The End of Cowboy Diplomacy?
No just an effective rejoinder
When Ronald Reagan ran for President in 1980, the cowboy image was woven throughout his campaign. Reagan astride a horse with a cowboy hat became political iconography for conservatives, Republicans, and right-leaning independents.
Having a tough talking fast acting cowboy like persona is so much a part of the GOP brand that it has become a litmus test for the Right. The realism of who the cowboys were in the 19th century and what civilized folks thought of them carries little weight in a world mesmerized by Hollywood’s representation of them.
And despite accepting the myth of the cowboy hero, the GOP has but one cowboy-esque moment in political history to lean on and that moment is over a century old.
In the past 50 years, four Republican Presidents campaigned as cowboys but delivered like the town council in “Support Your Local Sheriff”.
Reagan for all his cowboy imagery and Hollywood imagery turned out to be as much of a cowboy in the Oval Office as he was in his film carerr. (He played one in only 6 films).
Bush Senior tried to be more Dirty Harry than the Man with No Name on the campaign trail, but fulfilled neither role as President. If Presisent Biden is emulating a former President with his approach to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is “Poppy” Bush, the fomer CIA Director.
The “War on Terror” gave George W Bush the hat and the boots to sound like a cowboy; but it was clear from the moment W was told about the 9/11 attacks in a Florida classroom, he was ill-suited to play Jason McCollough1 or even Jake.
Which brings us to the Donald. Trump, if one believes his words or the assurances from Trumpists that he’d “kick Putin’s ass”, was never a cowboy. Trump is a professional bully and his emoting the armchair conservatism of Archie Bunker is a tell as to how ill-suited he was to the cowboy role.
His most recent epiphany to his donor base “we should take our F-22 planes, put the Chinese flag on them and bomb the shit out of Russia. And then we say, China did it, we didn't do, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.”2
If ever there was evidence that Donald Trump is not actually running for President in 2024, it is statements like this. It sounds dangerous, deranged, and has all the makings of another “Daisy” commercial for the Democrats. No amount of denialism or spin-doctoring gets Trumps past 47% - a fact that seems to have frozen the brighter minds at the Republican National Committee in the political headlights.
But if cowboy diplomacy or the armchair expertise that Trump that Trump trowels out is on life support at this moment, what are the Democrats offering? Neither the chess nor the poker allusions sells very well.
The Left better decide soon as the war in Ukraine seems to be cratering on Putin and a label for Biden’s very un-cowboy brilliance in dealing with Putin so far is needed.
The name of the cowboy played by James Garner who becomes Sheriff in “Support Your Local Sheriff”.
As reported by Presidential historian Michael Beschloss