Ronald Reagan’s most famous speech was “A Time for Choosing,” which he gave in 1964. Reagan created a strong speech that persuaded others through the use of his language and the examples he gave to support his claims. From the beginning, he makes himself sound like a regular guy and forgoes starting with political language or jargon that can easily confuse people and leave them feeling alienated because of it. He starts the speech with the line “I am going to talk of controversial things.” He doesn’t pretend that he’s going to sugar coat his words to make them more palatable to the masses, and this starts off his persuasion and the way that he can sway and evoke emotions in an audience.
Next, he refers to the two-party system battling each other as a family fight, giving a sense of community and belonging to all Americans by calling them all one family going through a rift amongst themselves. One of the important phrases about America is that it’s a melting pot for all cultures, and Reagan uses that idea while taking it one step further and refers to America as one large family. He is able to get his audience to relate to him with the use of one simple, familiar word because it makes him familiar. It makes him “one of us” rather than a distant, cold politician.
That isn’t the only word choice that Reagan makes in his speech that is carefully done to persuade his audience and evoke feelings that he can use to leverage support for his message. He paints America as a place of freedom for those who reside within it, and as a place of hope for those who are in unfortunate circumstances outside of it like the Cuban refugee he mentions talking about how lucky he felt that America provided him a place to escape to. Freedom is a core American value, and Reagan uses that value to advocate for the type of government that he wants Americans they feel they need.
Reagan makes his argument that it’s time for Americans to choose freedom from government control. He wanted the private sector to control more facets of life and the economy rather than the government, and he leveraged his support in his speech for this by saying that to not reduce government control would be the same as submitting the freedom of Americans to the government. And in another use of the persuasive language combined with familiar, powerful references (a tactic Reagan excelled with), he makes his audience ask themselves what freedoms the Founding Fathers wanted for Americans, implying that they would have preferred the freedom of self-government over giving up freedom for the security a more centralized government would provide. Instead, it was what the Founding Fathers did not want, or at least wanted kept to a minimum.
He pushes on with endless examples of how a more centralized government is failing the people it’s meant to govern, who happen to be people that Reagan wants to inspire to believe in their ability to govern themselves. He makes the problems relatable and the solutions sound achievable.
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