(Updated, Jan. 20, 8:45 am EST)
In a short-lived television series of the mid-1960s, Chuck Connors played Jason McCord, an Army cavalry captain stripped of his stripes and drummed out of the service in the 1880s with an unjust accusation of cowardice.
"What do you do when you're branded -- will you fight for your name?" the chorus at the opening of the prime-time melodrama sang. "Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you must prove you're a man.''
In 2016, more so than in most recent years, the assets and liabilities of a reputation are bared on the political line: You're only as good as your name.
Donald Trump, who landed at the front of the Republican Party's crowded pack of presidential candidates without any of the traditional investment in political organization, arrived there on the strength of his brand-name. He needed no introduction, with a brand that stood for success. Indeed a good share of the billionaire's self-stated net worth rests in the market value of his brand. The real estate developer and reality TV show star has claimed he's worth $9 or $10 billion. Forbes magazine figures it's closer to $4 billion: "The major difference: his brand.'' Trump claims a brand and brand-related deals worth some $3.3 billion. Forbes values the name at $125 million.
Either way, he possessed something akin to Procter & Gamble, sponsors of TV's "Branded'' -- a household name. In politics, it's also known as universal name recognition -- something which Hillary Clinton also possesses. It's an invaluable calling card for a national political campaign enabling someone to skip the appetizers in advertising and proceed apace to the main course.
He'd built a brand so strong, it blinded New Jersey's Casino Control Commission -- why exactly did anyone need three casinos anyway? When Trump opened "the largest and most lavish'' casino complex in Atlantic City, the Washington Post reports, he told the commission "he could pull it off for one main reason: He was Donald Trump.'' It lasted barely months. Yet even four bankruptcies have failed to tarnish the success of the Trump brand.
For those flocking to his presidential campaign rallies, Trump has delivered only reinforcement of his brand as a winner -- all those in his path, "losers.'' They are finding a natural-born boss firmly in command -- "You're fired." It matters little that, where supporters see boldness, deniers see boorishness. In an age of generic politicians, when so many candidates still soldier on past their sell-by dates, Trump's brand-name campaign is golden.
Leaders of the party worry that Trump's excesses of xenophobia, bordering on the political equivalent of ethnic cleansing, threaten to rebrand the Republican Party itself, devaluing whatever currency the GOP still holds among minorities, women and moderate independent thinkers in general. As Trump and alter-ego Ted Cruz struggle for the crown of the first-in-the nation Iowa caucuses, and Trump towers over the pack in polling in state contests beyond, the "establishment" worries about losing elections up and down the ballot. "Rarely has a party so passively accepted its own self-destruction,'' columnist David Brooks writes of the Trump-Cruz contest. "The idea that the G.O.P. can march into the 21st Century intentionally alienating every person of color is borderline insane.''
Trump, Brooks writes, is "a solipsistic branding genius whose 'policies' have no contact with Planet Earth'' and Cruz "would be as universally off-putting as he has been in all his workplaces. He's always been good at tearing things down but incompetent when it comes to putting things together.''
Years ago, I had a chance to hear Mike Murphy, a maestro of political and corporate marketing, talk about the value of a brand name. At the time, he admired in particular the value of Dodge's "Ram tough.'' The concept has served the company so well that they've spun the Dodge name right out of the sales-pitch. Today, the vehicles are sold simply as "Ram Trucks.''
Murphy had his own great success with another brand in Florida: "Jeb!" Bush, a twice-elected governor who left office more popular than when he entered it. And when Murphy and company set out again to make the son of one president and brother of another the next president of the United States, they dusted off the logo. There was one big problem, however, the Bush brand spoke of something else to some people -- whether it was that "Read My Lips" or "Mission Accomplished," it revived memories that many would just as soon not revisit. Keenly aware of the hurdles that must be overcome in this household name, Bush was determined to run as "my own man.''
In a season when the most widely watched presidential campaign debates in history and a parade of largely meaningless early polling would put Trump at center stage of a cast of generally more qualified candidates, Trump managed to brand Bush before he could define himself: "Low Energy.'' And Trump, with his "Make America Great Again,'' has managed to make Americans question the greatness of their own nation -- particularly those who question how a country might even consider electing him.
From the start, Bush hoped to run a "different'' sort of campaign, a "joyful'' one. He placed Murphy in charge of a formidable $100-million super-PAC, with an upbeat "Right to Rise'' message of opportunity for all, and headed out with a sense of optimism about what he sees as the greatest nation on Earth at an extraordinary juncture in its history. He was long reluctant to engage Trump in a war of insults, confident that one cannot bully one's way to the White House. Now, as the observers at Power Post, The Daily 202, note: "Jeb Bush has embraced with gusto his role as the anti-Trump.''
"If I'm the anti-Trump, I love that role," Bush says, "because that's who I am.''
The idea here is that someone must save the Republican Party from its front-runner. While Iowa's religious right-driven Republican caucuses are lost to Trump and Cruz, the party's establishment believes, the primary elections in New Hampshire and beyond will become questions of finding a reasonable alternative. Bush is banking on becoming that No. 2 in New Hampshire.
Still, as further evidence of the way Trump has transformed his party's contest, Bush has adopted the same tactic that Trump deploys in denigrating a rival. "Just one thing I gotta get off my chest -- Donald Trump is a jerk,'' Bush says in a minute-long TV campaign ad airing in New Hampshire. (He has stopped short of what Mark Salter, the wordsmith who put poetry in the life story of John McCain, calls Trump in Esquire: "An asshole.'')
Near the eve of the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, Murphy has mailed a video player loaded with a 14-minute production to a few hundred "opinion leaders" in both states. "The Jeb Story," also viewable at TheJebstory.com, makes no direct mention of the competition, only that some say America is in decline. "Jeb is a leader," a former speaker of the Florida state House says, framing the theme of a clip that replays highlights of Bush's political career and fast-forwards to 2016. Bush is shown campaigning: "We'll be much more optimistic as a nation... That's the mission I'm on.''
When the party is finished with what could be a prolonged primary battle, its candidate may well face another household name. While Republicans find some enjoyment in Bernie Sanders' potential rebranding of his own newly adopted tribe as the Democratic Socialist Party, it remains more likely that Clinton will claim the nomination -- and carry her own family's reputation, assets and liabilities alike, into the general election contest.
Trump, Bush and Clinton all came of age in the early or late '60s, which really was all about branding. Commercially, it was all about the Mustang, Camaro and Firebird. (Even the Mercury Comet was sold as "Caliente.") Politically, it was all about equality -- for African-Americans, women, farmworkers and more. Socially, it was all about making love, not war.
"What do you do when you're branded -- will you fight for your name?" the chorus at the opening of that prime-time television melodrama sang.
In 2016, the narrator might say, may the best brand win.