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 \u2014 did two or three sentences from Melania Trump\u2019s remarks the day before too closely resemble some lines of Michelle Obama\u2019s from eight years earlier? Plagiarism!<\/i><\/p>\n
One sighs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>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. \u00a0And not only will virtually any\u00a0such nonsense do, they allow the\u00a0nonsense they do settle on to\u00a0mushroom to thermonuclear levels.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Thus David Brooks on PBS soon opined that in \u201creal\u201d campaigns, all<\/i> speeches are thoroughly<\/i> vetted, and so this particular slip was clear proof of Trump’s\u00a0utter disdain for political norms, of gross incompetence, and dread evidence that the lunatic spouse of yesterday\u2019s speaker should be kept out of the Oval Office at all costs.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Doctor Brooks\u2019 trembling essay in the Times \u2014 Trump Is Getting Even Trumpier!<\/i><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 echoed this theme with flat assertions of Trump\u2019s evident descent into madness:\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cDoes anybody else have the sense that Donald Trump is slipping off the rails?\u201d asked Brooks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s 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…\u00a0This combination is bound to leave his ego threat sensors permanently inflamed.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Permanently inflamed ego threat sensors!\u00a0 <\/span>Thank you, Doctor.\u00a0 <\/span>Your prescription?\u00a0 <\/span>None being given, the patient is presumably hopeless.\u00a0 But at least we can be sure that<\/span>\u00a0the lunacy is metastasizing to the general public: \u201cSome forms of disorder \u2014 like a financial crisis \u2014 send voters for the calm supple thinker. But other forms of disorder \u2014 blood in the streets \u2014 send them scurrying for the brutal strongman.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Is Brooks calling for a Great Depression to send us to some \u201ccalm supple thinker\u201d as opposed to Trump, the “brutal strongman”?\u00a0 <\/span>If so, the market needs to crash soon.\u00a0 <\/span>Warns Brooks, \u201cIf 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.\u201d<\/p>\n I rather admire how Brooks left the mushroom clouds unstated; it gives his calm, supple thinking an implicit, rather haiku flavor.\u00a0 Even calmer<\/span>\u00a0readers may wonder whether Brooks rather than Trump is exhibiting paranoid lack or control.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n But s<\/span>uch readers will have missed other and even more paranoid effusions.\u00a0 For\u00a0<\/span>scuttlebutt has it that the offending passages in Mrs. Trump\u2019s remarks were not simply a forgotten impression of Mrs. Obama\u2019s remarks percolating up accidentally, or a speechwriter\u2019s sloppy use of existing prose models. \u00a0Oh no: \u00a0they evidence deliberate conspiracy.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Theory A<\/em>:\u00a0 <\/span>the Demos slipped a mole into Campaign Trump to insert the offending passage so as to make Mrs. Trump look bad.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Theory B:<\/em>\u00a0 <\/span>no, backstabbing #NeverTrump sympathizers among the Republicans slipped a mole into Campaign\u00a0Trump to do it.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Theory C:<\/em>\u00a0 <\/span>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.<\/p>\n Perhaps the sprightliest addition to the farce came from Breitbart<\/a>, \u00a0which pointed to lines Mrs. Obama\u2019s speech itself had plagiarized<\/a> from Saul Alinsky, lines that Hillary Clinton had lifted<\/a>\u00a0from Bernie Sanders, lines that Joe Biden had pilfered<\/a> from Neil Kinnock, lines that Obama himself had taken<\/a> from then-Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m rather surprised that they didn\u2019t also mention Obama\u2019s Dreams Of My Father<\/em> having been ghostwritten<\/a> by Bill Ayers, husband of Weatherman Bernadine Dohrn, or the production of Profiles In Courage<\/em> by the brilliant and talented\u00a0Ted Sorensen<\/a> rather than JFK.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps Brooks\u2019 reticence is catching.\u00a0 <\/span>One may only hope.<\/p>\n Whatever.\u00a0 <\/span>The storm raged, the ship of state sailed on.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Yet other moments had their drama too, or at least a certain entertainment value:\u00a0 <\/span>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<\/i>, and reluctantly boarded the Trump Train.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 <\/span>So he dropped it down. \u00a0But\u00a0 <\/span>no enthusiasm shown to date on stage has been more forced.<\/p>\n Further speakers took their turn, curiosities among them.\u00a0 <\/span>The Trump coronation continues its new and odd practice of interspersing sports and celebrity speakers \u2014 even the occasional person<\/i> \u2014 among the the power brokers.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 In Trump signo vinces:<\/em> \u00a0<\/span>\u201cTrump is a fighter!<\/i>\u201d he shouted, as commentators winced \u2014 and the crowd roared approval.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a pity we don\u2019t have any Marxists \u2014 explicit, dispassionate Marxists, anyway \u2014 among the mainstream media.\u00a0 <\/span>A class analysis of all these proceedings would be fascinating.\u00a0 <\/span>Trump has the most extraordinary ability to connect with lumpenproletariat.\u00a0 <\/span>Every other politician, every last journalist, one way or another rank themselves among the social elite.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s not so much a matter of money as of shared cultural signs, common linguistic markers.\u00a0 <\/span>If they care about the people at all, it\u2019s an abstract care directed from the outside.\u00a0 <\/span>Paul Ryan and David Brooks would not be caught dead drinking Ripple as they tune in to Bowling For Dollars.<\/em>\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Yet Trump\u2019s sense of the vast population who do, the great bulk of his electorate, is unerring.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Give the Trump people credit:\u00a0 <\/span>they learn.\u00a0 <\/span>Melanie\u2019s speech yesterday was faulted for a lack of personal anecdotes.\u00a0 <\/span>Tiffany Trump\u2019s with packed with touching detailed tales of a concerned and caring father.\u00a0 Political commentators fresh from<\/span>\u00a0Walter Benjamin and Reinhold Neibuhr shudder at such pap, but the rabble in the trailer park lap it up.<\/p>\n What Tiffany Trump began, Donald Trump Junior heated to perfection.\u00a0 <\/span>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 \u2014 not least \u2014 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Trump Junior gave us glimpses of a man rubbing shoulders almost daily with the actual working class \u2014 proles who work with their scarred and calloused\u00a0hands.<\/em>\u00a0 The people, not the romanticized needy of Marxist myth.\u00a0 <\/span>Whether Trump Senior loves and heeds them with the depth Trump Junior suggests is not the issue: \u00a0 <\/span>he knows<\/em> them, and knows them in a way few politicians and fewer journalists do, for he has never felt the need to reject and\u00a0flee<\/i> them as the price of social ascent.<\/p>\n But that was a sidelight of Trump Junior\u2019s speech.\u00a0 its driving<\/span>\u00a0point was to spell out definitively and clearly that this good and decent son dearly loves his good and decent father.\u00a0 <\/span>And that he did, very likely setting the foundation for a new political dynasty in place of the Bushes.\u00a0 Whether portent of the future or not, if<\/span>\u00a0the Trump campaign is wise, they\u2019ll be hitting these family videos over and over.\u00a0 <\/span>Brooks-like depictions of Trump the gibbering madman simply dissolve before them.<\/p>\n Not that madness is a domain unique to Donald Trump. \u00a0One of the odd things about American society is that we like our whites quirky but our blacks pristine.\u00a0 <\/span>Preferred white people in the public eye \u2014 a Kardashian; a Jobs; supremely, a Trump \u2014 are exceptional; striking.<\/em>\u00a0Square-jawed whites radiating rectitude, like Mitt Romney, bore us to tears.<\/p>\n Our preferred black<\/em> people, by contrast, are classical, perfect in every way:\u00a0 <\/span>Martin Luther King is the pinnacle, of course, and no small part of the appeal of Barack Obama was his approach to this ideal. \u00a0Few people of any race fly at such exalted levels, but among Republicans Ben Carson came luminously close.\u00a0 <\/span>A neurosurgeon with the kindest of expressions and the calmest of demeanors, he came close to pulling ahead early in the race almost by\u00a0virtue of his facial expression alone.<\/p>\n As with Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Bill Cosby, O. J. Simpson, though, cracks<\/em> 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\u2019ve really heard what he\u2019s just said.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n So with Carson’s appearance on Day Two.\u00a0 <\/span>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\u2019s Master\u2019s thesis, dedicated his book Rules For Radicals<\/em> to \u2014 gasp! \u2014 Lucifer!<\/em>\u00a0 And we all know what that<\/em> means.<\/p>\n There is a case to be made against Hillary, to be sure, but this is not it.<\/p>\n (And yet — I must confess, the longer the cries of “Lock Her Up!” rang, and the more the Dynasty<\/em> cast that is the Trump Family were paraded before cameras, the more sympathy — pity, really — I felt for Hillary. \u00a0She is by no means an unintelligent woman, nor a clumsy or uninsightful political manipulator. \u00a0Butt what a grim interior life she must lead. \u00a0When 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. \u00a0I can think of no political figure, not even Nixon, so completely unloved.)<\/p>\n But that is speculation, and much of Day Two \u2014 whose ostensible theme, \u201cMake America Work Again,\u201d was clearly more slogan than guideline \u2014 was more art, again and again aimed at touching the heart in the above fashions rather than the mind, and at addressing the key\u00a0 <\/span>demographic.\u00a0 <\/span>No intriguing whiff of foreignness and aristocracy leavened it, as with yesterday\u2019s dazzling appearance of Melania.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But there\u2019s more to power than sentimental courting of the commons.\u00a0 Wielders must be given their moment too. \u00a0<\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Ryan’s woes we have already addressed. \u00a0(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.<\/em>) Sessions \u2014 an anti-immigration crusader of exceptional focus and integrity \u2014 made the actual nomination, and did so with the features and manner of a sprightly and amiable Hobbit.\u00a0 Though a sincere Trumpista<\/em>, n<\/span>o sentence uttered by Sessions was unaccompanied by a mischievous grin, a wily eye.\u00a0 <\/span>One expected him to conclude the nomination with a sudden \u201cJust kidding!\u201d, a giggle, and a leap under a giant mushroom.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n But New Jersey Chris Christie, sauntering solidly up in chunky, five-by-five bulk, was another story:\u00a0 <\/span>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<\/em> after another, and leaving the crowd to judge.\u00a0 Judge they did: \u00a0r<\/span>oars of \u201cGuilty!\u201d and \u201cLock her up!\u201d flew up to the rafters, though “Guillotine!” would clearly have been preferred.<\/p>\n Like Clarke the day before, Christie made the best case to date, for he made a rational<\/em> case, detailing a record of foreign policy, secrecy and corruption that is anything but attractive. \u00a0But 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.<\/p>\n Nonetheless\u00a0I expect we will be seeing this one-two punch to heart and mind repeatedly in the remaining days. \u00a0Trump strategy at the moment seems to be taking two paths.\u00a0 <\/span>One is the de-demonization of Trump, with Trump\u2019s family taking the lead.\u00a0 <\/span>The other is the heavy demonization of Hillary Clinton, with her track record taking the lead.\u00a0 <\/span>The election thus comes down to a choice between a Trump administration that is potentially<\/i> incompetent, and a Clinton administration that is definitely <\/i>incompetent —\u00a0<\/i>corrupt, marked by bungled foreign policy initiatives, and continued and expanding wars.\u00a0 \u00a0Better a bird in the hand, perhaps even a cuckoo bird, than a Bush.<\/span><\/p>\n A winning strategy?\u00a0 <\/span>Could be.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n All in all, yet another good day for Trump.\u00a0 <\/span>The main question left being, will the press sieve the hours of blather for some some odd item, some new analogue to Michelle Obama\u2019s distant Ciceronian prose, and sting Trump overnight with it, obliterating all other coverage?\u00a0 Or will the hoi polloi<\/em>\u00a0click the talking heads off, but press the remote to see the next installment of House Trump?<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Tune in tomorrow.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u2014 did two or three sentences from Melania Trump\u2019s remarks the day before too closely resemble some lines of Michelle Obama\u2019s from eight years 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