When we met Alex P. Keaton in 1982, he was a Reagan Republican teen being raised by two former Flower Children. I think Alex even had a poster of Alan Greenspan in his room. Alex was very much a believer in Reagan’s supply side economics and the Trickle Down Theory. Fast forward to 2016. Would Alex have gotten on the Trump train?
To answer my own question, Alex did have a sense of morality and decency. He showed us that political or economic conservatives could still be decent people. I don’t think that he could have gotten on board with Trump’s bullying, vulgarity, lawlessness, or racism. I think the lawlessness would have been Alex’s line which cannot be crossed. However, he still would have been fond of the tax cuts going to the rich so they can rain down upon the rest of us.
So, I guess the real question is, would Alex have learned that trickle down does not and will not work?
A lot of Trump’s support came from the working class, and Alex definitely did not embrace the working class viewpoint. I think Alex would still very much be a staunch Republican, and would be in favor of the party’s economic views. I think he would find Trump to be abrasive and crass, not at all what a proper Republican should be.
That said, I think Alex would support Trump. Alex would not consider himself to be a racist, but he would be opposed to what he (like many Republicans) views as the Democrats giving out handouts to illegal aliens and giving out welfare to lazy people who don’t want to work. And Alex would definitely support Trump’s economic policies.
I very much doubt it.
I think the boring answer is that (AFAIK) the overwhelming majority of voters with policy positions matching Alex P. Keaton’s voted for Trump both times, without much hesitation. I suppose he might have been a National Review type who voted for someone like McMullin in 2016 because Trump was a sure loser who wasn’t even a real conservative, but was won over by Trump in the ensuing four years.
To me, the biggest question would be what Alex’s motivations were. Did he come off as having principled reasons for his views, or like he just drank the Kool-Aid?
What I remember from the show (which I only ever watched as a kid) seemed more like the latter. If so, then I don’t know why he wouldn’t drink the Trump Kool-Aid. That is, assuming we’re taking his teenage self and bringing him to modern times.
If we’re talking where Alex would be today as an adult? That’s trickier. On one hand, a lot of “staunch Republicans” seemed to be willing to fawn over Trump, even though he seems the opposite of their ideals. On the other hand, Alex is rather stubborn, so maybe he’d be one of the few whose ideals won out.
Then there’s the issue of whether or not that stubbornness remained through his adulthood. I always suspected his strong devotion to one side was at least partially fueled by being a pendulum swing away from his parents views which he rejected—that he swung as far as he could in the other direction. If so, and he ever realized this, he could have possibly moved more to the center, making him even more likely to stand up against Trump.
Still, as I said, my memory of the show is somewhat hazy due to time and my age when I watched it. I mostly wanted to comment to bring up the “drank the Kool-Aid” aspect: that not all ideals are logically reasoned into.
He’d already have recanted and become a Democrat during the Bush years. Alex was a good person.
Ermm, other than the infidelity.
Nobody is more principled than when they are young. An Alex P. Keaton in his fifties would have had lots of time to get used to compromising those principles for practical goals like lower taxes and political influence.
Alex P Keaton graduated from high school the same year I did, so we’re the same age. My guess is that he would be would have been a country club Republican and never-Trumper.
Alex was an intellectual, he prided himself on his own self superiority in reasoning his position. He wouldn’t have swallowed the Fox News pill and would have seen Trump for what he was, a buffoonish snake oil salesman. I think he’d be a fan of Mitch McConnell’s party discipline though.
Also, Family Ties is a sitcom. There isn’t anything funny about being a Trump supporter.
If Alex was the same young age, I think so. Young Republicans enjoy power, and covet the perks of being rich and flaunting their bling. He eventually would become conflicted, but realize the GOP would fall apart if they weren’t universal in supporting Trump, and they would lose their grass-roots voting block in their own elections.
Alex would be like 99% of the other Reagan Republicans who clutched their pearls until Election Day 2016 and then immediately capitulated and dove under Trump’s heel without a whimper.
I guess that leaves a 1% chance that he would have gone to work for the Lincoln Project.
Alex would be a “Wall Street Republican” Yes, he probably would vote for Trump because Trump was the Republican candidate. I don’t think however, he would be “Trumpist” is the sense of “build the wall” “fake news!”, “the election was stolen!” etc
In the Summer of 2000, Alex Keaton was the junior senator from Ohio, according to Micheal Fox’s character on Spin City.
I think there’s actually two different questions here:
Would (if via sit-com magic) the Alex Keaton during the timeline of the show appear in the present, would he be a Trumpist?
and
If Alex Keaton’s character lived through the intervening years in our world to the present day, would he be a Trumpist?
I think the answers are probably slightly different, with a lot more unknowns for the second. For the first point, he’s almost certainly, after an amusing montage of trying to catch up on all the changes lo these many years, still a Republican. Heck, he’s probably just based on the changing times be considered pretty far right on a number of views. Since he does not suffer fools gladly, he probably dislike’s Trump, but fully envies what Trump can and does get away with. And Alex is far too self-centered to ever put Trump at the center of his world - he would, much like Trump, be all about what can Trump do for me?
Having said that, if (again, via sit-com magic) if he could get power/money/influence by being seen as a Trumpist, he’d be full on Trump-regalia all the time. So, I suspect he’s be a Mitch McConnell-ist more than anything else. Ride the wave for all he can get, handwave away the criticisms, admire what Trump gets away with while internally mocking Trump for being an idiot and imagining what he could do if he could channel all the idiots.
The second scenario is going to vary tremendously depending on what happened during the intervening years. If you go with the Spin City Canon, and he became a Senator, then he’s almost certainly in the midst of the Trump-excusing current mix of the Republican party. He’s still probably way too self centered to believe in that crap, especially after decades in the business, but he knows the risks of being critical, especially as Ohio leans further right. So it would be one of those ‘I wish he wouldn’t say the quiet parts out loud critics of Trump’ but blaming all the problems on the Democratic Party instead. He certainly wouldn’t vote for impeachment, or for a full investigation of 1/6, but he wouldn’t be trying to out-Trump Trump.
If we only stick to the end of Family Ties, we know he does well in school, and gets a job on Wall Street. Too many different things could have happened during that time: success, failure, getting rich, getting Madoxed, etc. My read - he made and makes a lot of money, but isn’t keeping much of it beyond appearances - mostly because he’s on his 2rd, 3rd, or maybe even 4th wife/lover. After all, he’s rich, he’s charming, and he is not particularly faithful. So the first few times, he didn’t have a pre-nup, and being found the offending party for likely affairs, got taken to the cleaners. He still does well, but the costs of supporting a few ex-wives, and possibly a current wife and lover are putting a huge strain on him.
In this scenario, he could actually be a real Trumpist to a degree. A casual philanderer, one who feels he’s been done wrong by ‘liberal’ assumptions of behavior, always being asked to not be a casual misogynist . . . there would be a lot of appeal. He’d probably say he was supporting Trump 100% for the typical Republican reasons - strong borders, lower taxes, more trickle down, less political activism, but deep down he wouldn’t be nearly as critical as the Senatorial version would have been.
Assuming we’re talking about the present-day 55-year-old Keaton (senator from Ohio), I’m trying to imagine the conversations with his parents about Trump.
I concur. I see him being more ideologically and spiritually in line with the Bushes and Mitt Romney, not with the Tea Party/Trumper populist and religious side of the party.
As such, I totally see him being a never-Trumper and being a Lincoln Project type.
They died during the pandemic because Alex refused to wear a mask when visiting them at the retirement community.
I can’t remember all the episodes. But the “hippie parents” vs “conservative teenager” thing was central to the show i think . He did occasionally get his comeuppance from them. I think Tom Hanks played a hero Uncle that worked on Wall Street, but the Feds were after him.
So i think Alex has a moral compass. Republican to be sure, not necessarily a Trumpist
Ronald Reagan would not have been a Trumpist, so I doubt Alex Keaton would either. Reagan believed very strongly that character matters, that civility is important, and that you should have a solid grounding of knowledge in the things you believe.
He was ‘The Happy Warrior’ who had many friends who were Democrats, including Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. He could quote Bastiat and Hayek all day long, and knew exactly why he believed the things he did. Trump is just a populist who does whatever he thinks will get him raves from his ‘base’, whether or not it is consistent.
Reagan would have hated Trump, and about half of his policies. If Alex P. Keaton saw Reagan as his hero, he also would have disliked Trump,
As another data point: I was basically Alex Keaton during the Reagan years, and I think Trump is a stain on the body politic and always have.
Iran-Contra.