Patrick Allitt

The Donald Trump phenomenon is nothing new in American politics

It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have a strong opinion about Donald Trump. But it’s worth lowering the emotional temperature for a moment, taking a step back, and looking at him through the eyes of history. Has there ever been a presidential candidate like Trump? Here I’ll confine myself just to the last twenty-five elections (1916-2012), during which time the Democrats ran eighteen different candidates for president, and the Republicans seventeen. So apart from the soundbites is there anything really different about the Donald?

First, Trump has never run for office. The last time a major party ran a candidate who had never entered an election was in 1952 when the Republicans nominated Dwight Eisenhower. A war hero, commander of the D-Day forces in 1944, Eisenhower was so widely admired that both parties wanted him as their candidate. Far from being an outsider, he had been in government service for decades. The only other candidates of the last century with no previous electoral experience were Herbert Hoover (Republican candidate who won in 1928) and former Secretary of Commerce, and Wendell Willkie (Republican candidate who lost in 1940), a lawyer and corporate executive.

Second, Trump became a celebrity through a popular television show, ‘The Apprentice’, and appeared on the political scene with an instantly recognisable face. The obvious comparison here is with Ronald Reagan (in 1980 and 1984), who became a movie star in the late 1930s and then made the transition to television in the 1950s and early 1960s. Reagan, unlike most beginning politicians, never had to overcome the problem of obscurity — his was already a household name when he first ran for office (as governor of California) in 1966.

Third, Trump has had a turbulent person life — married three times and divorced twice.

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