Sarah Palin invoked Ronald Reagan a few times last night, pulling up endgame Cold War rhetoric  -- "Freedom is always just one generation away from extinction" --  and even refering to the country as "that shining city on a hill." That's a famous Reaganism from his White House days, when The Great Communicator used to wonder openly why some people were complaining about economic conditions -- there was a recession, after all, the worst since 1932 -- when it was "morning in America." That presented Joe Biden with a great opportunity for a comeback but the senator missed the chance. Certainly he must have remembered the even more famous use of "shining city on a hill" by Mario Cuomo at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Reagan might have coined the term -- it was based on a phrase from a sermon from a much earlier time -- but it was Cuomo who turned it gold:

Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their futures. The President said that he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining city on a hill." And the President is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.   . . . . But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.
In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.
In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation -- Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill."