New Trump: Reagan Redux?

Trump should now emphasize personal warmth instead of heat. We saw that quality in him at the Republican National Convention.

In the wake of the assassination attempt on then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, it was natural to wonder whether the notoriously caustic and opinionated former president would become more overtly serious and perhaps a bit chastened after an incredibly close brush with death.

Photo by History in HD on Unsplash

When Trump first walked into the Milwaukee convention center on Monday evening two weeks ago, his facial expressions were rather subdued. Trump appeared to me to be still rather shaken by the attempted assassination, and he looked somber and even sad at times, a distinct difference from his usual cocky, defiant attitude. Although British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result,” Trump seemed anything but exhilarated, and that remained true on subsequent nights, though the former president brightened when watching speeches by luminaries such as vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance, political commentator Tucker Carlson, charismatic wrestler Hulk Hogan, and UFC president Dana White.

If, however, we take Churchill’s observation as a metaphor for the successful emergence from momentous trials, Trump’s demeanor in the days since his near-death experience fit the description. Immediately after the shooting, Trump rose to the occasion and stopped to inspire the crowd and assure them of his well-being. Obviously, adrenaline helped him do so, though his response was extraordinary and showed courage and a level of natural leadership rarely seen these days (and certainly not from politicians), as several speakers at the convention noted.

The next day, Trump reportedly played golf and joked around with his companions, which sounds much like the Trump we have known since he entered public life decades ago. Trump’s demeanor at the convention was generally far graver than that, opening the question of exactly how the brush with death had affected him.

From what I’ve seen thus far, my conclusion is that although the assassination attempt gave Trump a jolting reminder of his own mortality and the preciousness of the things he most values in life, especially his large and loving family, he is still fundamentally the same man he always was. That should hardly surprise us about an individual approaching his ninth decade of life. Trump, an obvious extrovert, loosened up at the golf course and the Republican convention in response to the stimulation of human company and personal attention, with people naturally feeling solicitous toward him after his traumatic experience. That kind of attention is catnip to extroverts.

Inspired and uplifted by the compliments emanating from the podium over the past four days, Trump took the stage Thursday night in a spectacular and in fact garish, Vegas-style onslaught of flashing lights, his surname spelled out in large, illuminated letters, blaring music, and frenetic applause. The showmanship and audience enthusiasm reached a frenzy unique among American political conventions.

The former president spoke for 92 minutes, the longest acceptance speech in the modern era. To many observers the speech was far too long, with too many digressions, and it was certainly not pleasing to professional rhetoricians and never-Trumpers.

In the course of the speech, Trump moved quickly from solemn earnestness to rhetorical roughhousing and back to a sincere and unforced humility toward the conclusion. The speech moved seamlessly from New Trump back to Old Trump, with New Trump returning at the end.

After movingly describing the assassination attempt and his thoughts at the time and in the immediate aftermath, Trump walked over to the side of the stage where the coat and helmet of slain rally attendee Corey Comperatore were on display. Trump spoke affectingly of the former firefighter’s selfless heroism in deliberately shielding his wife and children from the assassin’s bullets, and he led a moment of silence for the fallen hero.

That was a decidedly new Trump, one willing to step aside for a moment and not be the center of attention.

Writing at USA Today, columnist Susan Page noted she wondered whether the “compelling story” of the attempted assassination which Trump recounted at the beginning of the speech marked a new Trump or would soon be overcome by the old:

The opening underscored a fundamental question in the campaign ahead: classic Trump, outspoken and sometimes outrageous? Or New Trump, transformed by his near-death experience?

Or maybe both?

It was both—and more. After returning to the podium, Trump reverted to a speaking style much closer to his usual approach and with his characteristic no-holds-barred criticism of his opponents. Repeatedly breaking away from the touching and emotionally mature words of the written speech, Trump interjected caustic comments about “the current administration,” as he put it, and its disastrous policies.

As Page describes it, when “Trump began the sort of extemporaneous riff he is renowned for, … he turned to the more familiar rhetoric of grievance.” Even so, Page writes, “The audience in the hall didn’t seem to mind, interrupting his speech with cheers and applause too many times to count.”

The audience certainly responded with enthusiasm, which could be due in great part to relief at the assurance that Trump had escaped unscathed from the attempt on his life. I don’t agree, however, with Page’s characterization of the speech as conveying an overwhelming sense of grievance, even in Trump’s asides. Although Trump engaged in numerous sharp criticisms of the current administration and its allies in Congress, he also expressed a strongly positive vision of America and a highly complimentary characterization of the American people that was surprisingly reminiscent of former president Ronald Reagan.

The similarities to Reagan’s agenda and critique of the government he faced are striking and clearly no accident. Trump’s temperament and emotional repertoire are far different from Reagan’s, making for an overall impression quite distinct from that of the Gipper. Nonetheless, Trump showed a great potential to change the tenor of the current political discourse with this move toward a Reagan policy recipe and a reoriented critique of his opponents as well-meaning incompetents made so by their foolish reliance on government as the solution to the nation’s problems.

A move of Trump’s critique away from accusations of malevolence on his political opponents’ part to a highlighting of the regime’s (abundantly demonstrated) incompetence would benefit both Trump’s candidacy and the tone of the national political debate.

The prewritten parts of Trump’s speech did just that, exuding optimism, positivity, and trust in the American people, characteristics rightly associated with Reagan. Trump spoke of achieving peace through strength, getting government out of the way of the people, restoring market freedom, encouraging entrepreneurship, supporting Israel, recognizing the importance of family, acknowledging the centrality of religious faith (with an implicit emphasis on Christianity), and restoring belief in the principles of the United States and the need for unity in pursuing the urgent restoration of the nation’s fundamental values, while firmly conveying the conviction that the Republican Party is the current day’s natural repository of those values and the means to achieve those aims.

That was Reagan’s program, and now it is Trump’s.

Even the differences make sense as updates of Reaganism. In place of the Soviet Union, we now have China as the leading Communist threat, and both men recognized the perils in the Middle East though the main players have changed in the intervening decades.

There is also much more similarity between the two former presidents’ respective political personae than is perhaps obvious. Reagan’s projection of toughness in comparison to Carter over the hostage crisis parallels Trump’s self-characterization as a man other nations’ leaders fear and his continual drawing of attention to the weakness of the current president. Like Reagan, Trump deploys ample humor in his speeches, though in his own more overtly satirical, acerbic style. As Reagan often did, Trump regularly contrasts current conditions with those of prior eras and cites government policies as causing the declines, calling for a return to the American values more commonly held in those earlier times.

Also like Reagan, Trump in his Thursday speech regularly cited real-life examples of struggle and heroism to highlight the errors of the current administration and identify an innate capacity for goodness in the American people that is a central argument in the case for smaller government. As with Reagan, the theme of government doing harm to the American people was central to Trump’s speech.

In the written text and in his unscripted digressions, Trump continually emphasized his outsider status as an individual who had achieved success in the world outside of politics, something Reagan likewise embraced. Finally, like Reagan, Trump survived an assassination attempt and emerged largely unscathed (though of course Reagan’s injuries were far more serious), and both responded with surprisingly poised and inspiring responses in the immediate aftermath of their respective attacks.

In their policy prescriptions and analyses of the nation’s problems, Trump and Reagan are remarkably similar.

In his acceptance speech on Thursday, Trump succinctly recounted the conditions of the nation during his term as president, characterizing them consistently as the best ever. Reagan did the same in his 1984 reelection campaign, though with much greater elegance. Trump on Thursday contrasted his economic record with the present stagnant economy of higher prices, higher interest rates, families struggling to make ends meet, and young couples unable to afford to buy a house, echoing criticisms Reagan made against President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Trump cited tax increases, excessive regulation, the war on fossil fuels, and a general hostility toward entrepreneurship and innovation emanating from the White House in the past three and a half years.

Trump’s litany of recent government-imposed disasters and outline of his party’s proposed remedies emphasized sympathy with his intended audience far beyond the walls of the convention hall:

People can't live like this under this administration, our current administration. Groceries are up 57%; gasoline is up 60 and 70%. Mortgage rates have quadrupled. And the fact is, it doesn't matter what they are, because you can't get the money anyway, can't buy houses. Young people can't get any financing to buy a house. The total household costs have increased an average of $28,000 per family under this administration. Republicans have a plan to bring down prices and bring them down very, very rapidly. By slashing energy costs, we will in turn reduce the cost of transportation, manufacturing, and all household goods—so much starts with energy.

And remember, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country by far. We are a nation that has the opportunity to make an absolute fortune with its energy. We have it, and China doesn’t. Under the Trump administration, just three and a half years ago, we were energy independent. But soon we will actually be better than that. We will be energy-dominant and supply not only ourselves, but we will supply the rest of the world. With numbers that nobody has ever seen. And we will reduce our debt—$36 trillion. We will start reducing that. And we will also reduce your taxes still further.

Like Reagan, Trump called for tax cuts, deregulation, reducing the government deficit, getting the federal government out of the way of energy development, unleashing innovation, restoring the nation’s military capacity, and bringing more jobs to Middle America.

Most remarkably, Trump provided a concise supply-side explanation of exactly how tax cuts reduce government deficits instead of increasing them, evoking the Laffer Curve:

We’ll start paying off debt and start lowering taxes even further. We gave you the largest tax cut. We’ll do it more now.

People don’t realize I brought taxes way down; way, way down. And yet we took in more revenues the following year than we did when the tax rate was much higher. Most people said, “How did you do that?” Because it was an incentive. Everybody was coming to the country; they were bringing back billions and billions of dollars into our country. The companies [had] made it impossible to bring it back. The tax rate was too high, and the legal complications were far too great. I changed both of them. And hundreds of billions of dollars by Apple and so many other companies would work back into our nation. And we had an economy the likes of which nobody, no nation had ever seen. China. We were beating them at levels that were incredible. …

This is the only administration that said, “We’re going to raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now,” and people are supposed to vote for them. I’ve never heard it [before]. You’re paying too much. We’re going to reduce your taxes still further. We gave you the biggest one. As I said, we’re going to give you more, and it’s going to lead to tremendous growth. We want growth in our country. That’s what’s going to pay off our debt.

That is a page right out of the Gipper’s manual: Reagan relied on supply-side economists for the policies that ultimately cured the stagflation of the 1970s.

As part of his proposed program of economic expansion, Trump promised he will allow the nation to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and natural gas starting on day one, noting that the current administration’s war on fossil fuels overrides consumer choice, wastes resources, and makes everything more expensive by driving up the cost of energy, a vital input for all commerce. That includes artificial intelligence and the internet, as these place great demands on the electricity grid, Trump added. The “green new scam” will end if Trump is elected president, he promised.

Trump emphasized the distinct contrast between his administration and the current one on border control. Trump said that he shut the border completely and the current administration has opened it wide for entry by millions of unlawful immigrants taking Americans’ jobs, including union jobs, as well as narcotics smugglers and gang members, likely terrorists, sufferers from mental disorders, and people who have engaged in horrific crimes such as rape, murder, other violent assaults, and abduction after arriving in the United States, citing specific examples so that none could claim that he was saying all immigrants are criminals.

In a striking example of Reagan-style use of stories from real life to illustrate the damage done by government policies and his compassion for people and determination to protect them, Trump said the following:

I also met recently with the heartbroken mother and sister of Rachel Moran. Rachel was a 37-year-old mom of five beautiful children, who was brutally raped and murdered while out on a run. She wanted to keep herself in good shape; it was very important. She was murdered. The monster responsible first killed another woman in El Salvador before he was let into America by the White House. This White House let them in.

He then attacked a nine-year-old girl and her mother in a home invasion in Los Angeles before murdering Rachel in Maryland. Traveled all throughout the country, doing tremendous damage. Rachel’s mother will never be the same. I spent time with her. She will never be the same.

I’ve also met with the wonderful family of Laken Riley, the brilliant 22-year-old nursing student—she was so proud of being first in her class—who was out for a jog on the campus of the University of Georgia when she was assaulted, beaten, and horrifically killed. Yet another American life was stolen by a criminal, aliens set free by this administration.

These were incredible people we’re talking about. These were incredible people who died. Tonight, America, this is my vow: I will not let these killers and criminals into our country.

As to the economic consequences of immigration, Trump noted, accurately, that all the jobs created in recent months in the United States have been taken by immigrants. In an interesting change, however, Trump said America should welcome legal immigrants, thus returning the party’s position on immigration to the Reagan-era approach. Trump repeatedly stressed his goal of creating more jobs for Americans, while abandoning any plausible justification for accusations of xenophobia.

Trump pointed out that under his administration the nation did not engage in any foreign wars, averting them, he said, by his personal combination of amiability and toughness in dealing with foreign leaders. He detoured into an observation that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un felt great affection for Trump and refrained from hostile acts toward the United States and South Korea while Trump was in office. This decidedly interesting relationship is in fact confirmed by the exchange of multiple letters between the two men.

Like Reagan before him, Trump addressed the convention at a time of alarmingly high rates of crime and of drug abuse, promising to attack these problems on the national level and restore the rule of law, and to do so without increasing the government’s harassment of ordinary people. That is far easier said than done, of course, and Reagan erred badly in the implementation of his war on drugs, and arguably even in its very concept, but that is what both men promised, at any rate.

Even Trump’s much-maligned position on trade and tariffs is remarkably like Reagan’s. Reagan imposed quotas on imports of Japanese automobiles, a 45 percent tariff on Japanese motorcycles, and a 100 percent tariff on televisions, computers, and power tools from Japan. In addition, while Reagan wanted a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement looks much more like the Gipper’s trade record than does the NAFTA treaty signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Of course, the differences between the two men’s personalities and public personae are certainly not trivial. Trump is much more openly emotional and prickly, often dwelling on negative thoughts and personal slights. Reagan’s sunny public personality, emotional maturity, and visible self-confidence contrast sharply with Trump’s often dour, sensitive, and petulant tone. Although the lengthy doom-scroll segments of Trump’s Thursday speech received enthusiastic approval from the convention audience, they do not play nearly so well with independents and undecideds.

Despite those critical differences, Trump’s acceptance speech suggested a potential move toward a much more Reagan-like tone for him and his party. Trump certainly was successful in conveying a new level of emotional maturity in saying, “With great humility, I am asking you to be excited about the future of our country. Be excited. Be excited.” Similarly, Trump said, with clear sincerity, “Now, we had—this was a great convention. This was—I think we're actually going to go home and miss it, you know? … First of all, look at these crowds. You'd never have this at a convention. Look at these crowds. Love. It's about love.”

Trump’s closing remarks emphasized personal humility and evoked Reagan’s fervent love for America. “Tonight I ask for your partnership, for your support, and I am humbly asking for your vote.” In an extraordinary combination of New Trump sentiments and Old Trump phraseology, the nominee continued with the following: “Every day, I will strive to honor the trust you have placed in me, and I will never, ever let you down. I promise that I will never let you down. To all of the forgotten men and women who have been neglected, abandoned, and left behind: you will be forgotten no longer. We will press forward, and together we will win, win, win!”

Trump will be sorely tempted to highlight his skill at mockery and comic hyperbole as he faces the frivolous currrent Democrat presumptive nominee. I hope that Trump will resist the temptation and will exercise discretion in choosing his opportunities for unleashing satire against Harris (should she gain her party’s nomination after all). Countless such opportunities will arise in the coming weeks; Trump should not leap at each one. He should let others help with that.

Trump has always stood for optimism and the value of hard work, and his policies have reflected that. He would benefit from emphasizing his solutions for the problems we face, and the farcical inaptness of the schemes being proposed by his opponent. The wisdom of those policies and the foolishness of his opponent’s are his superpower now.

A little personability will go a long way for Trump. Trump should emphasize personal warmth instead of heat. We saw that quality in him at the Republican National Convention.

Reagan changed noticeably after the assassination attempt against him, becoming even more intently focused on defeating Soviet Communism and restoring American ideals. If Trump follows that path and enters a new maturity in the wake of the attempt on his life, perhaps he will continue to harness that new spirit and bring to the rest of the campaign and his hoped-for second term a new sense of optimism and positive, can-do spirit that the nation sorely needs.