One of the great lines in North Carolina political history came from Ronald Reagan when he was governor of California. It was: "We built it. We paid for it. And we should keep it."

Reagan was talking about his opposition to the proposed treaty to turn the Panama Canal over to the Panamanians. It was a rallying cry that turned Reagan's political career around, defeated a number of U.S. senators, including North Carolina's Robert Morgan, and helped build the conservative movement that has dominated Washington politics for more than a generation.

The political role of the Panama Canal treaty is explored in a fascinating new book by Adam Clymer, former chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, called "Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right."

It was in North Carolina that Reagan used the canal treaty to rescue his bid to be president.

When Reagan arrived in North Carolina in March 1976, he had lost all five GOP primaries to incumbent President Ford, and there was increasing pressure for Reagan to get out of the race. The situation was so dire that Reagan's plane to North Carolina was delayed in Los Angeles until the campaign office was sure it had the money to pay for the charter, Clymer writes.

Reagan needed an issue to change the chemistry of the North Carolina primary. He found it in the proposed Panama Canal treaty, which Ford supported.

Sen. Jesse Helms, a canal treaty critic and key Reagan adviser, urged the Gipper to hammer on the canal as if it were the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

"What kind of foreign policy is it when a little tinhorn dictator in Panama says he is going to start guerrilla warfare against us unless we give him the Panama Canal?" Reagan asked.

The spat over the treaty revived Reagan's career and allowed him to win the White House in 1980.

Also in 1980, the Helms organization used the canal treaty to defeat Morgan, a moderate Democrat and former state attorney general from Lillington.

When Morgan first went to the U.S. Senate in 1975, he opposed the treaty. But as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Morgan was sent to Panama to hear the CIA station chief detail vulnerabilities there. Morgan spent a week in Panama meeting with leaders. It changed his mind.

He told the state Bar Association in 1977, "Our relationship with Panama on the future of the canal is a festering sore and affects our relations not only with Latin America but with the rest of the world. Our global position as world leader and a moral standard bearer is seriously weakened by maintaining this vestige of colonialism." That didn't fit on a bumper sticker.

The Helms-backed candidate, East Carolina University professor John East, ran TV ads accusing Morgan of having "voted to give away your Panama Canal." East's TV spots attacking Morgan included one ad showing an aircraft carrier going through the canal -- a physical impossibility.

Thirty-one years after the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty and nine years after control was turned over to the Panamanian government, it's hard to understand what the fuss was about.

The canal is operating pretty much the same under Panamanian control as it did under U.S. control.

In fact, Panama is talking about building a third set of locks wide enough to allow aircraft carriers to go through.