Reagan's Mantle

Trump rambles on in a long speech but hints at the future in a changing America

It is some forty years ago that Lee Greenwood would turn up at Reagan campaign events and sing “God Bless the U.S.A” with Ronald and Nancy nodding and smiling along. This week the now 81-year old Greenwood was one of the opening acts at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, last night he delivered the intro to Donald Trump’s speech as he belted out the same tune.

Trump has used the song before in earlier campaigns, but this time around it all of a sudden had a very different feel to it. The assassination attempt on the candidate had its impact in bringing sympathy to the four day convention circus and there was also a decided attempt to soften the harder edges of the 45th president of the United States. On opening night we witnessed Amber Rose, a black social media star with a some 24 million followers on Instagram explain how she came to her support for Trump, underlining that the man is not racist. On the same night the head of America’s largest union, Teamster President Sean O’Brien, addressed the Republican crowd in Milwaukee, a total novelty in American labor relations. The electoral plates in America are shifting and this time the Trump campaign team ensured it would get that message across to everyone watching the convention. It also emphasized that there was unity, detractors and Trump challengers like Niki Haley and Ron DeSantis took the stage and confirmed their support for the candidate: no more divisions.

The Economist this week argued that the Republicans are no longer the party of big business and country clubs, and that it is therefore no longer Reagan’s party. But the exact opposite is true as the single defining theme of Reagan was always to appeal to the average American and the articulation of that in his visionary ‘Shining City on a Hill’. Trump cannot even come close to paint that picture in an acceptance speech the way Reagan did it, he rambled on for an hour and a half last night, but his instincts are not dissimilar. And while traditional big businesses support Democrats, it is big tech that is now bankrolling Trump. Elon Musk committed to put up $45 million a month until election day to get Trump back in the White House. At the same time Silicon Valley giants such as Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz broke away from the tech industry’s left-leaning stance by making it clear they were behind Trump.

Trump has always been anti-establishment, much like Reagan who was never liked in the halls of traditional East Coast, white country clubs which was Bush territory. More than anything this was crystallized in the pick of JD Vance of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ fame as the candidate for the vice presidency. It fits the theme, the man from Ohio is a living ‘rags to riches’ storyline that indeed also defined Reagan’s journey from an impoverished youth to success in Hollywood, Sacramento and eventually Washington. Trump literally told the audience that Vance is the man of the future and will be one of America’s leaders for years to come. A successor was anointed.

So the convention revealed a few important things. Despite the usual half-truths, inaccuracies and self-aggrandizements, Trump more than once hinted at seeking to be a president for all Americans, with clear references to ‘unity’. At the same time he opened the door for the future where a new generation would chart the course for a stronger, but very different America. It all remains full of contradictions of course, to keep repeating the ‘drill baby drill’ mantra while having your campaign bankrolled by the man who practically invented the electric car is wild. And it will be a real challenge to have a more isolationist America while actively threatening China, Iran and Hamas in the same speech, with the Ukraine file being completely up in the air.

So is it a mixed bag? Yes and no. Trump is a transitional figure who is channeling the feelings of discontent that arose out of globalization, immigration and neo-liberalism. These were, ironically, the very trends Reagan unleashed in the eighties. And Trump is now leading a counter movement, far more transactional and less strategic, but very similar to Reagan by appealing across America’s cultural, economic, racial but above all class boundaries. Different tune, but same dynamic. It can go in any direction and it will be up to America’s next generation to shape it.

Israel

As Trump was about to start his speech last night, news from Israel came in about a drone attack on central Tel Aviv. There was a casualty and some wounded. This could have far reaching consequences as not only did it come from quite far, the Houthis in Yemen, it also somehow managed to elude Israel’s missile defence systems (for which now a human error is blamed). Anyway, there will be more on Israel in the weeks ahead here and a good way to get back into that is to note what JD Vance thinks about the US-Israel relationship and how it should inform the American approach to its allies. Interesting: