Take demagogues seriously. Voters love them. And they're only a joke until they win.

[phantom power]

As preparations began for the 1980 race, Lyn Nofziger, Reagan's late advisor, noted that Team Reagan didn't discourage the belittlement. In fact, they came to rely on it as part of their campaign strategy: being underestimated only made their man stronger. Liberals fell right into the trap: in the week running up to the election against Jimmy Carter, Doonesbury ran a series where the strip's indefatigable TV reporter, nature documentary-style, took "a fantastic voyage through...the brain of Ronald Reagan."

"Unhappily, the brain stops growing at age 20, and thereafter, neurons die off by the millions every year," the comic reported. "What this means is that the brain of Ronald Reagan's has been shrinking ever since 1931."

This was a fairly accurate portrayal of how Carter's aides saw their opponent. Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg has related that the campaign's strategists were confident that if they only could get Reagan side by side on the debate stage with the incumbent, the public would finally realize that the Republican candidate and former star of Bedtime for Bonzo was just stupid.

Well, they got their wish: A debate between Reagan and Carter took place the weekend before the voting. Reagan wiped the floor with the president, and a race that had been virtually tied turned into a Reagan landslide.

Trump is a very different figure from Reagan, who had governed America's most populous state, and rather successfully, before he ever ran for president. They are similar, however, in that they both top-rated TV stars for years before they ever sought office, Reagan as host of G.E. Theater anthology programs, and Trump as the billionaire host on 14 seasons of The Apprentice. Because of this, both men had a profound head start over their opponents, having already imprinted themselves in voters' minds exactly as they wished to be seen—Reagan as the genial curator of stories that always had happy endings, Trump as the omni-competent boardroom warrior before whom weaker mortals can only grovel.

But more than that, Reagan, and now Trump, reveal our own tendency to repress our fear of demagogues by dismissing them. And ultimately, it's all about us. Follow the bouncing beach ball. Take demagogues seriously. Voters love them. And they're only a joke until they win.

http://www.vice.com/read/what-ronald-reagan-teaches-us-about-donald-trump-925

[Gregorian]

1. Don't vote with your spleen!

I really mean it. I think all too many people vote according to what their hormones do when exposed to potential presidents. After all, we are animals. Reagan's confident, almost cynical, flippant attitude gave people's hormones a squeeze. Even Democrats bought it. Trump does the same thing. People are sick of the way things have been going, but despite being the unhealthiest thing they could do, they vote for what makes their hormones flow. Trump's another jerk that bullies his way into people's spleens.