The message Reagan left for Trump to hear
Before last Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies across the country, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana declared them off limits to patriotic Americans.
The anti-Donald Trump rallies were portrayed by the Republican leader as antithetical to American values; the one scheduled in Washington, D.C., would be especially odious, he predicted, stirring the “pro-Hamas … antifa” wings of the Democratic party into action.
Johnson’s wildly divisive rhetoric worked against his intended result. I suspect it stirred thousands of Democrats to attend the rallies who otherwise would have stayed away, along with a cohort of independently-minded Americans and at least a smattering of Republicans, all alarmed by the extra-constitutional and other excesses of the Trump administration.
Johnson was echoed by other Republican House leaders, such as Minnesota’s Tom Emmer, who said the rallies were “anti-American,” and by White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who, using the White House as backdrop, disparaged the notion of any right-thinking American joining with the terrorists, criminals, and illegal aliens who constitute the core of the Democratic party.
A day after the rallies, which drew an estimated 7 million Americans, including thousands of western Pennsylvanians, President Trump told reporters, “Look at the people – they’re not representative of the country…. The people were whacked out.”
As for being whacked out, the president released an AI version of himself wearing a crown and piloting an Air Force jet, and releasing great balls of brown sludge on the heads of unsuspecting, ordinary-looking Americans down below.
He later said he was joking. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the president of the United States.
Respecting the opinions of others is not a Trump thing. Unlike most, if not all of his predecessors, including Ronald Reagan, Trump doesn’t brook opposition, doesn’t take criticism well, doesn’t har
bor even a smidgen of democratic humility.
October marks the 39th anniversary of the opening of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. It was a warm autumn day, around noon, when President Reagan rose to speak at the dedication in Atlanta.
Reagan, a fierce conservative Republican critic of Jimmy Carter, had ousted the former Georgia governor, a Democrat, from the White House six years earlier.
Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, who covered the ceremony in Atlanta, pointed out in the following day’s Washington Post that Reagan and Carter were not exactly buddies. How could they be?
During the 1980 campaign for president, Carter had said that Reagan was stoking racial, religious, and class divisions. He said Reagan was unsteady, unreliable, and unprepared for the presidency.
Reagan declared, “Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
Five thousand people were on hand in Atlanta to hear Reagan in October 1986. Reagan, a brilliant speech maker, began with one of his most memorable passages: a shout out to American democracy and politics.
“None of us today feel any urge, in the name of good will, to downplay our differences,” he declared, referring to himself and Carter. “On the contrary, in a certain sense we can be proud of our differences, because they arise from good will itself – from love of country; for concern for the challenges of our time; from respect for, and yes, even outright enjoyment of, the democratic processes of disagreement and debate.”
Reagan continued, “From the time of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, frank debate has been a part of the tradition of this Republic. Today our very differences attest to the greatness of our nation. For I can think of no other country on Earth where two political leaders could disagree so widely yet come together in mutual respect.”
It might be that sentiments like these helped to fuel Americans’ cynical view of political leaders. Trump gives the appearance at least of sincere belief. What he hates he really hates, no fooling.
Still in all, if it came down to a choice between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, there’d be no choice other than the Gipper. The differences are stark: one was an honorable (and joyous) political combatant with a flair for mediation; the other is, well, the other is Donald Trump.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail. com.