The most popular take on Donald Trump is that we’ve never seen anything like him before.
But here’s the thing: We have seen something like Trump before -- we saw it with Ronald Reagan.
Now, there are obviously some big surface-level differences between Reagan and Trump. Reagan’s public persona was cool, calm, and collected; Trump’s is well, the exact opposite. Reagan had years of political experience before he ran for president; Trump has none. Reagan also was also deeply religious, or at least "spiritual" (he didn't go to church); Trump, I don’t think, has ever had a spiritual thought in his life.
But if you ignore those obvious differences and focus on how Trump is running and framing his campaign, you’ll see that he’s doing the exact same thing Reagan did, only in a style more appropriate for today. In 1980, Republican voters liked button-down politicians; today, they're looking for something more down-home. Trump, arguably, is the Duck Dynasty version of Reagan.
Like Reagan, he’s selling a mythology, the mythology of American greatness and American exceptionalism. Trump’s version of this mythology is a bit more macho than Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” sales-pitch of American greatness, but that’s a difference of tone, not of content.
At its core, Trump’s campaign, like Reagan’s campaign, is selling voters the idea that America, although the best damn country in the world, has fallen on dark times and needs its greatness "restored."
For Reagan, of course, all this mythology was just cover for what he and his far-right buddies really wanted to do: deregulated the economy, cut taxes for the rich, and help the billionaire class regain control of our political system. He and his supporters were looters, and they've looted the middle class over these past three decades to the tune of trillions of dollars in both income and wealth.
Reaganism and Reaganomics was a scam, a scam that we’re still trying to get ourselves out of.
And now, Trump is preparing to run pretty much the exact same scam, only thirty-six years later.
