Sloganeering Examples Make America Great Again
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on January. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Brand America Slap-up Again."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years earlier, when hardly anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office equally the 45th president of the The states.
Information technology happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the 24-hour interval later on Paw Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Part again.
But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan belfry that bears his name, Trump was coming to the determination that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought about was how to brand it.
One after another, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Brand America Bang-up." That i did not have the right band. Then, "Make America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the land.
And then, it hit him: "Make America Great Again."
"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote it downwards," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I take got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'See if yous can accept this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Mail service)
Five days later on, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Brand America Great Again" for "political action commission services, namely, promoting public awareness of political issues and fundraising in the field of politics." He enclosed a $325 registration fee.
His was a vision that ran confronting the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, information technology was "much the opposite," Trump said.
To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, get kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Dandy Again" was divisive and backward-looking. It fabricated no nod to variety or civility or progress.
Information technology sounded similar a death wish.
But Trump had seen something different in the land, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.
"I felt that jobs were hurting," he said. "I looked at the many types of disease our country had, and whether information technology'due south at the border, whether it'due south security, whether it'southward law and order or lack of constabulary and gild. And then, of course, you become to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk-bound, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Not bad Once more.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'1000 non your candidate. I think there is more right than incorrect," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't recollect we take to make America swell. I remember nosotros have to make America greater."
Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'one thousand actually old enough to remember the good old days, and they weren't all that proficient in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll requite you America slap-up over again' is if you lot're a white Southerner, you lot know exactly what it means, don't you?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Westward. Bush had used "Let'southward Make America Dandy Again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a twelvemonth ago.
"Simply he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His determination to claim legal ownership reflected a man of affairs's heed-set. "I recollect I'yard somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds up of 800 trademarks in more than eighty countries.
The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced his entrada and met the legal requirement that he was really using information technology for the purposes spelled out in his awarding.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America great once more" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.
Trump'due south red trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Mail service)
More than than just a chapeau
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic entrada. The ane constant, it often seemed, was "Brand America Great Again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on similar it did. It'due south been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"
There were enough of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Bang-up Once more" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or idiot box ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in tardily Oct. "The millions of hats volition make excellent keepsakes for those who idea his populist blowing could overcome Clinton'due south unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political motorcar."
Trump saw the hats every bit a fundraising and ad vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Way Week, no less.
"In the Way section, it was the ornament — what practice you call that? — an accompaniment. They said the accessory of the year. Y'all know the hat. You lot'd see people going to the fanciest assurance at the Waldorf Astoria wearing crimson hats," he exulted.
As is often the example, Trump's description is more than a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper really wrote was that the "one-time-school" caps had get "the ironic must-have fashion accompaniment of the summer," favored past hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing one during a July 2015 trip to the Mexican border — or the legions of supporters who raced to snap them upward. Trump had designed them himself, he said. The basic models sold through his campaign website were priced at $25.
"How many did we sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by x to one. It was knocked off by others. Merely it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys 1, that's an advertisement."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Nifty Again" caught on. It was the almost effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"Information technology really inspired me," Trump said, "considering to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant armed forces strength. Information technology meant taking intendance of our veterans. It meant and then much."
[When was America great? It depends on who y'all are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's campaign — for all its poll testing and loftier-priced advice from Madison Avenue — struggled to clear.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-ballot campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," co-ordinate to an e-mail from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were up confronting was naught brusk of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's master political strategist. Trump "understood the market place that he was trying to reach. Yous can't deny him that. He was very focused from the kickoff on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined up the states he needed to win what mattered: the electoral college.
"In terms of galvanizing the market that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did it single-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are yous fix?" he said. " 'Keep America Bully,' exclamation point."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Two minutes later, one arrived.
"Volition you trademark and annals, if yous would, if yous like information technology — I think I similar it, correct? Do this: 'Keep America Cracking,' with an assertion point. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got information technology," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd exist giving [you] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "But I am then confident that we are going to be, it is going to be so amazing. It's the merely reason I requite it to y'all. If I was, like, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure virtually what is going to happen — the state is going to be great."
All of which raises the questions: How tin greatness exist measured and sensed? What does it even mean?
"Existence a swell president has to practise with a lot of things, but i of them is being a not bad cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build upwards our military machine, we're going to display our armed services.
"That military may come marching downward Pennsylvania Artery. That military may be flying over New York Metropolis and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military," he added.
But Trump best-selling that slogans and showmanship will not be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "great once again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next iv years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe against terrorism, producing more than jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Act, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in technology and science, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will exist up to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, non a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived upwards to his promise.
"I think they have to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Beingness a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, simply you still have to produce the results."
"Honestly, you haven't seen anything yet. Await till you meet what happens, starting side by side Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Corking things."
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Alice Crites contributed to this study.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-came-up-with-make-america-great-again/2017/01/17/fb6acf5e-dbf7-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html
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