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.
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