Is Trump Making Us Great Again?
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Make America Great Again."
The 4 words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years before, when inappreciably anyone merely Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office equally the 45th president of the United states.
It happened on November. seven, 2012, the day afterward Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to exist a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, 1 that had some wondering whether a GOP president would always sit down in the Oval Office once more.
But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical way, the first affair he thought about was how to brand it.
Ane subsequently some other, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Swell." That one did not take the correct ring. Then, "Brand America Smashing." Only that sounded like a slight to the country.
And then, information technology hitting him: "Make America Nifty Again."
"I said, 'That is and so skilful.' I wrote information technology down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I accept a lot of lawyers in-house. We take many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'See if you can have this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
5 days later on, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Make America Great Again" for "political action committee services, namely, promoting public sensation of political issues and fundraising in the field of politics." He enclosed a $325 registration fee.
His was a vision that ran against the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, it was "much the reverse," Trump said.
To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would take to sand off its edges, go kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Not bad Again" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to multifariousness or civility or progress.
It sounded similar a death wish.
Just Trump had seen something different in the land, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.
"I felt that jobs were hurting," he said. "I looked at the many types of illness our state had, and whether it's at the border, whether it's security, whether it'southward law and order or lack of law and order. Then, of course, yous get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would exist good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Great Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If y'all're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'thou non your candidate. I recollect there is more right than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we take to make America great. I recall we take to make America greater."
Her husband, erstwhile president Bill Clinton, went so far every bit to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'm really old plenty to retrieve the expert old days, and they weren't all that adept in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That bulletin where 'I'll requite yous America great again' is if yous're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it ways, don't you?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Permit's Make America Keen Again" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until virtually a yr ago.
"But he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His determination to merits legal ownership reflected a businessman's mind-set. "I call up I'thou somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organisation lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than 80 countries.
The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was really using it for the purposes spelled out in his application.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP principal rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America great again" into their own speeches, Trump'southward lawyers fired off terminate-and-desist messages.
Trump's scarlet trucker cap featuring the Make America Smashing Once again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
More than but a lid
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic entrada. The one constant, it oft seemed, was "Make America Nifty Once again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on similar information technology did. It'due south been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't y'all say?"
At that place were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Great Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner'due south Philip Wegmann wrote in tardily Oct. "The millions of hats volition make excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional merely well-oiled political automobile."
Trump saw the hats equally a fundraising and advertising vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Style department — during Way Week, no less.
"In the Manner department, it was the ornament — what do you call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the year. Y'all know the hat. You'd encounter people going to the fanciest assurance at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
As is oft the case, Trump's description is more than a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "quondam-school" caps had become "the ironic must-have fashion accompaniment of the summer," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats past wearing ane during a July 2015 trip to the Mexican border — or the legions of supporters who raced to snap them up. Trump had designed them himself, he said. The bones models sold through his campaign website were priced at $25.
"How many did we sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"Information technology was copied, unfortunately. Information technology was knocked off by ten to one. It was knocked off by others. Only it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that'due south an advertisement."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Peachy Once more" caught on. Information technology was the most effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"Information technology actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, information technology meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant armed services strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."
[When was America nifty? It depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's campaign — for all its poll testing and high-priced communication from Madison Artery — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," according to an email from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were up against was cypher short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's main political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to reach. You lot can't deny him that. He was very focused from the start on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the pop vote, Trump lined up united states he needed to win what mattered: the electoral college.
"In terms of galvanizing the market that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did it single-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are y'all prepare?" he said. " 'Continue America Great,' exclamation bespeak."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Ii minutes later, i arrived.
"Will you trademark and register, if yous would, if you like it — I recollect I like it, right? Practice this: 'Keep America Great,' with an exclamation betoken. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business out of the fashion, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd be giving [y'all] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, information technology is going to exist so astonishing. It'due south the only reason I give it to you. If I was, like, cryptic about it, if I wasn't sure well-nigh what is going to happen — the country is going to exist great."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it even mean?
"Existence a great president has to practise with a lot of things, merely 1 of them is being a not bad cheerleader for the land," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build up our armed forces, we're going to display our military.
"That armed services may come up marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I hateful, we're going to be showing our military," he added.
Just Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship will non be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "great again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-practice list for the next four years: edifice stronger borders, keeping the country rubber against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with something amend, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it volition be upward to the people for whom "Make America Peachy Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to determine whether the 45th president has lived up to his promise.
"I think they have to feel information technology," Trump best-selling. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the state is very of import, but you nevertheless take to produce the results."
"Honestly, y'all haven't seen annihilation yet. Wait till you encounter what happens, starting side by side Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."
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Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-came-up-with-make-america-great-again/2017/01/17/fb6acf5e-dbf7-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html
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