Golis: The long road from RonaldReagan to Donald Trump

Rivals who didn't like Ronald Reagan's politics couldn't help but like him. As California governor and later as president, he was forever the genial optimist, eager to promote his conservative agenda without feeding rancor or division.

On the eve of his election as president, Reagan explained his vision of America this way: “These visitors to that city on the Potomac do not come as white or black, red or yellow; they are not Jews or Christians; conservatives or liberals; or Democrats or Republicans. They are Americans awed by what has gone before, proud of what for them is still … a shining city on a hill.”

Twenty-seven years after Reagan left the White House, we are left to consider how much the tone and substance of American politics have changed.

Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee for president, came to Reagan's home state on Thursday night. He used the occasion to re-tell a century-old story - unsubstantiated, it turns out - about the mass execution of Muslim terrorists with bullets dipped in pig blood. Then he called his political adversaries low-energy, lying, corrupt and stupid. His fans cheered.

Trump may be many things, but a genial optimist isn't one of them. He seems incapable of passing within 100 yards of a microphone without saying something mean-spirited about somebody.

Like no politician before him, Trump understands how to use television and social media to capitalize on his celebrity, dismiss the opposition and tap into the anger of millions of Americans who feel betrayed by their government.

It's not rocket science why this is happening. For more than a decade, political insiders in both parties were too busy managing their careers to notice that many Americans were being left behind by a new economy based on technology and overseas manufacturing.

In small towns and rust-belt cities, jobs that paid middle-class wages disappeared, to be replaced by jobs that paid less. Many people were hurting and after a while, they noticed that no one seemed to care. Under the circumstances, why wouldn't they be angry?

Reagan had a coherent message that went beyond simplistic promises. Trump does not. But when people are angry, pugnacity counts for a lot. And it doesn't hurt to find someone to blame - illegal immigrants, Muslims, politicians who make trade deals, minorities, women.

Americans today are polarized in a way that wouldn't have seemed possible in Ronald Reagan's time. We shouldn't be surprised. People in the Silicon Valley live in a very different economy than people in, say, Kansas or Mississippi.

Trump promises “to make America great again,” which led pollsters to ask: When was America at its greatest? It turns out, the New York Times reported last week, that Trump voters think the country's best times have come and gone. Democratic voters think the times are pretty good, and they're optimistic about the future.

For the past two years, the Pew Research Center has been mapping this growing divide. Whether you're liberal or conservative, it reported last week, may depend on the number of diplomas hanging on your wall. The more formal education you have, the more liberal your views, the new poll showed. And these differences have grown over the past 20 years.

Some will say this reflects the liberal biases of college faculties. Others will say it demonstrates that people with college degrees make more money and, therefore, are more satisfied with the political status quo.

From the beginning of his campaign, polls showed that Trump's most ardent supporters tended to be less educated, older, white and male. It took a New York billionaire to make displaced people feel like someone cared about their circumstances.

It's a conversation for another day, but the findings at least complicate the historic notion that the Democrats are the party of working people and the Republicans are the party of the wealthy.

The Pew study also showed that fewer Americans hold a combination of liberal and conservative views. More people are just down-the-line liberal or down-the-line conservative, which means they are less likely to acknowledge the value of compromise in a large and complex society.

If Reagan and Trump don't have much in common, they are similar in the way they were under-estimated by the class of professional politicians.

As a candidate for governor of California and later as a candidate for president, rivals laughed at the election prospects of the former movie actor. Now he is considered one of America's greatest presidents.

For many months, the establishment inside the Republican Party laughed at Trump, his considerable ego and his willingness to be outrageous. (Who else has defended the size of his private parts on national television?) He will self-destruct, they told themselves.

How did that work out for you guys?

It didn't hurt that Trump's rivals, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, had their own problems. Former Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner last week described Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh.”)

Trump will always find an audience. He knows how to do that.

We wait to find out whether he understands that succeeding in an office once occupied by Lincoln, FDR and Reagan requires more than self-promotion, pugnacity and name-calling.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.