Trump's Rear-View Politics

The GOP candidate is manipulating Americans' nostalgia for a country that never was.

If Donald Trump's presidential campaign had an official theme song, it would probably be "The Way We Were," or maybe Archie and Edith Bunker's rendition of "Those Were the Days." More than anything else, Trump's campaign rests on nostalgia for a bygone era when America was indisputably "great," immigrants came through Ellis Island (and only in small numbers), and where everybody (and especially women, minorities, and journalists) knew their place. The fact that his campaign slogan says he'll make America great again tells you Trump's gaze is firmly in the rearview mirror.

But he's not alone. All of the remaining candidates indulge in their own forms of nostalgia, defined as "sentimentality about the past, typically for a period or place with strong personal associations." Hillary Clinton wants Americans to hearken back to the 1990s, when somebody with the same last name occupied the White House. Bernie Sanders would like to take us back to those halcyon days when Glass-Steagall was still in place, and 1 percenters didn't earn vast sums while tanking the world economy. And Ted Cruz would like you to think he's the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan — with a bit of Jeremiah and St. Paul thrown in — and that electing him will return the country to its Puritan roots....

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