SACRAMENTO -- Running for president, Ronald Reagan repeatedly promised to "make America great again." Thirty-six years later, Donald Trump grabbed the line and became the great plagiarizer.
"Reagan was the original MAGA. No question. Trump swiped the line from Reagan," political consultant, speechwriter and author Ken Khachigian told me.
Reagan used the line in three Republican National Convention speeches and repeatedly on campaign trails. But you'd never catch Reagan wearing a red baseball cap with MAGA inscribed across the front. He was born to wear a plain white cowboy hat.
"Donald Trump recognized the penetrating strength of the Gipper's communication and co-opted the words into the very definition of his political persona," Khachigican writes in his recently published autobiography, "Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan and Nixon."
Toward the end of his winning campaign this fall, Trump also ripped off a more famous Reagan line from 1980: "Ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?"
Here's how Reagan often put it to voters:
"Look around you -- at the price of food, the price of gasoline, the interest rates you have to pay to buy a house, the amount of taxes taken out of your paycheck. Look around, then ask yourself: Are you really better off than you were in 1976?"
Any of that sound familiar?
But even when he was attacking, Reagan came across as upbeat and positive, directly opposite of Trump's tone. At least that's my observation, having covered Reagan for 20 years as a governor, candidate and president.
"When I unleashed that line," Khachigian writes, "I never dreamed it would serve as Reagan's defining message in 1980 and resonate for decades as a gold standard in political rhetoric."
Khachigican suspects he sold Trump on the "four years ago" comparison in an op-ed piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal less than three weeks before the election.
"Then Trump started using it a lot more" against Vice President Kamala Harris, Khachigian told a book-signing gathering last week in Sacramento.
In his very readable book, Khachigian writes candidly about behind-the-scenes dealings as a speechwriter and confidant of Reagan and Nixon. They're two Californians ever elected president; Khachigian lived his dream by working closely with both during their good and bad times.
'Like any intoxicant power can destructively turn good men/women against each other...'
Adds mining institutional force wasn’t unique under Reagans’ White House alone but prevalent elsewhere too!