly 20 percent, his sunny optimism never waned.
“Dutch signed the usual proclamations about various ethnic groups living the dream. His definition of who could live the America dream, however, was expansive. In a speech to educators, he argued that ‘the immigrants who came to Chicago, the poor in our inner cities, “the middle classes struggling to make ends meet—these Americans still believe in the American dream.’ 3 Eleven days later, he said that ‘the American dream of human progress through freedom and equality in competitive enterprise is still the most revolutionary idea in the world today. It’s also the most successful.’4
“At Ellis Island, he spoke movingly about ‘the millions of immigrants . . . [that] possessed a determination that with hard work and freedom, they would live a better life and their children even more so. They were captured by the American dream. And both they and their new country were better for their efforts and their faith . . . they proved how artificial are the prejudices and hatreds that exist in this world.’” 5
“Don’t tell Trump. He’ll go off on another narcissistic rage,” interrupted Dutch.
“That’s precisely why we should tell him,” responded Franklin. “He should know how far off course he has steered the ship of state. So should the American people.”
“Before anyone turns Dutch back into a Hubert H. Humphrey liberal—yes, he even campaigned for Humphrey back in 1948—you might want to hear how he used the American dream to leverage his tax and spending cuts,” suggested Gerry.
“Speaking to Ohio veterans organizations during the 1982 midterm elections, Reagan came across as a dyed-in-the-wool conservative:
For the truth is that Americans must choose between two drastically different points of view. One puts its faith in the pipe-dreamers and margin-scribblers in Washington; the other believes in the collective wisdom of the people and their commitment to the American dream. One says tax and tax, spend and spend, and the other says have faith in the common sense of the people.
The other side believes the solutions to our nation’s problems lie in the psychiatrist’s notes or in the social worker’s file or in the bureaucrat’s budget. We believe in the workingman’s toil, the businessman’s enterprise, and the clergyman’s counsel. The other side speaks of limitations and redistribution. We want growth and opportunity. The other side wants us to lower our expectations. Well, we have a vision of making America great again. The other side speaks of national malaise, a sickness. We offer hope. 6
“Dutch, Trump was channeling you after all. I hope you copyrighted ‘Making America Great Again,’” teased Barack.
“As you know, a president’s words and phrases don’t belong to him,” retorted Dutch. “They belong to the American people. The copyright laws don’t protect us while we’re on the public payroll. So he’s free to do whatever he wants to do with it.
“I only wish he understood how much damage he is doing to America here at home and around the world. Even on my darkest days, I exuded an attitude of optimism, openness, and opportunity. Going nuclear and getting nasty never worked for me.”
“Dutch was the consummate cheerleader. He often explained how the dream raised the spirits of millions,” Gerry continued. “To the American Legion in 1983, he argued, ‘the American dream lives — not only in the hearts and minds of our own countrymen but in the hearts and minds of millions of the world’s people in both free and oppressed societies who look to us for leadership. As long as that dream lives, as long as we continue to defend it, America has a future, and all mankind has reason to hope.’ 7
“Dutch returned to the Legionnaires’ convention a year later and laid down a marker that would resonate throughout his second term:”
I preach no manifest destiny, but I do say we Americans cannot turn our backs on what history has asked of us. Keeping alive the hope of human freedom is America’s mission, and we cannot shrink from the task or falter in the call to duty. In the past 4 years, we’ve offered renewed hope to millions of people in developing lands, and we’re beginning to see them turn away from the East and toward political and economic systems based on personal freedom. So we must not be apologetic about our nation’s commitment to freedom. We must present to the world an America that is not just militarily strong, but an America that is morally powerful — an America that has a creed, a cause, a vision of a future time when all people of the world will have the right to self-government and personal freedom. 8
“As he closed out his reelection campaign, Dutch shifted from saving the American dream to ‘ensuring that every person has not only an equal chance, but a much greater chance to pursue the American dream.’ 9
“His view of the dream was all-encompassing. At a rally in Iowa, he tied the American dream inextricably with—and explicitly to—his campaign’s message that it was morning in America:
And if I could leave you with one last thought from my heart, it’s that the American dream is a living thing — it’s always growing, always presenting new challenges, new vistas, and new dreams. And throughout Cedar Rapids and throughout Iowa, there are young couples today saving to buy homes of their own, mothers and fathers who want to give their children a better education, men and women with dreams of making the good earth of Iowa still more fruitful, the good town of Cedar Rapids still healthier and more prosperous, and America herself stronger and better still. My vision of America, and I know it’s one you share, is of a land where all have the opportunity to work hard and to make these dreams come true. 10
“He also hammered the point home at a naturalization ceremony in Detroit five weeks before Election Day. Speaking to those newly minted citizens, he said ‘with you, the American dream is reborn.’ 11 And it certainly was.
“Once reelected, Dutch never quit leveraging the American dream. He used it to provide help to farmers, pass debt limit legislation, cut spending, bring personal and business tax rates down, and press for job training partnerships. Drug-free workplaces and schoolyards; new jobs, better education, rising incomes; and safe and affordable housing were integral parts of his agenda for that rebirth of the American dream. All along, Dutch kept quoting Archibald MacLeish: ‘There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.’’’ 12
“And he could wax lyrical himself. Perhaps it was his Irish genes. But his rhetoric matched the mood of the Republic more often than not.
“At his State of the Union speech, President Reagan said”
after all we’ve done so far, let no one say that this nation cannot reach the destiny of our dreams. America believes, America is ready, America can win the race to the future—and we shall. The American dream is a song of hope that rings through night winter air; vivid, tender music that warms our hearts when the least among us aspire to the greatest things: to venture a daring enterprise; to unearth new beauty in music, literature, and art; to discover a new universe inside a tiny silicon chip or a single human cell.
As we work to make the American dream real for all, we must also look to the condition of America’s families. Struggling parents today worry how they will provide their children the advantages that their parents gave them. In the welfare culture, the breakdown of the family, the most basic support system, has reached crisis proportions — in female and child poverty, child abandonment, horrible crimes, and deteriorating schools. After hundreds of billions of dollars in poverty programs, the plight of the poor grows more painful. But the waste in dollars and cents pales before the most tragic loss: the sinful waste of human spirit and potential. We can ignore this terrible truth no longer. As Franklin Roosevelt warned 51 years ago, standing before this Chamber, he said, “Welfare is a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” And we must now escape the spider’s web of dependency. 13
“Dutch never lost sight of how the American dream affected the minds of those whose nightmares were filled with repression and suppression on five continents. At the Ethics and Public Policy Center, he described a chat he’d had with Gorbachev in Iceland. The passage is long, yet underscores how twisted and tainted Trump’s bromance with the new Russian czar is:
[Gorbachev] told me that when I talk about how we Americans look forward to the day when the world knows the blessings of liberty—he told me the Soviets take this as a kind of threat. And, of course, there’s really only one answer to that: It’s no threat. We call it the American dream. And, yes, we do think it’s important. And, yes, we do believe that someday it will belong to every man, woman, and child on Earth. And let me say to you tonight: We must never let the need to talk with the Soviets lead us to forget that dream or our duty to it. And we must never forget, either, that this very dream, our Judeo-Christian ethic and all it means, is not only our reason for meeting the Soviet challenge but also our great advantage.
In getting ready for my meetings with Mr. Gorbachev, I asked many experts what role Communist ideology plays in the Soviet Union today. Some told me it’s irrelevant because nobody believes it anymore. After all, it failed to produce not only freedom but also food. . . . And still others said that, whatever people think of it, it’s put the Soviets in an ideological bind that will thwart their participation in the technological revolution that — with America in the lead — is now sweeping the world.
Well, that revolution is really a revolution of hope that will launch the West into a new age of productivity, prosperity, and growth; an age as far advanced over our own as the Industrial Age was over the preindustrial, an age in which statism and totalitarianism are left forever behind. And that’s why it’s so important for all of us here tonight to remember that this revolution of hope, this new position of strength for the West, is the backdrop for the talks we’ve been having with the Soviets. And that’s why we believe that we made more progress in our meeting in Iceland in 2 days than our negotiators in Geneva made in the last 2 years. Well, all of our proposals are still on the table, and we see no reason that our negotiating teams shouldn’t pick up where we left off. The Soviets have sent signals that they maybe believe this, too. 14
“Dutch wasn’t finished. In a radio address to the people of the Soviet Union, he reminded them that ‘peace is also a dream. For two centuries, men and women from all over the world have left their homelands to make often dangerous passages to the shores of my country, to a land of peace where they had the freedom to make their hopes into realities for their families and themselves. They had a dream, and we in America call it the American dream. But to live in a land of peace and hope is not just the American dream; it’s the dream of all people, of all lands.’” 15
“That must have gone over with the Kremlin like a lead balloon,” interjected W.
“More like a lead bullet to the back of the head,” George responded. “That was the KGB’s preferred method of execution. Now their thugs use nerve agents . . . but only on orders from a former KGB colonel.
“And yet, three years after Dutch’s speeches and during my watch, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved, the wall he had challenged Gorbachev to tear down had fallen to the picks and shovels of East and West Germans, and most of the Warsaw Pact countries would be welcomed, eventually, into the NATO alliance. That was all Dutch’s doing.”
“It’s late,” Gerry reminded the table. “But let me make one final point, a point that will trigger another narcissistic rage from the man upstairs, if he’s listening. That point is about free trade. And it was made right here in the White House.
“Dutch was called ‘the Great Communicator’ for a reason. He made confusing arguments understandable, complex ones uncomplicated and divisive issues like trade less so. ‘Our commitment to free trade is undiminished. We will vigorously pursue our policy of promoting free and open markets in this country and around the world. We will insist that all nations face up to their responsibilities of preserving and enhancing free trade everywhere.’ But his strong suit was bringing all Americans into the conversation. ‘But let no one mistake our resolve to oppose any and all unfair trading practices. It is wrong for the American worker and American businessman to continue to bear the burden to continue to bear the burden imposed by those who abuse the world trading system.’
“And then Dutch laid down the American policy formulated and followed by each of us for nearly nine decades. A child of the Great Depression, he stated the obvious: ‘We do not want a trade war with other nations; we want other nations to join us in enlarging and enhancing the world trading system for the benefit of all. We do not want to stop other nations from selling goods in the United States; we want to sell more of our goods to other nations. We do not dream of protecting America from others’ success; we seek to include everyone in the success of the American dream.’16 Nor did he—or did any of us—promote a strident protectionist, tariff-driven trade war. We knew free trade meant jobs, cheaper consumer goods, and a lower cost of living.
“Two years later, Dutch laid the foundation for the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which George and Bill would push to fruition. Trump tore up that agreement, reneged on our commitments to Pacific Rim countries, and started a full-blown trade war with China. So it is imperative we remember where Dutch was coming from in 1987:
I have long felt that the people who came to the New World, especially here in North America, have a mission to perform in proving to the world there is a better way. Canada and the United States will soon be doing just that: demonstrating to all humanity that there are, indeed, no limits to what people can accomplish when they are free to follow their dreams. Once this step has proven successful, there’s no reason others should not use our success as a model. Ours is a dream of an open world where all are free to trade and do business together, to enjoy the fruits of prosperity, and to live in peace with one another. And we’re making that dream a reality. It is the American dream. 17
“And with that, I yield back the remainder of my time,” the former minority leader intoned.
“Just in the nick of time,” advised Barack as the mantle clock struck nine.
1. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at a White House Reception for Members of the Advertising Council Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/246312.
2. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at a Conservative Political Action Conference Dinner Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/245356.
3. Ronald Reagan, Remarks to the National Catholic Education Association in Chicago, Illinois Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/245040.
4. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Annual Meeting of the United States Chamber of Commerce Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/245327.
5. Ronald Reagan, Remarks Announcing the Formation of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial Commission Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/245881.
6. Ronald Reagan, Remarks in Columbus to Members of Ohio Veterans Organizations Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/246117.
7. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Annual Washington Conference of the American Legion Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/262549.
8. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Annual Convention of the American Legion in Salt Lake City, Utah Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/261042.
9. Ronald Reagan, Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at the “Choosing a Future” Conference in Chicago, Illinois Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/261060.
10. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at a Reagan-Bush Rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/261516.
11. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at Naturalization Ceremonies for New United States Citizens in Detroit, Michigan Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/261774.
12. Ronald Reagan, Remarks on Signing the International Human Rights Day Proclamation Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/261207.
13. Ronald Reagan, Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the State of the Union Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/254269.
14. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Ethics and Public Policy Center Anniversary Dinner Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/258186.
15. Ronald Reagan, New Year’s Radio Address to the People of the Soviet Union Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/257596
16. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at a White House Meeting With Business and Trade Leaders Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/260345.
17. Ronald Reagan, Remarks to the United States Chamber of Commerce on the Economy and Deficit Reduction Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/251733.”