Who Wants To Be A President?
by Tom Sullivan
Hiroshima at 70, the Voting Rights Act at 50, Jon Stewart, tonight’s Republican debate, the Texas voter ID ruling. It’s a bit much to take in before work. But I’m going to go with what E.J. Dionne calls Bernie Sanders’ “authentic authenticity” and what that, plus Donald Trump lapping the Republican presidential field in the polls, says about the mood of the country.
Dionne explains that Bernie Sanders “taps into a deep frustration with inequality and the power of big money in politics while also reflecting the public’s interest in bold proposals to correct both.” But at the New Yorker, James Surowiecki observes that fully one third of Republicans with no college education support the candidacy of Donald Trump. They support the billionaire, according to pollster Stanley Greenberg, because of their deep sense that the system is corrupt and that Trump can’t be bought.
Why then would they not demand Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, both of whom have established bona fides in that area? Besides political tribalism, perhaps it’s the money, and because Trump is the perfect game-show candidate. Because as jaded as they may be, voters still haven’t let go of the American dream. Plus, decades of quiz shows (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) and reality TV have programmed them to think they’re just one right answer or good idea away from being Donald Trump, the showman. Surowiecki writes:
Trump is hardly the first Western plutocrat to venture into politics. Think of William Randolph Hearst or, more recently, Silvio Berlusconi. But both Hearst and Berlusconi benefitted from controlling media empires. Trump has earned publicity all on his own, by playing the role of that quintessential American figure the huckster. As others have observed, the businessman he most resembles is P. T. Barnum, whose success rested on what he called “humbug,” defined as “putting on glittering appearances . . . by which to suddenly arrest public attention, and attract the public eye and ear.” Barnum’s key insight into how to arrest public attention was that, to some degree, Americans enjoy brazen exaggeration. No American businessman since Barnum has been a better master of humbug than Trump has.
There’s one born every minute, and Trump has suckered his share of drought-stricken dirt farmers into thinking he’s an economic rainmaker. But there’s a difference, explains Dionne:
As for alienation from the system, Trump and Sanders do speak to a disaffection that currently roils most of the world’s democracies. But their way of doing it is so radically different — Sanders resolutely programmatic, Trump all about feelings, affect and showmanship — that they cannot easily be subsumed as part of the same phenomenon. Sanders’s candidacy will leave behind policy markers and arguments about the future. Trump’s legacy will be almost entirely about himself, which is probably fine with him.
True. But whether Sanders’ candidacy, if unsuccessful, has any policy legacy on the left remains to be seen.
Finally, I’ll welcome back Charlie Pierce from his vacation. Pierce looks at the Jade Helm 15 nonsense and the arrest of three North Carolina men for preparing to meet the Kenyan usurper’s martial law with improvised explosives. It is symptomatic of some Americans’ darker response to disaffection:
For all the talk about how Donald Trump has tapped into some general dissatisfaction with government and some ill-defined populist moment, the energy behind his campaign comes mainly from these sad and angry places, deep in the tangled underbrush of fear, hate, and profitable ignorance, where it’s all funny until somebody builds a bomb.
But tonight, at least, it’s Bread and Circuses in Cleveland.