Déjà vu in the Cleveland air

It is the final night of the roller coaster Republican convention and Jerry Falwell Jr. just called Donald Trump a "blue collar billionaire."

The journalist sitting next to me behind the stage laughs so hard he almost falls off his seat.

After making this oxymoronic (emphasis on the second part of the word) statement, Falwell went on to tell an off-color joke about Chelsea Clinton interviewing his father years ago. The late evangelical leader told her the three biggest threats to America are: "Osama, Obama and your mama."

That's the last light moment of the evening. The bombastic Republican nominee breaks the all-time convention record for length of acceptance speech at 75 minutes, longer than Obama's and Romney's combined in 2012.

And for the whole speech, Trump barely cracks a smile. I guess it's hard to do that while describing the fall of the American empire and its inevitable hurtling off a cliff unless we elect the "only one who can fix the country."

I am having a déjà vu moment sitting at the Quicken Loans Center in Cleveland, enduring speakers like Falwell, Sheriff Joe and other American eccentrics before Ivanka Trump’s gracious intro and her dad's doom-and-gloom acceptance speech.

In 1980, my senior year in high school, I had my first political awakening working on the quixotic presidential campaign of Ted Kennedy. The Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, was a bland, stiff campaigner, and a hostage crisis in Iran crippled his presidency. Carter was perceived as weak and a tough-talking Republican was proving to be a formidable opponent. Ronald Reagan said he would bring the hostages home, beat the Russians and build a galactic shield to protect us from nuclear weapons.

After more than two years of having sand kicked in our face by a small Middle Eastern country, America longed for a cowboy to ride to the rescue. Reagan was right out of central casting. He had built a modest career as a B-movie actor (remember "Bedtime for Bonzo?"), and was the closest thing to a reality TV star in politics (until now) and he parlayed his genial fame into capturing the state house in California, prior to his two terms in the White House.

As a smug high school senior about to head off to college, I looked down on this simpleton of a man and naively thought there was no way American voters would elect someone so dim as leader of the free world.

I was very wrong.

On the first Tuesday in November 1980, I sat in the basement of my college dorm watching the election returns with a look of horror on my face. Not only did Reagan win easily, he brought a majority of Republican Senators with him.

And there are shades of 1968 in the air today, too.

Many pundits liken Donald Trump to Richard Nixon, the last Republican "law and order candidate." In 1968, he rode a wave of fear and chaos in the streets into the White House. That was the year of widespread protests on college campuses against the Vietnam War. More tragically, it was also the year two American icons, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated.

Nixon's scowl and his talk of a "silent majority" are being echoed by Trump. Nixon was cagey and knew how to play on the fears of voters to elevate his candidacy. Ditto for Trump today.

Instilling fear into voters is an age-old tactic for authoritarian candidates who play the strongman. Reagan and Nixon did it with success, as did Rudy Giuliani when he ran for mayor of New York City in 1993. Trump is borrowing from their playbook.

It's a long way to November. Hillary is a better candidate than Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter. Obama is a more popular Democratic president than Lyndon Johnson or Carter.

Last week, The New York Times Upshot’s state-by-state analysis put Clinton's likelihood of winning at 76 percent. The electoral map generally favors Democrats.

But the echoes of 1968 and 1980 still ring in my ears.

Let's see how the donkeys do in Philadelphia next week.

Tom Allon is the president of City & State.