SACRAMENTO — run for president, ronald reagan He repeatedly promised to “make America great again.” Thirty-six years later, Donald Trump caught the line and became the great plagiarist.

“Reagan was the original MAGA. No questions asked. Trump ignored what Reagan said.” Ken Khachigian, political consultant, speechwriter, and author he said to me.

President Reagan used the term in his three Republican National Convention speeches and repeated it on the campaign trail.

But you’ll never find President Reagan wearing a red baseball cap with MAGA emblazoned on the front. He was born to wear a plain white cowboy hat.

“Donald Trump recognized the penetrating power of Zipper’s communication and incorporated the word into the very definition of his political persona,” Khachigian wrote in his recently published autobiography. “Behind closed doors: In the room with Reagan and Nixon. ”

In the final stages of this fall’s campaign, Trump also imitated President Reagan’s more famous line from 1980: “Ask yourself: Am I better off than I was four years ago?” .

Here’s what President Reagan often said to voters:

“Look around you: the price of food, the price of gas, the interest you have to pay to buy a house, the amount of taxes that are taken out of your paycheck. Look around you and ask yourself: Is life really better than it was in 1976?”

Does anything sound familiar?

But even when he was on the attack, Reagan sounded upbeat and positive, the opposite of Trump’s whining, apocalyptic tone. At least that’s my view after covering President Reagan for 20 years as governor, candidate, and president.

“When I uttered that line, I never imagined it would become President Reagan’s defining message in 1980 and resonate for decades as a monumental piece of political rhetoric,” Khachigian said. I’m writing.

Mr. Khachigian suspects that in an op-ed he wrote for the Wall Street Journal less than three weeks before the election, he promoted Mr. Trump by comparing him to “four years ago.”

“Then Trump started using that word more and more against Vice President Kamala Harris,” Khachigian said at a book signing in Sacramento last week.

Khachigian writes candidly about behind-the-scenes, face-to-face dealings in a highly readable book. Speechwriter, confidant of Reagan and Nixon.

They are the only Californians ever elected president, and Khachigian, a farm boy from Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley, works closely with them through good times and bad, living his political junkie’s dreams. Lived.

Mr. Khachigian was a cheerful and easy-going man, a hard-line conservative and politically hard-liner, but he always made sure to express only the president’s views in his speeches.

In the book, Mr. Khachigian does not decry the backstabbing and turf-building by ambitious presidential aides.

“Like any drunkard, the powers that be in our nation’s capital can have a devastating effect, pitting good men and women against each other, fostering mistrust and betrayal, and fueling a strong desire for identity, attention, and recognition. ,” he wrote. “Of the seven deadly sins, all but laziness are born of beckoning temptation.”

But, he added, “the use of power and the mining of organizational power for self-aggrandizement was not unique to President Reagan.”

Mr. Khachigian, 80, began his political career while attending Columbia Law School in New York. He volunteered for Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign and was hired by campaign speechwriter Pat Buchanan, who initially suspected the boy of being a spy for rival Nelson Rockefeller.

The younger Khachigian, who was working as a White House liaison during the final dark days of Watergate in 1974, wrote a memo to Nixon “implying in vain to refuse to resign,” he writes in the book. There is.

“I argued that “resigning does not suit your character,” but “[your] There must be an instinctive desire to fight. ”

Khachigian still believes that: “A lot of Republicans were cowardly; they [congressional] Vote for impeachment.” So they didn’t support the president.

One small section of the book particularly intrigued me. There was always speculation as to whether President Ford would agree to a pardon if Mr. Nixon resigned. The anecdotes reported by Khachigian suggest that an agreement may have existed.

Shortly before he resigned, Khachigian recalled speaking with the president’s lawyer, Fred Buzard. Mr. Khachigian said he would like to be left alone if Mr. Nixon resigns.

“Fred looked me straight in the eyes and said something I’ll never forget,” Khachigian wrote. “Don’t worry, that’s part of it. He’s not going to leave unless he gets those understandings.” He repeated, “Don’t worry about that, Ken.”

“I remembered them a month later when Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon.”

After Nixon returned to San Clemente, Khachigian helped him write his autobiography, essentially ghostwriting him.

Nixon connected Khachigian to one of his early career strategists, California-based political consultant Stu Spencer. Spencer then hired Khachigian to be President Reagan’s speechwriter in 1980 after he took over his troubled campaign as chief of staff.

The “biggest secret,” Khachigian writes, was that Nixon sent a steady stream of memos offering advice to Reagan, most of which were helpful. They kept it quiet “to take away” [President] Carter creates a clue to reviving the Watergate scandal. ”

The campaign’s unofficial “chief of staff” was Nancy Reagan — affectionately called “Mama” by her husband — whose life was dedicated to fiercely defending and advancing her beloved “Ronnie.” .

Khachigian writes about anger nancy regan Chief of Staff James Baker slams president for ordering speechwriters not to attack Democratic candidates walter mondale He was called by name during his 1984 re-election campaign. Mr. Baker told the first lady that such a comment was un-presidential.

“That’s enough, Jim. Now let me get this straight,” Khachigian quoted her as saying. “Ronnie will call Mondale by name, not just ‘my opponent.’ I don’t want any more ‘Huckleberry Finn’ speeches. Gone are the white picket fences. Is it obvious?

President Reagan’s speech quickly turned harsh.

“At every opportunity, I mentioned Mondale’s name and made it sound like blasphemy,” Khachigian wrote.

He believed Mr. Baker was too moderate and had prevented Mr. Reagan from achieving conservative goals of lower taxes and smaller government in the name of “realism.”

I saw it differently. Thanks to Baker, Reagan was able to compromise with Congressional Democrats and achieve something no conservative ideologue could have done.

In any case, Reagan’s winning rhetoric (mainly crafted by Khachigian) lives on today through Trump. unfortunately.