argumate:

kontextmaschine:

To hear the right’s triumphalism of recent years, you’d think that only smug Democrats were appalled by Reagan while Republicans quickly recognized that their party, decimated by Richard Nixon and Watergate, had found its savior.

The Republican elites of Reagan’s day were as blindsided by him as their counterparts have been by Trump.

A typical liberal-Establishment take on Reagan could be found in Harper’s, which called him Ronald Duck, “the Candidate from Disneyland.” That he had come to be deemed “a serious candidate for president,” the magazine intoned, was “a shame and embarrassment for the country.”

A strategic memo by Carter’s pollster, Patrick Caddell, laid out the campaign against Reagan’s obvious vulnerabilities with bullet points: “Is Reagan Safe? … Shoots From the Hip … Over His Head … What Are His Solutions?” But it was the strategy of Caddell’s counterpart in the Reagan camp, the pollster Richard Wirthlin, that carried the day with the electorate. Voters wanted to “follow some authority figure,” he theorized — a “leader who can take charge with authority; return a sense of discipline to our government; and, manifest the willpower needed to get this country back on track.”

(yep)

I have been pushing the Trump/Reagan thing. How many people on Tumblr were alive then, I wonder. How many people on Tumblr are alive now, even.

I think it’s really significant that Reagan was shaped by the movie studio system, where you as the principal would do the projects the studio boss said, or at least the ones your agent said, in the way the director said, and you were just responsible for the charisma gap

And Trump coming from 80s NYC tabloids AND ‘00s reality TV, the first is a lot about politicking with the players and the second is just the principal drawing on his personality to throw whatever at the wall and the editors pick out and polish the jewels after the fact