By Leon Hadar.

WITH your permission, let me take a stroll down memory lane. It was 1980 and I was enrolled in the prestigious Columbia University’s School of Journalism in New York City, and together with my classmates I was taking part in my first Big Time political journalism undertaking: Covering the Republican presidential primary race in New Hampshire.

Two leading candidates were dominating the then GOP presidential fight. First, there was George HW Bush, the former congressman, CIA director and US ambassador to China, who was the favourite of the Republican establishment and who – according to the major media outlets – was going to win his party’s nomination. He had the Big Mo(mentum), they argued.

Challenging him was Ronald Reagan, an ageing former B-grade movie star who had served as the governor of California and who held extremist right-wing views on domestic and foreign policy issues – calling for a return to the Gold Standard and for ending the diplomatic détente with Red China – and who was, not surprisingly, supported by the ultra-conservative wing of the GOP.

To make a long story short, at some point during the primary campaign, I joined my fellow students for a roundtable with several of the famous journalists, including the legendary Theodore “Teddy” White, the author of a series of bestsellers on the earlier US presidential races (The Making of the President) that – like other young political junkies – I devoured and regarded as the bible of political reportage. For me, the idea of meeting Teddy White was akin to a young kid shooting hoops when Michael Jordan suddenly shows up in his backyard.

So you can understand when Teddy asked us what we were thinking – Will Mr Reagan or Mr Bush win the primary? – I hesitated to raise my hand. But then I did and little me told the great Teddy that, well, I had a feeling that Mr Reagan would beat Mr Bush.

Mr White was a gentleman so he did not respond to my words of wisdom by laughing out loud. I remember him giving me the sweetest, most grandfatherly smile, and saying, “Well, young man, I don’t believe that an elderly and mediocre Hollywood actor would win the Republican presidential nomination, and in the unlikely case that he does, I can predict now that he wouldn’t be able to win in the general election.”

My ego was depleted as Teddy and the rest of the political experts and journalists on the panel went on to explain that candidate Reagan was not very smart and lacked any basic knowledge of world affairs. He was a “lightweight” and a “radical” whose candidacy would be rejected by the majority of Americans (as most opinion polls indicated at the time) and who would eventually be recalled as a historical footnote, if not as a “joke”.

As we all know, Mr Reagan did beat Mr Bush and went on to win the presidential race and then to be re-elected by a landslide for a second term. He ended up introducing major reforms of the American economy and presided over the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. He is regarded today as one of the great American presidents of the 20th century.

I recalled my encounter with Teddy White in 1980 as I was following the emergence of New York real estate magnate Donald Trump as the leading Republican presidential candidate this year. The majority of contemporary political pundits and the members of what we now refer to as the mainstream media (MSM) had initially dismissed that scenario as a political fantasy. They predicted with quite a lot of confidence that the favourite of the Republican Establishment Jeb Bush, the son of Mr Reagan’s challenger in New Hampshire, would win the race this year.

In a way, the response by the pundits and the MSM to the political rise of The Donald this year echoes the sentiments expressed by The New York Times and other elite newspapers in reaction to the primary victories of The Gipper in 1980 (Mr Reagan’s first big role as an actor was playing ill-fated football star George Gipp in the 1940 film classic, Knute Rockne: All-American): Disbelief. Denial. Anger. Disparagement. Vilification.

Today’s tough talk by the New Yorker, who has pledged to abolish radical Islam from the face of the earth and launch trade wars against China, raises concerns that he would devastate the global economy. Similarly, the former California governor who was a long-time anti-communist crusader, and had vowed to toughen US policy towards the Soviet Union and China and the other “commies”, ignited fears that his policies would lead to World War III. Would you allow these dangerous warmongers to have their fingers on the nuclear button?

Mr Reagan, like Mr Trump, was not an intellectual or policy wonk, but an entertainer. And as in the case of the Republican frontrunner this year, much of what he said during the presidential primaries sounded like a mixture of stream-of-consciousness babble and sound bites. So it is not surprising that the press depicted the two as lacking in substance and turned them into targets for insults and jokes.

The secret of the electoral successes of both The Gipper and The Donald can be traced to their ability to communicate with their followers through simple messages. While exploiting fears of foreign enemies, the two combine a sense of national pride and strength, which appeals in particular to lower middle class white Americans, including economically squeezed blue-collar workers who had voted for the Democrats in the past.

Hence, the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s are coming back in the form of the Trump Democrats of today who are helping the brash GOP candidate score major victories in the primaries. And in the same way that the Republican bosses had tried to place obstacles on candidate Reagan’s road to winning the nomination in 1980, the current Republican establishment – led by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney – is seeking to stop candidate Trump’s rise as the GOP presidential frontrunner this year.

But Mr Trump is not a political clone of Mr Reagan by any stretch of the imagination. Candidate Reagan did not go out of his way to insult and humiliate his rivals, and he certainly did not enlighten voters about the size of his genitalia. Candidate Reagan surrounded himself with the best and brightest advisers on domestic and foreign policy and hired talented speech writers, allowing him to deliver addresses that outlined his plans to reform the American economy and to strengthen US national security.

Many of Mr Trump’s public addresses, on the other hand, seem to focus on, well, Mr Trump himself and are devoid of substance when it comes to policy issues. He continues to bombard voters with incoherent and inconsistent ideas about building a “beautiful wall”, barring Muslims from entering the United States, punishing China for its trade policies, and “making America great again”. That rhetoric plays directly into the hands of Mr Trump’s opponents who portray him as a xenophobic and racist candidate, a dangerous man who should not occupy the White House.

Surprising his critics, Mr Reagan turned out to be not a fantastic ideologue but a pragmatic leader who recognised the limits operating on American power. Contrary to the earlier fears of his bashers who had worried that he would launch a nuclear attack on Russia, he ended his presidency making peace with it.

Unfortunately, at this stage of the presidential campaign, much of what candidate Trump says or does tends to reinforce anxieties about his leadership style and his policies at home and abroad. Like in the case of Mr Reagan, a president Trump could end up proving wrong his critics, the Teddy Whites of today. But he has a long way to cover before he reaches that point.