Trump has revived an interesting and substantive intra-conservative debate from the past.
In news from 1978, Donald Trump sided with Ronald Reagan over William F. Buckley Jr. on the question of whether the U.S. should have turned the Panama Canal over to Panama. Likely inadvertently and definitely against character, Trump has revived an interesting and substantive intra-conservative debate from the past.
A team of Reagan, Pat Buchanan, Roger Fontaine, and John McCain Jr. argued against Buckley, James Burnham, George Will, and Elmo Zumwalt about the issue of control of the Panama Canal in a debate on Firing Line in 1978 (you can watch the whole thing here). The U.S. had negotiated the Carter-Torrijos Treaties the year before, which outlined the process of turning the canal over to Panama by 1999. Buckley’s team argued in favor of the Senate ratifying the treaties, and Reagan’s team argued against. The Senate did ratify them, and the Panama Canal was fully turned over in 1999.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson yesterday, Trump said the U.S. was wrong to give control of the Panama Canal to Panama. The Daily Caller reports:
“If I’m president, they’ll get out because I have a very good relationship with President Xi [Jianping] and he respected this country, he respected me,” Trump said. “And he’ll get out and we can’t let them ruin the Panama Canal. We built the Panama Canal, it should’ve never have been given to Panama.”
That last line sounds similar to “We built it, we paid for it, it’s ours!” which was the slogan used by those who argued against the treaties. To tease Buckley, Reagan had that slogan painted on cardboard signs along his driveway when Buckley visited his home a few months after the 1978 debate.
The United States had administered the Panama Canal Zone as a territory between 1903 and 1979. Buckley argued that as a practical matter the canal should be turned over to Panama, and he was in the minority among conservatives at the time. Most agreed with Reagan, that keeping the canal would project American strength. You can read more about the debate in a post from Luther Abel earlier this year by clicking here.