Subject: New Yorker: Trump, Reagan, and the Downsizing of History
From: "Sarge, Matthew" <[email-masked]>
To: Comm_D <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 12:37:38 -0700

Trump, Reagan, and the Downsizing of History<http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-foreign-policy-distance-between-trump-and-reagan?mbid=social_twitter>

In the search for figures bearing comparisons to Donald Trump, one's mind inevitably wanders back in time. After a brief pause to muse over Sarah Palin, one soon moves to the late Ronald Reagan, the last entertainer who ran for the Presidency of the United States, which he won. For all the posthumous veneration that Reagan now receives, there are Americans who point to his candidacy as having fatally lowered the bar for qualifications for entry to the White House. It is hard to recall a moment when anyone accused Reagan of lording a superior knowledge over others. This seems unlikely to happen anytime soon with Trump, too.

Unlike Trump, though, Reagan had a pleasingly mellifluous voice and a studied actor's ease at the podium, and he appeared to actually believe in the ideas he expressed. He might not have command of the briefing books, but there was a philosophy there. There was also a convincing sense that Reagan, whatever his political views, was a nice guy. However he may behave in his personal life, Trump's public persona is a mash-up of the prurient cruelties of Jerry Springer with the selfie-stick vanity of the Kardashians. He has repeatedly shown his bullying nature and variously ridiculed his fellow candidates for their physical size ("Little Marco" Rubio), purported dishonesty ("Crooked Hillary" Clinton), and reputed ugliness (Carly Fiorina). When someone at one of his rallies called Ted Cruz a "pussy," Trump immediately repeated the word.

But a more telling contrast between the two men comes in the area of foreign policy. Coming into the Oval Office, thirty-five years ago, Reagan was the embodiment of a galaxy of homespun simplicities that he had helped nurture as an actor on behalf of his own Great Generation; as President during the last decade of the Cold War, his good-versus-evil rhetoric was often cartoonish. Nonetheless, it spoke to certain truths. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" was a line straight out of Twentieth Century Fox, and may have ended up as little more than a hollow flourish had it not been for the collapse of the Soviet Union, a few years later. That event, though, gave Reagan the good fortune of appearing to have been morally righteous, historically clairvoyant, and strong, without ever actually going to war.

Since those days, of course, the world has shown itself to be a much more complex place, as subsequent Presidents have learned, usually to their chagrin, with some faring better than others. George W. Bush did a particularly poor job at matching his own efforts at a Reaganesque rhetoric to the moment: "Mission Accomplished" comes to mind. And now we have Donald Trump.

Trump's "America First"-themed foreign-policy address last week, in Washington, D.C., was billed as his first attempt at delivering a grown-up speech. It would, it was said, be something other than the usual ad-lib assemblage of stream-of-consciousness riffs, drive-by insults, know-nothing japing, and self-referential preening that some Americans find so fetching (to judge from primary-vote totals) and ratings-worthy (to judge from the airtime the networks give him). And so, on Wednesday, Trump stood in front of a teleprompter, in all his orangeness, and tried his best, with a speech that someone had evidently helped him write, to sound serious.

Trump quickly hit all the high-concept trouble spots-Israel, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Russia, China-anywhere he could take a passing swipe at Barack Obama or his current main rival, Hillary Clinton. He invoked them to declare, once and again, as he has many times on the stump, that he would make America great again by being firmer than Obama, and would put America first. There was little that was dramatic or memorable, perhaps by design; it seemed that the speech was more of an exercise in proving that he could get through an appearance without saying something unhinged. In that sense, he was more or less successful, although observers were quick to point out his general superficiality. And the irrepressible man from Mar-a-Lago managed to utter a few off-script Trumpisms-"very bad," "believe me," a "disaster"-the now-familiar verbal crutches of a man who is singularly driven to constantly speak his mind while not really possessing the means to do so. He looked less like Reagan at the Wall than like Dean Martin during his standup routines.

Although he didn't repeat it for his "America First" speech, Trump's ultimate foreign-policy statement remains that he will build a wall, a beautiful wall, and make Mexico pay for it. Perhaps he believes that, with such comments, he will gain honor abroad for a disrespected and abused United States-a theme he revisited frequently in his speech. If so, he is far from achieving that goal. Instead, Trump has gained popularity in Mexico as a best-selling papier-mâché piñata, with his mouth obscenely open, the better for people to bash it with sticks at birthday parties, and at any other opportunity.

As with his threats about the wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, Trump's main foreign-policy position seems to be about making other countries pay for things. Much as real-estate developers who wish to use his name on their buildings must pay Trump a handsome fee, it seems he wants America's deadbeat allies to pony up a fairer share of the bills. In his speech on Wednesday, for example, Trump promised to make Washington's European NATO allies pay their fair share of their membership dues, or else, he hinted, they'd be cut loose from the U.S. defense umbrella.

As for Russia, Trump said, "I believe an easing of tensions, and improved relations with Russia from a position of strength only, is possible, absolutely possible. Common sense says this cycle . . . of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries." Trump went on to say that as President he would engage with Russia and "try and get a deal that's great-not good-great for America" and that if he couldn't get one, he would "quickly walk from the table. It's that simple." In the front row of the audience for Trump's speech at the Mayflower was none other than Sergey Kislyak, Vladimir Putin's ambassador to the United States. He diplomatically refrained from offering his opinion on the speech.

Thirty years after Reagan dared his greatest adversary to tear down the Berlin Wall, we have Trump boisterously claiming he wants to build a new one, not to keep out Communists, or even the ISIS terrorists he mysteriously claims to know how to eliminate, but people from Mexico, our closest neighbor to the south, a friendly nation, and one on which we rely for a significant percentage of our labor market, as well as our imported oil. If this is not a downsizing of history, then what is?