Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz was surrounded by adoring Democrats during his campaign stop Tuesday in Reno, but he spent much of his time talking to Republicans.
It was an element of his half-hour speech before an estimated 2,000 people at the Grand Sierra Resort that was easy to miss amid the straight-talk rhetorical style and bruising takedowns of dangerous Donald Trump and Project 2025 promoter JD Vance. On the stump Walz, the Minnesota governor and former six-term congressman, comes off as a cross between Will Rogers and a Red Bull-boosted football coach.
But he also carried an important message from running mate Vice President Kamala Harris, one that could help win swing state Nevada. Not only does she care more for working class and middle-class Americans, but she’s also willing to reach across the aisle to Republicans who are repulsed by Trump’s rhetoric and endless campaign of grievance.
“Call me old-fashioned,” Walz said, “but a president’s character and words should matter.”
He then reminded all present that when the going got tough in the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt soothed a nation by reminding it that the only thing it had to fear was fear itself. Walz then pivoted to include a name not often uttered these days in Democratic circles.
“Then we saw communism spreading across the globe, suppressing freedoms, crushing democracy, and it was growing, and Ronald Reagan showed up and said ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.’ That’s what we do,” he said. “And in the most consequential presidential election of our lifetime, in the only presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Donald Trump stood up and said ‘They’re eating cats, they’re eating dogs.’”
Walz then proceeded to eat Trump’s lunch, balancing a litany of criticism with a slate of ideas that a Harris-Walz administration would put before the people. That not only includes defending reproductive rights and rolling out tax cuts and startup cash for low-income homebuyers and small businesses, but protecting and expanding Medicare and Medicaid while fending off attacks on the Affordable Care Act. Critics say it will add trillions to the budget, but the Democrats remind skeptics that Trump managed to do that without accomplishing lasting gains.
Then Walz reintroduced Reagan to the conversation.
“Donald Trump also said, instead of being like Ronald Reagan and standing up to the Russians and their expansion, Donald Trump told the Russians, do whatever the hell you want to one of our allies, as they rolled into Ukraine,” he said. Then he offered a little nugget in Will Rogers fashion, ripping the jaw-dropping news from the headlines that in his post-presidency Trump not only had held as many as seven private phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but had sent the dictator COVID test kits at a time when there weren’t enough kits available for America’s own leaders.
In a line that ought to reverberate through the rest of the campaign, Walz said, “I can guarantee you Kamala Harris and I do not have dictators on speed dial.
“Look, it’s pretty simple, you get it,” he continued. “Our allies don’t trust [Trump.] The people who work with him know how dangerous he is. And people like Putin flatter Trump, and Trump looks up to him. Because what we know is you can walk all over him. He’s easily played. Flattery will get you everywhere with Donald Trump.”
Tearing into the Trump-Vance connections to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook for remaking the federal government, Walz again reminded his audience of a Republican who stepped up and put his country over his party when the ACA was in jeopardy. “The only reason we have it was, John McCain stood up and said no,” he said.
At last, he came out and pointed to the elephant in the room.
“There’s Republicans in this room,” Walz said. “There are. I say this because those of us remember the Republican Party in this country has contributed much to this nation. They have been there. Look we don’t always agree on some of this, but I will guarantee you, when the older Republicans talked about freedom, they meant it. They meant it. Now these guys, Donald Trump, it turns out when he’s talking about freedom, [he means] that government should be free to be in your doctor’s office, to be in that school library, or to be pretty obsessed about being in your bedroom.
“I would argue the party of Ronald Reagan would want government out of all of those things. … I don’t want to speak for the Republicans here, but I gotta feel that’s a mantra of the old Republican Party: Just mind your own business on this.”
Whether you believe Walz applied too much shellack to the Reagan presidency is immaterial. His point is valid. Character does matter, leadership requires it, and compromise on behalf of the common good shows strength, not weakness. That’s not just good politics. It’s a way forward in a dark time.
John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.
