Trump’s New Campaign Slogan Is a Confession of Failure

There’s no doubting the genius of “Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump’s 2016 election slogan. While the campaign’s operations were chaotic, the candidate volatile, and many of the policies contradictory, the phrase offered a clear, coherent summary of Trump’s redemptive vision for the country. It was a testament to Trump’s decades as a master marketer, though he took the phrase from Ronald Reagan; the president is a magpie, clever at borrowing and attracted to shiny things.

The one danger of a slogan so simple is that it offers a simple test for voters: After four years, Trump has either made America great again or he hasn’t. The president long ago made the logical choice to that his reelection slogan would be “Keep America Great,” though he has it as “new,” garnering credulous press attention each time. The phrase wasn’t quite as punchy as its predecessor—there was a reason Trump continued to employ MAGA, even in the self-proclaimed KAG era—and it raised the question of , if he’d already made America great, but it sufficed for a while.