Political History: NPR

One of the subjects President-elect Donald Trump chose to promote through social media posts on Christmas morning was the Panama Canal. This was a surprising and appropriate choice.

The first surprise is that the canal was not a centerpiece issue of the 2024 presidential campaign, nor has it been featured in President Trump’s previous campaigns. In his first term as president, this was not a focus of his foreign policy, and in fact, it has not been prominent in American politics or policy debate since the days of disco.

But President Trump, in a post on Truth Social and later in a pre-holiday speech in Phoenix, has vowed to reduce shipping fees through the canal or “return the Panama Canal in full, promptly and without question.” I demand it.”

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But it makes some sense that Mr. Trump would bring it up now. This was consistent with President Trump’s other promises and threats emphasizing an “America First” theme in U.S. trade and foreign relations. The president-elect has long promoted the idea that the United States has been exploited, changed at short notice, and even manipulated by allies and beneficiaries, not to mention rivals such as China.

But tapping into this familiar reservoir of anger with a specific reference to the Panama Canal is a reminder of a pivotal moment for the Republican Party and for the American experience of the past half-century.

There is an argument that the Panama Canal issue was a turning point in Ronald Reagan’s presidential career. Without it, he might have been just a two-term California governor whose dreams of the White House never materialized.

Issues, Tactics, and Candidates Meet

The year is 1976, and while Americans are celebrating their nation’s bicentennial, they are reeling from a series of traumatic events. The Vietnam War divided the country perhaps more dramatically than any conflict since the Civil War. A harrowing chapter comes to a terrible end as the last American staff member scrambles into a helicopter on the roof of the American embassy.

Former President Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 to “unite us” and reelected in 1972 with a landslide victory in 49 states, but was mired in a web of campaign crimes, lies, and cover-ups, and was defeated in 1974. He was forced to resign on the verge of impeachment. He was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

Mr. Ford gave the country some breathing space in the run-up to his election. However, in the election year of 1976, inflation was rising, primarily due to rising energy prices along with the price of imported oil. The economy was stagnant at best, with unemployment rates well above 1960s levels. But ambitious young Republicans chose not to challenge their party’s incumbents.

Reagan’s calculations were different. He had just resigned as governor of California the previous year and had the support of many Western and Southern party leaders and conservative activists. President Reagan was also in his mid-60s, which at the time was thought to pose an “age problem.” His brief bid for the Republican nomination in 1968 was too little, too late. The 200th anniversary of the nation’s founding seemed to be his last chance.

But Mr. Reagan had trouble raising money for the incumbent and lacked connections with party leaders in early primary states. He lost New Hampshire and Florida, as well as three other early primaries. His financial resources were drying up. Some in the campaign urged Mr. Reagan to get it together. “Ronald Reagan appears to have lost the battle,” political commentator William F. Buckley wrote in late March. Another conservative columnist, James J. Kilpatrick, saw the Reagan presidential campaign as “almost over.” Several Reagan aides and biographers have written that Reagan’s wife, Nancy, wanted him out so as not to embarrass him.

Instead, Reagan stood his ground. He was looking ahead to the March 23 primary in North Carolina, where he had the support of the state’s senior senator, Jesse Helms, an ultra-conservative icon. A unified campaign team came up with tactics and issues. They bought time on local television stations in the state, playing a prerecorded speech that President Reagan had previously given on the topic of the Panama Canal and the Ford administration’s “abandonment” plan.

Why did the canal issue resonate?

Most Americans learned a little about canals in school, but rarely gave them a second thought. They knew that a series of waterways across the narrow isthmus of Central America would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, saving weeks of navigation time between oceans. They noted that under President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States helped establish a friendly local government in Panama and took over a canal project abandoned by France (with around 20,000 workers injured and sick). (after a life was lost).

But relatively few people, then or now, remember how the Canal Zone became the scene of anti-American protests and unrest in the 1960s. For decades, presidents of both parties have been negotiating with Panama for the final handover of the area and operation of the canal, but that goal has not yet been achieved. But in the middle of that decade, simply proposing a “gift of the canal” as America’s new humiliation following Vietnam and Watergate was enough to bring loud applause at Reagan events in the South. . Therefore, the election campaign in North Carolina was carried out in full force.

The effect was shocking. President Reagan said the canal should not be given to Panama or any other country. “We built it, we bought it, and we’re going to keep it going,” he said. That was the word Mr. Helms was using, borrowed from the senior senator from a neighboring state, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Helms and Thurmond had sent a small but powerful force of mostly Southern senators to resist talk of transferring the canal to Panama.

The campaigns of Helms, Thurmond, and Regan frequently featured misinformation about the Panamanian government being “Marxist” and other claims. But it struck a chord with many Americans who see the issue as a test of nationalism and even patriotism. And most importantly, it worked. North Carolina Republicans voted, giving Mr. Reagan a majority and giving Mr. Ford a six-point victory.

Overnight, the country’s narrative changed. The boring Republican primary suddenly became a center of media attention. Reagan’s coffers were full again. He rode the momentum from the Panama issue and North Carolina to other Southern states, Indiana, Nebraska, and the West. By the time the tournament was held in Kansas City that summer, the challengers had nearly closed the gap. Reagan then chose a moderate Pennsylvania senator as his running mate in an effort to secure the delegation, but this move lost momentum and fell short.

Meanwhile, Ford narrowly lost in November 1976 to former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who moved quickly to reach a deal with Panama.

Transferring control of the canal was actually a goal of Ford’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a longtime advisor to former President Richard Nixon. Kissinger believed that transferring the canal was the best way to improve the United States’ position in Latin America in general. As a candidate, Mr. Carter was cool with the idea, even saying in an October debate with Mr. Ford that he had no intention of relinquishing “effective control of the Panama Canal Zone at any time in the foreseeable future.” But after Election Day, under the influence of his choice for secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, Carter changed his mind, giving new impetus to the long-running negotiations.

Thanks to the efforts of Helms, Thurmond, and others, the treaty came close to being rejected by the two-thirds majority required in the Senate. But in the end, Senate Republican Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee did enough to overturn his colleagues by a single vote.

The relevant treaty was signed in September 1977.

Although President Reagan continued to oppose the Panama Accord, it was finally approved by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, according to Lou Cannon, a reporter and biographer who covered him more closely and longer than anyone else. “When the agreement was signed, the rhetoric became much more subdued.” In “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime,” Mr. Cannon reports that “President Reagan’s interest in the Panama Canal diminished after it served its political purpose.” Mr. Cannon wrote that President Reagan’s pollsters told him that this issue was primarily of concern to hard-core conservatives. By 1980, Reagan had shut down the category.

Trump then and now

No public record exists regarding President Trump’s attitude toward the Panama Treaty in the late 1970s. It’s possible he opposed them as a 30-year-old businessman looking to shift his real estate focus from Queens to Manhattan at the time.

What is known is that Mr. Trump has proven at least as adept as Mr. Reagan at public hearings on issues that electrify crowds at rallies. This week’s Panama issue was part of a salvo in his “America First” manifesto to more aggressively advocate for U.S. interests abroad in his second term. That included President Trump’s renewed interest in acquiring the Arctic island of Greenland, which is not for sale to Denmark. On a less serious note, President Trump also listed “Canada” among the items on his Christmas wish list.

Of the series of Trump statements, the mention of Panama seems likely to get the most reaction from the crowd at either rally. This gives the best chance of keeping the MAGA flame burning and kinetic energy flowing.

And for now, the return to Panama also reminded us of Trump’s unparalleled ability to reinvent political conversations alone in the middle of the night.

Was he going to restart the canal debate and pressure Panama to lower U.S. shipping rates? Is there a similar design behind the Greenland request, or is there more to the mention of Canada than a desire to troll Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?

It could become clear what pressure, if any, Trump is prepared to exert on Panama when he returns to office. The issue may fade for him, as it did for President Reagan. As with Reagan, other issues can creep in.

And like his predecessor, Trump will know where to find the reliable cues that will prompt a roar from the crowd.