PHILADELPHIA — Democrats have attacked the theme of Donald Trump’s campaign, “make America great again,” from the moment Trump became a serious contender for president. There is no need to make America great again, they say, because it is already great. And what makes this country great, many Democrats argue, is its racial, ethnic, gender, and other diversity.
“At the core of the Democratic rejoinder to Trump is a vision of American greatness that foregrounds diversity and inclusivity,” the liberal journalist Ezra Klein wrote Tuesday.
At a downtown Philadelphia corner crowded with Democratic convention-goers, a vendor set up shop to sell just one kind of T-shirt: one emblazoned with the slogan “America is already great.”
Speaking to the convention Tuesday night, former Attorney General Eric Holder referred to “this already great nation — Donald, did you hear me? — this already great nation.”
In a widely-praised speech to the Democratic convention Monday, first lady Michelle Obama addressed the question, defining American greatness in terms of civil rights and women’s rights.
The core of Mrs. Obama’s praise of Hillary Clinton was that Clinton, after losing a bid to become the nation’s first woman president, had “the guts and the grace to keep coming back and putting those cracks in that highest and hardest glass ceiling until she finally breaks through, lifting all of us along with her”:
That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today. I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves — and I watch my daughters — two beautiful, intelligent, black young women — playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.
So don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great, that somehow we need to make it great again. Because this, right now, is the greatest country on earth.
In 2008, amid her husband’s stunning national political success, Mrs. Obama famously said that, “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” Now, her pride is apparent as she frames American greatness as a story of expanding rights.
Donald Trump, who started this conversation, sees greatness in a different way. The greatness that Trump sees is the America that won World War II, that put a man on the moon, that built a manufacturing and economic powerhouse — all the mid-century accomplishments that helped shape Trump’s views when he was young.
When Trump speaks of American power, he often cites Gens. George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur, legendary World War II commanders.
Trump often refers to an American past in which the country is a manufacturing giant, turning out steel and cars and machinery at a time before the Steel Belt became the Rust Belt.
And just last week, as part of his Republican convention themes, Trump posted on his campaign’s Facebook page, “47 years ago our nation did something that NOBODY thought we could do — we were the first to put a man on the moon. It is time to be number one again! Believe me, as president, we will once again, Make America First Again!”
The contrast is stark: One concept of American greatness celebrates soaring, world-historical accomplishments of days gone by. The other celebrates identity.
Of course, the civil rights movement was a great mid-century achievement, too. Trump and Hillary Clinton are of the same generation, just a year apart in age, but they are two early Boomers with strikingly different views of their formative years.
Both Trump’s and the first lady’s (and also Clinton’s) visions of America’s greatness just happen to appeal most to their respective political constituencies. Mrs. Obama’s appeals to the minorities, women, and young people who powered the Obama coalition in 2008 and 2012. Trump’s appeals to the aging white voters who remember a time in which their family’s livelihood came from manufacturing, who remember how World War II was a large part of their parents’ and relatives’ lives, and who remember the night in July 1969 in which American astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
Of course, the U.S. is a demographically different country today, and about two-thirds of the current population was born after the moon landing. They voted for Barack Obama, and Democratic strategists believe they will vote for Hillary Clinton and keep voting for Democrats in the years to come. That is what is at stake in Michelle Obama’s and Donald Trump’s competing visions of American greatness.
