Day Two of the Republican National Convention opened (in the world of journalism, at least) with apocalyptic discussions of one of the weightiest and most crucial political topics of the day — did two or three sentences from Melania Trump’s remarks the day before too closely resemble some lines of Michelle Obama’s from eight years earlier? Plagiarism!
One sighs. Trump-bashers have so much to work with; yet they go to ridiculous lengths to find idiosyncratic sticks with which to beat their favored dog. And not only will virtually any such nonsense do, they allow the nonsense they do settle on to mushroom to thermonuclear levels.
Thus David Brooks on PBS soon opined that in “real” campaigns, all speeches are thoroughly vetted, and so this particular slip was clear proof of Trump’s utter disdain for political norms, of gross incompetence, and dread evidence that the lunatic spouse of yesterday’s speaker should be kept out of the Oval Office at all costs.
Doctor Brooks’ trembling essay in the Times — Trump Is Getting Even Trumpier! — echoed this theme with flat assertions of Trump’s evident descent into madness: “Does anybody else have the sense that Donald Trump is slipping off the rails?” asked Brooks.
“It’s hard to know exactly what is going on in that brain, but science lends a clue. Psychologists wonder if narcissists are defined by extremely high self-esteem or by extremely low self-esteem that they are trying to mask. The current consensus seems to be that they are marked by unstable self-esteem… This combination is bound to leave his ego threat sensors permanently inflamed.”
Permanently inflamed ego threat sensors! Thank you, Doctor. Your prescription? None being given, the patient is presumably hopeless. But at least we can be sure that the lunacy is metastasizing to the general public: “Some forms of disorder — like a financial crisis — send voters for the calm supple thinker. But other forms of disorder — blood in the streets — send them scurrying for the brutal strongman.”
Is Brooks calling for a Great Depression to send us to some “calm supple thinker” as opposed to Trump, the “brutal strongman”? If so, the market needs to crash soon. Warns Brooks, “If the string of horrific events continues, Trump could win the presidency. And he could win it even though he has less and less control over himself.”
I rather admire how Brooks left the mushroom clouds unstated; it gives his calm, supple thinking an implicit, rather haiku flavor. Even calmer readers may wonder whether Brooks rather than Trump is exhibiting paranoid lack or control.
But such readers will have missed other and even more paranoid effusions. For scuttlebutt has it that the offending passages in Mrs. Trump’s remarks were not simply a forgotten impression of Mrs. Obama’s remarks percolating up accidentally, or a speechwriter’s sloppy use of existing prose models. Oh no: they evidence deliberate conspiracy.
Theory A: the Demos slipped a mole into Campaign Trump to insert the offending passage so as to make Mrs. Trump look bad.
Theory B: no, backstabbing #NeverTrump sympathizers among the Republicans slipped a mole into Campaign Trump to do it.
Theory C: Trump himself, ever the crafty Machiavellian, did it personally so as to get the press to dwell on a trivial verbal gaffe as opposed to the racism / sexism / homophobia / xenophobia permeating not merely the increasingly Trumpy Trump, but the Republican Party speakers now bending to his evil will.
Perhaps the sprightliest addition to the farce came from Breitbart, which pointed to lines Mrs. Obama’s speech itself had plagiarized from Saul Alinsky, lines that Hillary Clinton had lifted from Bernie Sanders, lines that Joe Biden had pilfered from Neil Kinnock, lines that Obama himself had taken from then-Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
I’m rather surprised that they didn’t also mention Obama’s Dreams Of My Father having been ghostwritten by Bill Ayers, husband of Weatherman Bernadine Dohrn, or the production of Profiles In Courage by the brilliant and talented Ted Sorensen rather than JFK.
Perhaps Brooks’ reticence is catching. One may only hope.
Whatever. The storm raged, the ship of state sailed on. The centerpiece of Day Two was the nomination, and clinching of that nomination, by the Great Satan, Donald Trump himself, finally extinguishing the conspiratorial efforts of his many Republican detractors.
Yet other moments had their drama too, or at least a certain entertainment value: for instance, the writhing, beautifully muted anguish of Paul Ryan as he bowed to the inevitable, conceded that Trump had overwhelming electoral support among the regrettable rank-and-file who actually, you know, vote, and reluctantly boarded the Trump Train.
Ryan, whose massive lead over challenger Paul Nehlen has been vertiginously corroding of late, is deft enough at politicking to realize that while his embrace of immigration and his disdain for Trump plays well among the Establishment, it plays so poorly among the proles that he may well do a Cantor and be out of a job if he keeps it up. So he dropped it down. But no enthusiasm shown to date on stage has been more forced.
Further speakers took their turn, curiosities among them. The Trump coronation continues its new and odd practice of interspersing sports and celebrity speakers — even the occasional person — among the the power brokers.
Yesterday it was the cringe-inducing spectacle of the mother of a dead victim of a reckless illegal at the wheel, and another mother of a dead victim at Benghazi. On Day Two, it was the likes of an UFC (Ultimate Fight Champion) wrestler talking about the way Trump supported and stood by him as he built his spine-twisting enterprise. In Trump signo vinces: “Trump is a fighter!” he shouted, as commentators winced — and the crowd roared approval.
It’s a pity we don’t have any Marxists — explicit, dispassionate Marxists, anyway — among the mainstream media. A class analysis of all these proceedings would be fascinating. Trump has the most extraordinary ability to connect with lumpenproletariat. Every other politician, every last journalist, one way or another rank themselves among the social elite. It’s not so much a matter of money as of shared cultural signs, common linguistic markers. If they care about the people at all, it’s an abstract care directed from the outside. Paul Ryan and David Brooks would not be caught dead drinking Ripple as they tune in to Bowling For Dollars.
Yet Trump’s sense of the vast population who do, the great bulk of his electorate, is unerring. He opened Day One of his convention with Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty and on Day Two he brought on his daughter, apple-cheeked Tiffany Trump, praising her Dad like a high school valedictorian.
Give the Trump people credit: they learn. Melanie’s speech yesterday was faulted for a lack of personal anecdotes. Tiffany Trump’s with packed with touching detailed tales of a concerned and caring father. Political commentators fresh from Walter Benjamin and Reinhold Neibuhr shudder at such pap, but the rabble in the trailer park lap it up.
What Tiffany Trump began, Donald Trump Junior heated to perfection. In what was certainly the high point of the evening, a dynamic Donald Junior painted a picture of Trump as not only a magnificent father, passionate patriot, and stellar achiever, but — not least — a man much more comfortable with the carpenters and contractors and plumbers and roofers in his employ than with the Harvard number-crunchers men of great wealth must needs bring in. Trump Junior gave us glimpses of a man rubbing shoulders almost daily with the actual working class — proles who work with their scarred and calloused hands. The people, not the romanticized needy of Marxist myth. Whether Trump Senior loves and heeds them with the depth Trump Junior suggests is not the issue: he knows them, and knows them in a way few politicians and fewer journalists do, for he has never felt the need to reject and flee them as the price of social ascent.
But that was a sidelight of Trump Junior’s speech. its driving point was to spell out definitively and clearly that this good and decent son dearly loves his good and decent father. And that he did, very likely setting the foundation for a new political dynasty in place of the Bushes. Whether portent of the future or not, if the Trump campaign is wise, they’ll be hitting these family videos over and over. Brooks-like depictions of Trump the gibbering madman simply dissolve before them.
Not that madness is a domain unique to Donald Trump. One of the odd things about American society is that we like our whites quirky but our blacks pristine. Preferred white people in the public eye — a Kardashian; a Jobs; supremely, a Trump — are exceptional; striking. Square-jawed whites radiating rectitude, like Mitt Romney, bore us to tears.
Our preferred black people, by contrast, are classical, perfect in every way: Martin Luther King is the pinnacle, of course, and no small part of the appeal of Barack Obama was his approach to this ideal. Few people of any race fly at such exalted levels, but among Republicans Ben Carson came luminously close. A neurosurgeon with the kindest of expressions and the calmest of demeanors, he came close to pulling ahead early in the race almost by virtue of his facial expression alone.
As with Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Bill Cosby, O. J. Simpson, though, cracks keep appearing in the benign image — in the case of Carson, weird loopy moments when he goes off on tangents that make you wonder if you’ve really heard what he’s just said.
So with Carson’s appearance on Day Two. Beginning with a quite proper call for the use of reason, he soon veered off into bashing secular progressives and pointing out that Saul Alinsky, the subject of Hillary Clinton’s Master’s thesis, dedicated his book Rules For Radicals to — gasp! — Lucifer! And we all know what that means.
There is a case to be made against Hillary, to be sure, but this is not it.
(And yet — I must confess, the longer the cries of “Lock Her Up!” rang, and the more the Dynasty cast that is the Trump Family were paraded before cameras, the more sympathy — pity, really — I felt for Hillary. She is by no means an unintelligent woman, nor a clumsy or uninsightful political manipulator. Butt what a grim interior life she must lead. When she sees Trump with his clearly supportive and adoring family, what must she think, contrasting that with what must surely be the squalid domestic bitterness of decades with Bill. I can think of no political figure, not even Nixon, so completely unloved.)
But that is speculation, and much of Day Two — whose ostensible theme, “Make America Work Again,” was clearly more slogan than guideline — was more art, again and again aimed at touching the heart in the above fashions rather than the mind, and at addressing the key demographic. No intriguing whiff of foreignness and aristocracy leavened it, as with yesterday’s dazzling appearance of Melania.
But there’s more to power than sentimental courting of the commons. Wielders must be given their moment too. The high points involving appearances by the power elite were the humiliation of Paul Ryan, the nominating speech by Senator Jeff Sessions, and in particular the talk by Governor Chris Christie.
Ryan’s woes we have already addressed. (It was briefly, but not briefly enough, re-played in the comatose appearance of Mitch McConnell, auditioning for a supporting role in The Walking Dead.) Sessions — an anti-immigration crusader of exceptional focus and integrity — made the actual nomination, and did so with the features and manner of a sprightly and amiable Hobbit. Though a sincere Trumpista, no sentence uttered by Sessions was unaccompanied by a mischievous grin, a wily eye. One expected him to conclude the nomination with a sudden “Just kidding!”, a giggle, and a leap under a giant mushroom.
But New Jersey Chris Christie, sauntering solidly up in chunky, five-by-five bulk, was another story: a former federal prosecutor, Christie took up the case against Hillary Clinton in professional form and staged a mock trial, detailing one disastrous Clinton foreign policy gaffe after another, and leaving the crowd to judge. Judge they did: roars of “Guilty!” and “Lock her up!” flew up to the rafters, though “Guillotine!” would clearly have been preferred.
Like Clarke the day before, Christie made the best case to date, for he made a rational case, detailing a record of foreign policy, secrecy and corruption that is anything but attractive. But playing to the crowd proved irresistible, and as the passion ratcheted up, he soon was landing one Tyson-like blow after the next. moving the crowd more and more, but the mind less.
Nonetheless I expect we will be seeing this one-two punch to heart and mind repeatedly in the remaining days. Trump strategy at the moment seems to be taking two paths. One is the de-demonization of Trump, with Trump’s family taking the lead. The other is the heavy demonization of Hillary Clinton, with her track record taking the lead. The election thus comes down to a choice between a Trump administration that is potentially incompetent, and a Clinton administration that is definitely incompetent — corrupt, marked by bungled foreign policy initiatives, and continued and expanding wars. Better a bird in the hand, perhaps even a cuckoo bird, than a Bush.
A winning strategy? Could be. But a more interesting and longer-term strategy may be emerging as well, wherein the political Reality TV show in days to come will be the adventures of House Trump, as Ivanka and Tiffany and Donald Junior take on the Sith hordes of Jebs, Chelsea Clinton, fading Kennedys and perhaps even aspiring President Michelle, licking their wounds in the wings and plotting comebacks.
All in all, yet another good day for Trump. The main question left being, will the press sieve the hours of blather for some some odd item, some new analogue to Michelle Obama’s distant Ciceronian prose, and sting Trump overnight with it, obliterating all other coverage? Or will the hoi polloi click the talking heads off, but press the remote to see the next installment of House Trump? Tune in tomorrow.