Ronald Reagan and morning

It’s morning in America. Who said that?

Ronald Reagan?

Not exactly. An adman, Hal Riney wrote it and spoke it as a campaign ad for Reagan for the 1984 elections.

It did the trick. Reagan won.

Brief and to the point. Persuasive. Effective ad.

That’s what Reagan was good at. Communicating. Reducing the message to the essentials. Didn’t go on and on. Wasn’t disagreeable while disagreeing.

While being simplistic. But, you know, I remember hearing, somewhere, he insisted on having any world crisis summarized on no more than one sheet of A4 paper at his morning meetings. Not some thick report.

One A4 sheet? That’s about as much as I can manage and I’m half the age he was then.

And here’s some trivia. He also had the U.S. government switch from 8 inches by 10.5 letter size to 8.5 by 11 inches to get closer to A4 size.

So that’s what a president does. Legislates new paper sizes.

He had his wry side. He knew what government was about. At some stage he observed that the government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Morning (again) in America

It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?