“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
That simple question to America’s voters was coined in 1980 by my father when he debated Jimmy Carter on TV.
Part of my father’s closing statement, it probably won the night for him.
Since then it’s become a question that has been asked to voters in some form or another in every televised presidential debate.
My father followed it up with several other rhetorical questions that are just as relevant today as they were 44 years ago:
“Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? …
“Is America as respected throughout the world as it was four years ago?”
“Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago?”
I’ve got some similar questions for the voters today who can’t decide on Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
“Are you safer today than you were four years ago?”
“Are you safer today with major wars going on in the Middle East and Ukraine?”
“Are you safer today with Vladimir Putin rattling his nukes at us and Iran threatening Israel?”
“Are you safer today with an open Southern border and 10 or 12 million undocumented immigrants, questionable asylum seekers, Venezuelan gang members and terrorists scattered who-knows-where across the USA?
“Are you safer today in San Francisco with thousands of homeless and mentally disturbed people sleeping and getting stoned on fentanyl on the downtown sidewalks?”
“Are you safer in Springfield, Ohio, where 20,000 Haitian migrants have suddenly moved to town?”
“Are you safer today in Los Angeles, where petty criminals go unpunished by district attorneys and a Metro bus was just hijacked at gunpoint at 1 a.m. by a guy who shot a passenger to death?”
“Are you safer today at your favorite mall with the smash and grabs and hijackings or in downtown Beverly Hills wearing your best jewelry?”
There are a bunch of other “four years ago” questions voters could be asked.
“Are your kids safer on college campuses?”
“Are you safer if you are Jewish at NYU? If you own a small business in what’s left of Minneapolis? If you go to the parking lot after a Cubs game without a pistol in your purse?”
Kamala Harris dodges my dad’s “four years ago” question and every one of its variations every chance she gets.
She usually does it by babbling something idiotic about how she grew up middle class.
Or by boasting how she wants people who are much richer and smarter than her to pay their fair share of taxes.
Or by fibbing about how she sweated over the french fry fryer one summer in the Bay Area at an unknown McDonald’s where no one remembers her.
But, hey.
If you truly feel safer today than you did four years ago, and if it’s not because you’re a political fat-cat being driven around Washington in an armored limo by a well-armed ex-Navy Seal, then go ahead, vote for Harris for president.
But if you think things like street crime and border security have gotten out of control, there is another choice.
You might think he’s a jerk, a bully or a narcissistic billionaire who is a Russian agent and truly wants to become a dictator.
You might not like how he made his fortune or how he says mean things like “Crooked Hillary” about your heroines.
But from 2016 to 2020 he did a lot more things right for America than wrong.
And because he’s a little predictable and talks tough, our foreign enemies are even more frightened of him than the dumb pack of scaredy-cat ladies on “The View.”
So trust me. Love him or hate him, four years ago we Americans were much safer – locally and globally – under Donald Trump. And we’re going to be in really big trouble if we don’t give him four years more.
Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
