"Don't Sell America Short"

Let it be said right at the outset that this book is not yet another on President Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economics or “Reaganomics,” his push for major tax reforms, his stance on the Iran-contra affair, his far-fetched “Star Wars” idea, or other issues that stand out regarding his national and international policies and actions. While they are mentioned in passing, the main emphasis is on his effective use of proverbial rhetoric. While the extensive scholarship on Reagan does include statements about his keen interest in language as a most important communicative tool, his impressive reliance on literary and political quotations, Bible and folk proverbs as well as proverbial expressions of all sorts has basically remained unmentioned. And yet, upon close scrutiny, it becomes clear that these stylistic elements add a colloquial and often metaphorical tone to his speeches and writings. The President insisted on applying common sense to his messages that was enhanced by everyday vocabulary and well-known phrases. Where Reagan has rightfully been tapped as the “Great Communicator,” it can now be claimed that his steady employment of strategically placed proverbs justifies this distinctive label. For, indeed, President Reagan, was among many other accomplishments, a great proverbialist!

The study of proverbs or paremiology, as the scholarly term has it, is indeed a multifaceted undertaking as I have described it in my book Proverbs. A Handbook (2004). During my more than five decades of tilling this rich field of inquiry, I have dealt in much detail with such varied topics as the linguistic and semiotic nature of proverbs, their actual use in social contexts, their cultural, historical, and folkloric dissemination, their political, sociological and psychological significance, their appearance in literature of all types, their prevalence in religion, their pedagogical value, their depiction in art, and their use in the mass media. Some of this work has appeared in my books “Proverbs Are Never Out of Season”: Popular Wisdom in the Modern Age (1993), The Politics of Proverbs: From Traditional Wisdom to Proverbial Stereotypes (1997), “Proverbs Are the Best Policy”: Folk Wisdom and American Politics (2005), “Proverbs Speak Louder Than Words”: Folk Wisdom in Art, Culture, Folklore, History, Literature, and Mass Media (2008) “Behold the Proverbs of a People”: Proverbial Wisdom in Culture, Literature, and Politics (2014), “Right Makes Might”: Proverbs and the American Worldview (2019), The Worldview of Modern American Proverbs (2020), and “Worth a Thousand Words”: Cultural, Literary, and Political Proverb Studies (2025). As can be ascertained from some of these titles, I obviously have a special interest in the sociopolitical use of proverbs, to wit my studies of four major American figures: “No Struggle, No Progress”: Frederick Douglass and His Proverbial Rhetoric for Civil Rights (2001), “Making a Way out of No Way”: Martin Luther King’s Sermonic Proverbial Rhetoric (2010), and “All Men and Women Are Created Equal”: Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s and Susan B. Anthony’s Proverbial Rhetoric Promoting Women’s Rights (2014). I might add here that almost all books listed in this and the following paragraph were published with the Peter Lang publishing house of New York for which I am sincerely thankful.

But, of course, I have also been drawn to the rich proverbial rhetoric of American presidents. It started with a book about The Proverbial Harry S. Truman (1997) that I wrote together with my colleague and friend George B. Bryan. After his premature death I published The Proverbial Abraham Lincoln (2000) and some years later wrote the book “Yes We Can”: Barack Obama’s Proverbial Rhetoric (2009). More recently I undertook investigations of two presidents of the second half of the twentieth century: “A Rising Tide Lifts All the Boats”: The Proverbial Rhetoric of John F. Kennedy (2023) and “We Are All in the Same Boat Now”: The Proverbial Rhetoric of Franklin D. Roosevelt (2025). Naturally I became aware of the fact that except for Abraham Lincoln I had dealt with Democratic presidents. Surely the time was ripe to look at a Republican president. Three candidates for another detailed and laborious study came to mind: Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan. When I discovered that the public papers of Roosevelt and Coolidge were not published in easily accessible volumes, my decision fell on Ronald Reagan whose massive 15 volumes of his Public Papers were waiting for me at the library of the University of Vermont. The decision to work on Reagan also made a lot of sense since I experienced his presidency firsthand. How could I, as a so-called German American, ever forget his famous exclamation “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” on June 12, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin!

The next step was to check those 15 Reagan volumes with their 12,687 pages (double columns) and several volumes of diaries, letters, and Reagan’s autobiography An American Life (1990) totaling 3,370 pages out of the library. With those 16,057 pages to read at hand, I was ready to begin my adventure into discovering what made Ronald Reagan the famous “great communicator.” Of course, dozens of books and articles were added to the study, with Max Boot’s quite recent biography Reagan: His Life and Legend (2024) being the proverbial icing on the cake, so to speak. I received it as a Christmas gift from my wife as I was working on this book. Now that I have completed all that reading of primary and secondary sources, I can honestly state that it has been a most enlightening journey with the end result being that Reagan’s rhetorical prowess is to a considerable degree informed by his effective use of proverbial language. All those quotations, proverbs, proverbial expressions and more are listed in their contexts in the index that makes up the second half of this book. The first part with its ten chapters presents the informative results of the study of Reagan’s proverbial rhetoric. It starts with a chapter entitled “‘You Ain’t seen Nothin’ Yet’: Ronald Reagan’s Optimistic Oratorical Prowess.” Here it becomes clear that the president had a future-oriented worldview and took on the presidency with hopeful vigor for a peaceful future at home and abroad. The second chapter with the title “‘Government Is Not the Solution, It Is the Problem’: Two Inaugural Addresses and a Farewell Speech” investigates these three major speeches, drawing the conclusion that both inaugurals were not particularly memorable, lacking in memorable one-liners as it were. The farewell address was more effective with its metaphor of “the shining city on the hill” standing for Reagan’s positive outlook for America’s future. With Reagan’s interest in history and literature it comes as no surprise that he enjoyed quoting famous statements of which some have become proverbial over time. The third chapter “‘Hitch Your Wagon to a Star’: Effective Reliance on Well-Known Quotations” cites numerous sententious remarks that helped Reagan to add a certain authority to his comments.

Ronald Reagan will certainly be remembered for his repeated use of the proverb “Trust but verify” that played such an important role in the relationship between him and Mikhail Gorbachev. The fourth chapter presents a close reading of “‘Dovorey no Proverey / Trust but Verify’: A Russian Proverb at Decisive Summit Negotiations.” As with other presidents, Reagan is quite keen in relying on the proverbial wisdom of the Bible that is discussed in the fifth chapter: “‘Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself’: Bible Proverbs as Voices of Moral Authority.” With that the major sixth chapter is reached that shows how Reagan was quite the proverbialist in citing folk proverbs to add metaphorical expressiveness to his deliberations. Of course, he is also quite capable of having some fun with traditional proverbs by changing them into so-called anti-proverbs, as in the chapter title “‘Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows’: The Use of Proverbs as Argumentative Strategies.” While proverbs are complete sentences that can stand alone as independent complete sentences, proverbial expressions are usually metaphors that are easily integrated into oral and written communications. The next three chapters on “‘Seeing the Light—Feeling the Heat’: Proverbial Expressions as Political Metaphors,” “‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’: Somatic Expressions as Emotive Rhetoric,” and “‘There’s Got to Be a Pony in Here’: Animal Phrases as Elucidating Imagery” explain how Reagan used proverbial phrases to add a colloquial flavor to his speeches that helped him to get in touch with his audiences who enjoyed the idioms especially if applied in typical Reaganesque humor. Common sense and humor make up a considerable portion of Reagan’s proverbial rhetoric and so do the many stories and jokes that he enjoyed telling whenever he had the opportunity to do so. The tenth chapter, appropriately entitled “‘This Reminds Me of a Story’: A Potpourri of Reagan’s Favorite Narratives” shows the president at his best in using folkloric and proverbial language to communicate in everyday language with the American people.

As always, I wish to thank my colleagues from the Interlibrary Loan Office at the Howe Library of the University of Vermont for their much-appreciated help in obtaining secondary materials for me. I also acknowledge my professorial friends Simon Bronner, Charles Clay Doyle, Dennis Mahoney, Kevin McKenna, David Scrase, and Patricia Turner for their interest in and support of my work. My friend and at times co-author Andreas Nolte once again handled the chore of preparing the extensive Index of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. My dear wife Barbara was supportive and interested in this large project, always willing to listen when I would tell her about a new proverb or story discovery during my many hours of reading. Finally, then, it is time to dedicate this study to my Republican friends and relatives with whom I share the altogether positive remembrance of the fortieth president of the United States.

Wolfgang Mieder

Summer 2025

Ronald Reagan’s Optimistic Oratorical Prowess

It did not take long for President Ronald Reagan to be called “The Great Orator,” a designation that received its stamp of approval in the book title Ronald Reagan. The Great Communicator (Ritter and Henry 1992). Perhaps it was a tongue in cheek or ironic title at first (Lakoff 1990a: 262), but it has long been acknowledged that “as a communicator of superlative skill, Reagan is a model by which other presidents will be judged” (Stuckey 1990b: 89). It is, of course, of interest what Reagan himself thought of this repeatedly cited moniker of sorts in his “Farewell Address to the Nation” of January 11, 1989:

And in all of that time I won a nickname, “The Great Communicator.” But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation—from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries. They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I’ll accept that, but for me it seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense. (XV, 1720; January 11, 1989; for the Roman numerals see the bibliography)

Of course, it mattered what he said, but how he verbalized it and with what intonation and gestures also made his messages come across effectively. His earlier career as an actor who could memorize his scripts with ease, as a TV personality, and as a radio host all trained him well to use his natural communicative skills to his advantage during his political years (Scaife 1987, Denton 1988c, Raphael 2009). Robert Welch concludes his enlightening essay on “The Great Communicator: Rhetoric, Media, and Leadership Style” with this revealing paragraph:

Reagan will always be remembered as the Great Communicator. Communication was a fundamental component of his leadership, and many politicians, pundits, and scholars connected the revitalization of the presidency that took place under him to his communication skills and strategies. For Reagan, it was a strategy that fit his talents. He was a naturally gifted communicator, but his experiences on radio, in movies, on television, and in giving speeches, particularly on the GE [General Electric] tours, when he traveled around the country talking with ordinary people helped develop his skills of connecting with his audience. (Welch 2015: 91)

As one would expect, there are voices that disagree with such positive assessment, voicing that “The Great Communicator” slogan is nothing but a cliché and arguing that he was usually only acting out a prepared script and that his “ability to communicate effectively in discursive environments” (Leyh 1986: 300) was anything but impressive. Nevertheless, perhaps Wynton C. Hall’s characterization of Reagan as “The Great Composer” might be a more apt term for such critics: “Ronald Reagan’s ‘music’—themes, positions, and visions—was entirely his own. The style and ‘instruments’ used to amplify Reagan’s music, however, were determined in concert with the members of his ‘symphony’—a select group of speechwriters” (Hall 2005: 168–169). For the record, it should also be noted that Reagan wrote literally thousands of letters, self-authored radio-scripts and speeches, and prepared many addresses with which he reached thousands of General Electric employees (Carpenter 1987: 331). There can be no doubt that Reagan had one of the most comprehensive rhetorical preparations of any American president. But to be sure, his rhetoric was not particularly eloquent or philosophical in its ordinary vocabulary. It was common sense that he was after most of the time, and in order to hold to this promise, he declared: “I’ve got something to say, and I’m going to use plain language. I’m not going to pull punches” (XII, 695; June 22, 1987). In fact, he had “a knack for cutting the usual political lingo and getting straight to the issue that mattered the most to the voter, his pocketbook” and clearly had the “ability to reach the average voter and get his philosophy across” (Speakes 1988: 301). Yet with rare exceptions to be discussed in later chapters, “Eloquent words that become a nation’s persuasive maxims during a president’s tenure in office (and endure after) have not been forthcoming from Ronald Reagan or his speech writers” (Carpenter 1987: 335). And still, “Reagan’s ‘just plain folks’ style of speaking may be the opposite of traditional oratory, but his rhetoric apparently appealed to the American public during the course of his two-term presidency” (Aden 1989: 384) just as President Harry Truman’s ordinary language did some four decades earlier (Mieder and Bryan 1997).

No doubt, Reagan had “the gift of presenting his beliefs in simple, emotionally evocative symbolic slogans (i.e., metaphors), delivered in a warm, comforting, and sincere manner” (Stuckey 1990a: 4) that often was enriched by his everyday sense of humor, as for example: