Trumped Again!

A Lone Author's Attempt to Understand Donald Trump and his Phenomena

Part II: Misunderstanding Ronald Reagan

In our previous Trumped! post we discussed the modern right's obsession with wonkish policies and how these just don't win out against simple slogans and ideas.

Reagan understood this. Let's look at one of his 1980 campaign commercials. Now, in 1980 your author was 7 years old. But it was obvious to everyone, even a 7 year old, that something was wrong. The Soviets were on the march, we faced constant energy crisis, we had double digit inflation. So here's an ad:

Longish for a campaign ad, not. Let's look at his two more famous ads from 1984:

And on foreign policy:

In the middle ad there's a lot of economic fact, true, but no wonkish policy talk.

Reagan was talking about broad ideas, 'morning in America' a 'bear in the woods'. What us wonkish types failed to understand about Ronald Reagan was his easy themes. Nobody was voting for him because they wanted IRA accounts, 35% and  marginal tax rates. Nobody voted for Reagan thinking, 'Yes! I want a 600 ship navy!' People were voting for strength and prosperity.

Ronald Reagan was waging culture war not policy war. We have forgotten this. He was telling us that the other side was weak, didn't mind that it was weak and had no idea how to fix the nation's problems. And he wasn't just running against Carter, but against the last 20 years of center-left consensus.

This was true for George Bush in 1988. Let's take a look at this doozie:

This ad is not about policy. It is about culture. This ad says, 'Michael Dukakis is a northeastern liberal who is soft on crime (also he's a member of the ACLU and burns the flag. Noe check out this one:

Now don't get distracted by the listing of weapons systems, those are just facts to back up the argument, not the argument. The argument was, 'Michael Dukakis is a liberal wimp'.

This was culture war, and it was the last time conservatives fought one. They won 53 percent of the vote and 42 states.

One more:

I saw this in 1980. It stuck with a 7 year old. Think about that!

Anyone remember a Bob Dole ad? Or a Romney ad?

I didn't think so.