https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...c03b45c2e97336&ei=79

Story by Joshua Zeitz • 15h • 7 min read

“When it comes to the [Panama] Canal,” the future president intoned, “we built it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and … we are going to keep it!”

No, not incoming President Donald Trump. That was Ronald Reagan, the former California governor who in 1976 challenged incumbent Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination.

From 1976 to 1978, the future of the Panama Canal — specifically, whether it should remain under U.S. sovereignty or revert to Panamanian control — proved an unusually potent campaign issue, tipping both presidential primaries and congressional races in states as far and wide as Colorado, New Hampshire and Idaho, places nowhere near Central America and with no direct stake in who owned the storied waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

With Trump now demanding that Panama cede the canal back to the United States, and threatening to use military force if the Panamanian government refuses his demand, the topic is back in the news. And it’s no less strange than it was almost 40 years ago.

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