We Used to Be a Great Can We Not Be Great Again
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Belfry on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Mail service)
"Make America Great Again."
The four words that would assist propel Donald Trump to the White Firm were an inspiration born years before, when inappreciably anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States.
It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the 24-hour interval afterwards Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crunch, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Office over again.
But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his proper noun, Trump was coming to the determination that his own moment was at mitt.
And in typical style, the first thing he thought about was how to brand it.
One afterwards another, phrases popped into his caput. "We Will Brand America Cracking." That 1 did not have the right ring. Then, "Make America Great." Just that sounded like a slight to the country.
And then, it hit him: "Brand America Corking Once again."
"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote it down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I accept a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Meet if you can have this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Five days later on, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Brand America Bully Again" for "political action group services, namely, promoting public awareness of political problems 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 opposite," Trump said.
To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, get kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Great Once again" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like a death wish.
But Trump had seen something different in the state, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.
"I felt that jobs were hurting," he said. "I looked at the many types of affliction our country had, and whether information technology's at the border, whether it'south security, whether it'southward constabulary and order or lack of police and society. And so, of class, you go to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Great Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'yard non your candidate. I think there is more right than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we have to make America great. I call back we have to brand America greater."
Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, went so far every bit to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'thousand actually old enough to retrieve the good former days, and they weren't all that good in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll requite y'all America great again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don't you?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Permit's Make America Groovy Over again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year ago.
"But he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His decision to merits legal ownership reflected a businessman'due south mind-ready. "I think I'yard somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than 80 countries.
The trademark became constructive on July xiv, 2015, a calendar month after Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using it for the purposes spelled out in his application.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP chief 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 cease-and-desist letters.
Trump'south ruby-red trucker cap featuring the Make America Nifty Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Postal service)
More than just a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The ane abiding, it ofttimes seemed, was "Make America Bully Once more."
"I didn't know information technology was going to catch on similar information technology did. It's been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't yous say?"
There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Peachy Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or goggle box ads.
"An advisable icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner'southward Philip Wegmann wrote in late Oct. "The millions of hats will brand fantabulous keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'southward unimaginative and conventional merely well-oiled political auto."
Trump saw the hats every bit a fundraising and advert vehicle. He was thrilled when his entrada headgear landed in the New York Times Manner section — during Way Week, no less.
"In the Style section, it was the decoration — what do you call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the year. You know the chapeau. You'd see people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
As is often the example, Trump's description is more a little hyperbolic. What the paper actually wrote was that the "old-schoolhouse" caps had become "the ironic must-have fashion accompaniment of the summer," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny power to capture the current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing i 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 10 to one. It was knocked off by others. But it was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys one, that's an advertisement."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Again" caught on. It was the nigh effective kind of political bulletin, bite-sized and visceral.
"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, information technology meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."
[When was America keen? It depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's campaign — for all its poll testing and loftier-priced communication from Madison Avenue — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan before 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 cipher short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'south chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to reach. You can't deny him that. He was very focused from the get-go on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined up the 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 information technology single-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Mail, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you lot ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Great,' exclamation point."
"Go me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Two minutes after, ane arrived.
"Will y'all trademark and annals, if you would, if you like it — I think I like it, right? Practice this: 'Keep America Cracking,' with an exclamation bespeak. With and without an exclamation. 'Continue America Swell,' " Trump said.
"Got information technology," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd be giving [you lot] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be then amazing. Information technology's the merely reason I give it to you. If I was, like, ambiguous near it, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the country is going to be great."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty hateful?
"Being a great president has to exercise with a lot of things, just ane of them is being a smashing cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to testify the people as we build upwardly our military, we're going to display our military.
"That war machine may come marching down Pennsylvania Artery. That war machine may be flight over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I hateful, we're going to exist showing our military," he added.
Simply Trump best-selling that slogans and showmanship will not be the ultimate tests of whether the land is "great once more."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next iv years: building stronger borders, keeping the country prophylactic confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Act, replacing it with something meliorate, promoting excellence in technology and scientific discipline, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will exist up to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived upwards to his promise.
"I call up they take to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the state is very important, but you still have to produce the results."
"Honestly, yous oasis't seen anything yet. Await till you see what happens, starting next Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."
Read more:
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Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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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