Our nation’s 250th anniversary this year gives President Donald Trump a unique opportunity to shape the midterm elections in his favor. Trump should deliver three major speeches commemorating freedom and democracy, the first at Normandy, France, on June 6 for the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion. A second major address should take place at Valley Forge on July Fourth, and a third at Gettysburg on Labor Day.
The goal should be to frame the midterm elections as a stark choice between Democratic ideologues who believe America is an evil force in the world and Republicans who, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, see our country as “the last best hope of Earth.”
To that end, a major address at the Normandy American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach has the potential to reshape U.S. and European views of Operation Epic Fury and Trump’s newly assertive approach to the defense of America’s national interests. Two-thirds of U.S. voters think Trump hasn’t explained his reasons for this war well enough. Although approval is rising slightly among domestic audiences, the majority of independent voters disapprove of the war. Polls taken after the bombs began dropping show that Europeans now think America is more of a threat to world peace than China.
Normandy offers Trump a platform to reach these two vital audiences at once: American voters and grassroots Europeans. Trump has dramatically changed U.S. foreign policy from a globalist and multilateralist approach to an instrument of American national power and revitalization. Great changes require clear explanations so that Trump’s new vision for America and Europe’s role in the world is easily grasped by people on both sides of the Atlantic.
Jittery allies and their publics need to be reassured about how they fit into America’s muscular new policy of overthrowing corrupt dictators, preventing the ayatollahs from lobbing nuclear missiles at Europe, or keeping the Russians from invading. Trump needs to remind the European grassroots that a precondition for peace is military strength while reaffirming that America and Europe will always stand together.
European grassroots opinion matters to U.S. national security. To follow through on their NATO commitments to spend 5% of GDP on defense, Europe’s leaders need public support. They won’t be able to realign budget priorities to increase defense without Trump’s help in building grassroots support.
To U.S. audiences, Trump needs to send the message that his tough love with allies is about building an abiding peace and deterring aggression, keys to a prosperous American economy. The economy remains a top focus of the midterm elections, but the war with Iran has elevated foreign policy in voters’ concerns, and sticker shock at the gas pumps has commingled the two issues. The overarching theme for Trump’s Normandy speech should be America’s and Europe’s shared civilization and values over the 250 years since the founding of our Republic, and how we can maintain them for centuries to come. Trump can begin shoring up support by clarifying his goals at the site where the Allies’ liberation of Europe began.
Trump’s challenge today reminds me of President Ronald Reagan’s in 1984. A hostile press corps caricatured Reagan as a Grade-B movie actor with an outdated view of America, an intellectual lightweight likely to start World War III. A punishing recession characterized his first two years in office. An economic recovery was just beginning, but voters hadn’t felt it in their pocketbooks. Reagan’s public opinion ratings in Europe and the U.S. had been battered by the Nuclear Freeze movement. Mass protests against Reagan’s deployment of short and medium-range ballistic missiles in Europe and press criticism of his defense buildup made him seem like a war monger on both sides of the Atlantic.
Reagan had invaded Grenada and sent the Marines into Lebanon, where Iranian-backed terrorists killed 241 U.S. service members by driving a truck bomb into their barracks. I worked in the White House Office of Planning and Evaluation at the time and flew to Camp LeJeune to help arrange the Reagans’ attendance at the memorial service for the slain troops. White House polls taken shortly after showed Ohio Sen. John Glenn easily beating Reagan if he were the Democratic nominee in 1984.
I was on the White House advance team in Normandy and handled press coverage of Reagan’s speech at the American military cemetery. I saw firsthand how powerful a forum it was for reaching Europeans and shaping the political dynamics of the 1984 elections. Reagan’s Normandy speeches had a huge impact. For Americans, they put the war-monger issue to rest, allowing his reelection campaign to focus on domestic issues. Reagan’s European approval ratings soared. He polled as France’s most popular man, eclipsing Yves Montand. So many Europeans visited the cemetery after Reagan’s remarks that the volume of traffic destroyed the road, and it had to be repaved.
CUBA OPENS PRIVATE-SECTOR INVESTMENT TO NATIONALS IN US
I have no doubt Trump can achieve something similar. Despite the stereotype of MAGA voters as neo-isolationists, polls show they are highly supportive of Trump’s foreign policy and embrace of Israel. Trump can win over independents by tying together how his foreign and economic policies will unite, not only to make America great again, but to improve prospects for peace by quelling world tensions heightened by Russian and Chinese militarization.
Peace and prosperity is a message that sells, like Reagan’s “peace through strength” did in 1984. Next stop, Valley Forge.
John B. Roberts II worked on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns and in his White House. He was an international political strategist and executive producer of the McLaughlin Group. He is an author and artist.