OPINION:
Every day, there’s another example of a dishonest politician (we get it, they’re all liars).
Take this past week: Former President Donald Trump, fresh off being convicted on 34 felony counts, said he NEVER demanded that we “lock her up,” referring to Hillary Clinton. Of course, the media quickly played all the times he said just that — and he said it a lot.
Then Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before Congress, saying he essentially made up the 6-foot social distancing rule in the early days of COVID-19.
The guy who declared “I am science” admitted that there was no real science behind most of the things he ordered all of us to do as the pandemic got underway (and don’t get confused, Dr. Fauci is most definitely just another politician).
Then President Biden, after taking Monday off (except for a fundraising trip to Connecticut), suddenly found time to address the spectacular crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. He announced a “crackdown” that will now allow just — wait, 1.8 million foreigners to enter illegally? Talk about too little, too late.
But there was a time when politics sometimes soared. Thursday is D-Day. Eighty years ago, the world poured into Europe to end Hitler, who, against all odds, had declared war on “the world.”
SEE ALSO: The boys of Pointe du Hoc
The target: a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast in France divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The swarm: 7,000 ships, 12,000 aircraft, 156,000 Allied troops (including some 73,000 Americans).
What the world did on June 6, 1944, was absolutely amazing, and one man really got it: Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Biden decided to leave his basement to attend the 80th anniversary ceremony in Normandy, but 40 years ago, then-President Ronald Reagan flew in and owned it all. In his address, “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc,” Reagan told the world what it all meant.
“We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France,” the president said atop Pointe du Hoc, which lies 4 miles west of Omaha Beach. “The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke, and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.”
“Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance,” Reagan said.
“The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place,” he said.
“When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.”
Some of the men who had fought that day were there 40 years later to hear Reagan, who said:
“Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow, we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.”
Mr. Biden is in France this week and scheduled to deliver a speech on D-Day from the very same spot, Pointe du Hoc. If he somehow manages to stay awake and his teleprompter doesn’t fail, then … oh, who are we kidding, he’ll still never get even close to one of the greatest speeches ever delivered by an American president.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on X @josephcurl.
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