Trump elected POTUS in 1988

Taken from a thought I had in another thread...

Not to derail the thread, but I think it'd be more interesting as a creative exercise to imagine a world where Trump had run for president, and won, during the first cycle he floated the possibility of doing so - the 1988 election.

Imagine Trump handling the American response to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, desire for German reunification, the Tianamen protests, the fall of the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein's aggression in the Middle East. Quite a pivotal and delicate time in world history, and we were lucky to have competent US leadership during that period.

So... what if Trump had been elected that year?

It's easy enough to imagine such a scenario that's just within the realm of possibility. Say the Iran-Contra scandal is a much bigger deal, perhaps not to the point of causing Reagan to resign, but it certainly discredits much of the Republican establishment. Trump decides this is his year, and runs in the GOP primaries, exploiting his outsider appeal (perhaps also carrying the early endorsement of folks like Pat Buchanan). Democrats fumble their advantage by nominating someone like Jesse Jackson, who narrowly loses the general election.

While this may have a lot of interesting effects domestically, I'm primarily concerned with how he might have handled foreign policy, for the reasons laid out above. While Trump certainly didn't have Twitter to telegraph his every impulse to the world, we know that his basic political instincts then were the same as today - he had a strong distrust both of the benefits of international trade and the Western alliance system that America fostered during the Cold War. So... how does he handle things?
 
Trump 1988 fits better into the Democratic party 1988 I think. He'd be something like an early Ross Perot---similar voter and position portfolio but more bombast and less charts and graphs.
 
It would be 2016 eighteen years early. He attacks Bush as "Wimpy George" and hammers the Reagan-Bush admin on Iran-Contra, while mocking Bob Dole's war record and injuries. He would slam Reagan on the debt and deficit while praising conservative policies like tax cuts and deregulation. If he faces Dukakis in the general election, then he runs a dirty campaign similar to OTL: spreading rumors about Duke's mental health, Willie Horton, etc. Except that Trump would viciously attack Dukakis personally, making fun of his stature and monotonous oratory.
 
If Trump behaved in ‘88 like he did in ‘16 even 60-70% of the time, I could see that being a route to Jesse Jackson actually winning the Presidency.

But if Trump runs a non-insane campaign, I could see him pulling off a win in NY.

Trump 1988 fits better into the Democratic party 1988 I think. He'd be something like an early Ross Perot---similar voter and position portfolio but more bombast and less charts and graphs.

While I agree that Trump with his playboy image and all that wouldn’t make him a friend of the Moral Majority, Ross Perot of today IOTL is a Republican and with the PoD, the Moral Majority could be discredited in the way the Eastern Establishment was with Watergate.

It’d be like a Wall Street take over of the GOP and that’d lead to so many changes to the modern GOP.

If Jackson runs as the moralist, we could end up with non-racist Reagan Democrats swinging back into the party on social issues. Economic conservatives would become more broadly affilited with the likes of Trump and the fictional Gordon Gecko, with those types battling it out with established Reaganites for party supremacy throughout the next decade if Trump wins. If he loses, we could see a return to form within a few years.
 
He'd be hated by a majority in his eight years, but his reputation would slowly improve over time. He'd still be loathed among the upper-middle class hillary dem/religious right GOP top 20% culture warriors but the majority I think would be shifitng to being neutral and some more positive.

The old coalitions die*. You end up with the new 'center-right' party Nixon wanted, but with the addition of a small libertarian wing. Democrats? Who even knows, you could end up doing their bill clinton to obama to HRC transition of being the party of uptight upper middle class/wannabe upper-middle class types types even faster or prevent that transition from happening at all.

* Going by his 2000 book, Trump wanted singlepayer. Him and Ted Kennedy doing singlepayer, plus protectionism means the old coalitions are gone by 1994.
 
If Trump runs an '88 Campaign like he did '16, he ain't getting elected, simple as that.
Disagree. Demographics were such that Reagan could be elected in 1980 and annoint a successor in 1988 despite running on a campaign even less thought out than 2016 Trump's. Trump being more personable than Bush Sr. would have the advantage of not being as bland as Bush Sr. was.
 
Trump would run a campaign more similar to 2000 than 2016, focusing on debt and taxes rather than divisive social issues.

But again, I think his basic impulses regarding foreign policy (i.e. his skepticism toward trade, many of America's allies, NATO, etc) would be be roughly the same, which could be interesting (i.e. potentially disastrous) in those few years where the geopolitical scene was radically reorienting itself.
 
Why would anyone take Trump seriously in 1988? There's no 24 hour news cycle and more importantly no social media to amplify every single thing he says and does while inundating voters with fake news. Trump in 2016 received unprecedented exposure with tons of free media because CNN and Fox News were covering all his rallies.

1988 is a completely different era for political elections. There's no Fox News dominating conservative political culture and trust in the media is higher because most Americans are getting their news from newspapers and the traditional Big Three network TV channels. If those outlets aren't going to take Trump seriously then I don't think he's going to get the momentum necessary to defeat a Reagan-backed George Bush.
 
Why would anyone take Trump seriously in 1988? There's no 24 hour news cycle and more importantly no social media to amplify every single thing he says and does while inundating voters with fake news. Trump in 2016 received unprecedented exposure with tons of free media because CNN and Fox News were covering all his rallies.

1988 is a completely different era for political elections. There's no Fox News dominating conservative political culture and trust in the media is higher because most Americans are getting their news from newspapers and the traditional Big Three network TV channels. If those outlets aren't going to take Trump seriously then I don't think he's going to get the momentum necessary to defeat a Reagan-backed George Bush.

Not to mention that I'm pretty sure the moment he publicially mocks a disabled person or the parents of a deceased veteran, his election hopes in '88 are dead as a doornail.
 
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