A little advice from Rick Perlstein

In January of 1965, when Reagan, a conservative Hollywood actor, began exploring a run for governor of California, the incumbent, Democrat Pat Brown , sent out a young aide on a scouting trip. The scout reported back that Reagan would "fall apart when he gets attacked from the floor....His attacks on [Lyndon B. Johnson] and Governor Brown won't make it with those who don't think the President is a dictator." Nevertheless the lightweight announced he would run, and a columnist in the Washington Star recorded an "air of furtive jubilation down at Lassie for Governor headquarters."

Reagan's 1965 Republican primary opponent was judged a political superstar by the New York Times, easily "matching oratorical skill" with the former actor. When Reagan visited Redwoods National Park, and reporters quoted his immortal words, "a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?", the San Francisco Chronicle reported his campaign would soon "bottom out."

"The Republican Party isn't bankrupt, or isn't that bankrupt that it has to turn to Liberace for leadership," Esquire observed at the time. "'Bring him on' is our motto," a Brown aide said—and Reagan was brought, winning the nomination in a landslide, and eventually winning the general election.

But the jokes only continued. When Reagan entered the 1968 presidential race, the TV comedy revue Laugh-In made "Ronald Reagan is running for president," an unadorned punchline—that was the whole gag. He ran again in 1976, challenging an incumbent president in his own party, and taking for the nominating contest all the way to the convention, an almost unheard of feat in modern American politics. That this was a historic accomplishment largely escaped the media, however; it didn't matter, for instance, to the author of the syndicated comic strip Dunagin's People, who depicted a TV announcer explaining, "Now that the conventions are over, we can get back to our regular program—old Ronald Reagan movies."

As preparations began for the 1980 race, Lyn Nofziger, Reagan's late advisor, noted that Team Reagan didn't discourage the belittlement. In fact, they came to rely on it as part of their campaign strategy: being underestimated only made their man stronger. Liberals fell right into the trap: in the week running up to the election against Jimmy Carter, Doonesbury ran a series where the strip's indefatigable TV reporter, nature documentary-style, took "a fantastic voyage through...the brain of Ronald Reagan."

"Unhappily, the brain stops growing at age 20, and thereafter, neurons die off by the millions every year," the comic reported. "What this means is that the brain of Ronald Reagan's has been shrinking ever since 1931."

This was a fairly accurate portrayal of how Carter's aides saw their opponent. Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg has related that the campaign's strategists were confident that if they only could get Reagan side by side on the debate stage with the incumbent, the public would finally realize that the Republican candidate and former star of Bedtime for Bonzo was just stupid.

Well, they got their wish: A debate between Reagan and Carter took place the weekend before the voting. Reagan wiped the floor with the president, and a race that had been virtually tied turned into a Reagan landslide.

Trump is a very different figure from Reagan, who had governed America's most populous state, and rather successfully, before he ever ran for president. They are similar, however, in that they both top-rated TV stars for years before they ever sought office, Reagan as host of G.E. Theater anthology programs, and Trump as the billionaire host on 14 seasons of The Apprentice. Because of this, both men had a profound head start over their opponents, having already imprinted themselves in voters' minds exactly as they wished to be seen—Reagan as the genial curator of stories that always had happy endings, Trump as the omni-competent boardroom warrior before whom weaker mortals can only grovel.