America’s Bookends, Reagan and Obama at Normandy
Posted by JimMy wife and I, by sheer happenstance, ended up staying in Normandy just two days after President Reagan spoke commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day. In the summer of 1984 Mr. Reagan and Americans were very popular in Europe, even in France. The mood amongst the locals was positively euphoric and at 10 to 1, the dollar was king in France.
Mr. Reagan’s speech was given to mark the end of a period of American funk, starting with the Vietnam aftermath and ending with a bout with colossal inflation rates. His was a victory lap, a coronation recognizing a new era of American ascendancy in the West.
Mr. Obama’s appearance was about the future. The last administration throughly trashed America’s reputation abroad. His purpose was deliberate; to position himself as not of the past 25 years but as a new direction forward, but yet still linked to some of Mr.Reagan’s legacy in Europe.
The setting above Omaha Beach is more than the sum of its parts. You cannot be anything but in awe of what happened there and to feel an immense weight about you. There is no way to be on that beach or on the bluffs and not feel the experience in a transcendent and tragic sense. You will ask yourself from what wellspring of personal courage and will did this collective effort come from?
Watching the speech I thought back to my own experience and found it diminished, not in a negative way, but by what it must have taken to endure that day.
