The cycles of American history never cease to fascinate.
Not all that long ago, the Republican Party wrapped itself in the flag and made unabashed patriotism a part of its platform.
At the 1984 Republican National Convention—right at the midpoint of Ronald Reagan’s presidency—United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick delivered a speech. Up until that point, Kirkpatrick had been a Democrat.
Her speech, though, marked a break with her old party and an embrace of the GOP. At the heart of her address was a line that she used to indict Democrats.
“Somehow, they always blame America first,” she said.
For the next 20 years, Republican candidates draped Old Glory over their shoulders and Republican conventions rocked with chants of “USA! USA! USA!”
Part of what made it all possible was Reagan’s sunny optimism, his smiling belief that America was the “shining city on a hill,” the beacon that brought out the best in humanity. His optimism about America’s future proved to be an effective counterpoint to the often-strident gloominess of the Democrats, many of whom were still traumatized and, in some ways, paralyzed by the tumults of the 1960s and 1970s.
Reagan sensed that most Americans wanted to feel good about their country. His easygoing patriotism allowed Republicans to set the terms of political discussions in the United States for a generation or more.
That was then.
This is now, when the script has been flipped.
As the recently concluded Democratic National Convention demonstrated, the Democrats now are the ones who punctuate their gatherings with chants of “USA! USA! USA!,” adorn themselves in the Stars and Stripes and make celebrations of all things America a key part of their appeal to the voters.
Their standard bearer, Vice President Kamala Harris, made clear in her speech accepting her party’s nomination for president that her platform was basically a civics lesson.
She offered full-throated declarations that she stood for “the rule of law” and the “peaceful transfer of power”—sentiments that would have seemed like cliches rather than a battle cry at most points in this nation’s history.
But we are not at most points in U.S. history.
We are at this point—in this moment in Donald Trump’s America.
The core of the former president’s appeal to his supporters has been Napoleonic in conception ever since he descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower to declare his candidacy for the presidency.
He has presented himself as the man on horseback, the warrior chieftain who is the only one who can restore a desperate and despairing nation’s prospects.
“I alone can fix it,” Trump declared at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
That megalomaniacal assertion came amidst a speech that depicted the United States as little more than a ravaged wasteland, a country on the edge of collapse. He since has called America “a failed nation” many times.
So much for Reagan’s grinning flag-waving.
But Trump needs to argue that the United States is on a rapid descent to a fiery pit in order to justify his assertion that we need a strong man with no regard for our institutions, laws or traditions to save us.
Absent such justification, much of what Trump says and does—his cozying up with dictators, his repeated defiance of legal and constitutional constraints—would be akin to treason.
Because Trump needs to denigrate America to advance his political interests, he leaves the door open for his political opponents to present themselves as the flag wavers.
The lovers of country.
The patriots.
The opening is more than a symbolic one.
Jeane Kirkpatrick had been a Harry Truman/John F. Kennedy/Lyndon B. Johnson Democrat for nearly 40 years before she gave that speech at the 1984 Republican convention.
The following year, she formally became a Republican, part of a movement of Cold War Democrats toward the GOP.
The presence of several longtime Republicans on the stage at this year’s Democratic convention is a sign of a similar migration occurring in reverse these days.
Republicans’ motivation for abandoning their traditional party is the same as it was for Democrats four decades ago.
Most Americans love their country, regardless of its flaws and missteps, and they resent the political party or candidate who, to use Kirkpatrick’s words, blames America first.
It took Democrats a couple of decades to figure that out.
It remains to be seen if Republicans are equally slow learners.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
