New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Reagan’s elections offer history lessons for Trump
At Mount Rushmore on July 3, President Donald Trump used the familiar tactic of stoking fear by warning that a “left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”
This transparent falsehood signified an effort to revive his failing campaign for reelection. In the aggregate of national polls compiled by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website, Trump’s approval rating is about 40 percent, about as low as President Jimmy Carter’s dismal rating 100 days before the election of 1980 and President George H.W. Bush’s in 1992. Carter lost his campaign for reelection in a landslide, and President Bush, in a three-candidate contest, was badly beaten. Knowing some history, a highlyrespected Connecticut-educated opinion writer for New York
City’s newspaper of record recently asserted that the election is close to over. An equally sharp Connecticut-born and based elections analyst currently gives Trump only an 8.5 percent chance to win a second term.
Forecasts are not facts. Four years ago, Trump proved himself to be an energetic, resourceful campaigner, and much could happen before Election Day. Nevertheless, history suggests what Trump will only improve his prospects by moderating his tone and tactics. The gloomy, almost depressing, culture-war themes at his rallies in Tulsa and Phoenix last month and at the South Dakota event, ostensibly not a campaign rally, must be replaced by providing leadership through a more uplifting, optimistic message.
In 1984, a television advertisement supporting President Ronald Reagan’s campaign for a second term began: “It’s morning again in America.” I did not vote for Reagan in that election, but I recognize the brilliance of this ad. Its sentiment minimized the threats posed by growing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union, warfare and related violence in Latin America and the Middle East, where 220 U.S. Marines were killed by a truck bomb in Beirut, Lebanon in October 1983. the lingering effects of a recession, and the AIDS epidemic. Instead, the slogan was memorable by capturing the spirit of many Americans. Reagan did not promise the best of times, but he did offer leadership toward rebirth. Not surprisingly, Reagan was re-elected in a landslide. Providing leadership requires inspiring trust and showing a path forward.
According to an ancient saying that apparently originated more than 2,000 years ago in “Aesop’s
Fables”: Be careful what you wish for because you might get it. One shrewd Connecticut-born political journalist recently opined that many people who supported Donald Trump in 2016 thought he would be a terrible president but did not expect him to win the election, and voted for him as a gesture of protest against the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton Democrats. Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, he has been deeply divisive, posing as a patriot while subverting basic American ideals. Willingness to enflame the culture war works sometimes, especially for challengers, but this strategy is not advisable for a president during a global public health and economic crisis that has been complicated in the United States by protests against structural racism and police violence. At some point, every president must be accountable for the state of the nation, even for events beyond his direct control.
President Trump has been
Forecasts are not facts. Four years ago, Trump proved himself to be an energetic, resourceful campaigner, and much could happen before Election Day. Nevertheless, history suggests what Trump will only improve his prospects by moderating his tone and tactics.
complacent, even dismissive, about the continuing threat of coronavirus, too willing to rely on short-term economic indicators such as daily changes in the equity markets and monthly unemployment reports but insufficiently concerned about the cruel realities of long-term health risks. Although Trump clearly would prefer to make the election about ideology, identity, and his warped version of history, in the national referendum on four years of his presidency, a central issue must be whether he can do the job.
That was the question in July 1979, when President Carter was mocked for his so-called “malaise” speech. In a time of rising energy prices and ongoing economic “stagflation”, Carter sought to deflect attention by lamenting what he described as “a crisis of confidence ... that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” Many Americans agreed, blamed Carter, and voted for Reagan.
Four years later, believing Reagan had been an effective president and was optimistic about the future, voters rewarded him with one of the greatest landslide victories in U.S. history. In this year’s election, under very different conditions, if President
Trump does not quickly re-brand himself and change tactics, he is inviting resounding defeat and rejection comparable to Carter’s debacle in 1980.