President Joe Biden attempted to emulate former President Ronald Reagan, a Republican icon, in his remarks to World War II veterans on the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
From the place he spoke, a Colleville-Sur-Mer cemetery containing thousands of American soldiers who died in Europe, to the message he conveyed, Biden’s moment in Normandy, France, was an attempt to channel the historic appearance Reagan made himself.
Biden hammered home the United States’s steadfast relationship with other NATO countries in the face of Russia, which is waging a vastly unpopular and tension-boiling war on Ukraine. Reagan’s remarks came in the face of the Soviet Union during the closing years of the Cold War, saying, “We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.”
Biden mirrored Reagan’s anti-isolationist remarks: “The United States and NATO, a coalition of more than 50 countries standing strong with Ukraine. We will not walk away because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated, and it will not end there. All of Europe will be threatened.”
The president also matched Reagan in his remarks about NATO.
“America is invested in our alliances and forged new ones, not simply out of altruism, but out of our own self-interest as well,” Biden said.
Biden’s praise of the alliance forged to rebut Russia echoed Reagan’s sentiments 40 years earlier: “The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies.”
Biden is hoping to reap much of the same effects as Reagan’s speech. The former president’s 1984 address helped him to a second term in the White House as voters grew more confident in his approach to foreign policy.
Biden will also deliver remarks from Pointe Du Hoc, a clifftop that special operations forces mounted in a significant raid on D-Day, on Friday. Reagan did the same.
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Thursday’s commemoration will likely be the last for many U.S. WWII veterans as even a 17 year old, the minimum age to enlist with parental consent then, who took part in the assault would be around 97 today.
Biden has some other similarities to Reagan. Much like Reagan, Biden’s age and cognitive ability have been a hot topic in the lead-up to his reelection bid. Biden took the oldest president title from former President Donald Trump, who took it from Reagan, when he took office in 2021.
