Mitt Romney minced no words in branding Donald Trump a "con" politician, that is, not meaning a "conservative," but a "phony." He was only asserting something commonly held. Yet, that he did not say so in 2012 when Trump rooted for Romney's presidential candidacy exposes either opportunism, which, frankly, is what makes politics tick, or circumstances having changed drastically in 2016 from 2012. When an outsider shakes a conservative party, even hijack its core constituents, something more than change-for-the-sake-of-change is underway. Another name for it is revolution.
What brought this about? Why did it not happen in 2012? How will the future be impacted?
However one might call it, the Trump tsunami cannot always be reduced to Trump. His credentials do not add up to the support he is receiving. First of all, he does not carry a coherent and comprehensive agenda or platform: anyone following his press conferences and speeches will instantly know how sporadic, narrow, and shallow his knowledge of the issues a chief executive must constantly confront. Secondly, "Trump" is not a business brand successful enough to quickly gather national traction: he has had as many failures (of which Romney had a lot to say) as successes (of which Romney was silent), but clearly without a model behind his name, like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, George Soros have - he is farther away from becoming the national trademark that he thinks he already is. Finally, politics and business aside, Trump has not been a role-model of anything else to appeal to likely voters: not as a father or husband appealing to conservatives; nor through religion that might kindle evangelical interest; nor, too, by his philanthropic work to spark non-governmental organisational interest; nor even as an educator appealing to students, given a university carrying his name (and under a judicial investigation currently).
Winning broad support of many of those groups in the 15-odd primary elections and caucuses thus far raises the question: What brings them to him?
Trump-ism might be discarded as a product of the times, but long-term grievances also rattled the atmosphere. At least six sets of "circumstances" arguably gave it its glow and his moment in the sun: Obama as an 8-year president; Tea Party factionalism within the Republican Party; diminishing U.S. clout globally; the emergence or resurrection of orphaned fringe groups instrumentalising the Internet to reconnect, conflate, and coordinate tactics; the rigidity of a 2-party political system preventing "third" forces from maturing when multiple "third" forces demand expression and recognition; and the corresponding failure of a country to look beyond its manichaeistic outlook (that is, interpretations in opposite "black" or "white" terms) to emergent "shades of gray" solutions.
Barack Obama may be the necessary condition for the drastic deterioration of racial relations in the country and the growth of Trump-ism (Liz Peek, for example, spearheads this sentiment in The Fiscal Times). At the core lie two plot-triggering thoughts: if an Afro-American can get to the White House, so can any "correctly-blooded" white; and, pushed to the extreme, Obama's eight years can be pitted as being so abysmal that the "correctly-blooded" white can deliver what the "establishment," generically, has not been able to. Trump seized the broken partnership between the White House and Congress, epitomised by the rift between Obama and Senator Mitch McConnell, to vilify the "establishment." He eloquently presented his two-fold case: he had the leadership genes to repair those relations; and that each of his primary election victory demonstrates him to be the answer to the questions of a desperate electorate. Romney pierced this invincibility bubble with his criticism.
Second, the Tea Party had unwittingly done Trump's spade-work by thwarting congressional compromises with the White House and holding any Republican presidential candidate as hostage to this belief: Sarah Palin probed this mind-set's frontiers in 2008, and though she fumbled, she exposed the opportunities; by sidelining it in 2012, Romney's mainstream conservatism failed to carry the day; but Trump's entry into a lacklustre field propelled him to hijack and transform it in 2016 into his personal platform. Since no other 2016 Republican presidential candidate passed the Tea Party litmus test, Trump's "say it like it is" campaign produced that marriage of convenience.
Third, there is a long history supporting the contention that evaporating relative power is first met by denial, then adjustments, before acceptance. Among countries, this was best exemplified by Great Britain one century ago, until the United States took complete control after World War II. Ever since, the absolute military and economic U.S. power has become relative, generating nightmares for some U.S. citizens, as in the Tea Party, and thereby the denial mode. Trump cashed in. Bashing China, Mexico, and Muslim countries resonated well with residual public fears. Restoring absolute U.S. power globally may be impossible in future, but the public will accept it only if trials and errors so determine. Until then, the likes of Trump will likely riddle the U.S. political firmament.
His diatribe is music to those in the shadows or on the fringes. This is the fourth "circumstance." Particularly with the Internet, these groups can now re-connect and reinforce each other, needing only an eloquent spokesperson. Palin's failure elevated Trump to fill the bill, as evident in embracing the Ku Klux Klan, his anti-Hispanic rhetoric getting sharper, going to the extreme with the Muslim ban, and increasing Black condescension.
All of the above circumstances profited from the very absence of a "third" force in the two-party U.S. political system. Just as Bernie Sanders symbolises that force within the new Democrat party, Romney's Trump criticism did likewise within the Republican Party. Of course, preventing Trump sufficient delegates at the convention opens the possibility of a compromise with an outsider; and only Romney and Ryan lead that list without having campaigned at all. A "third" force like Ross Perot's Reform Party in 1992, or the Populist Party one century before him, exposes the Republican roots: the party itself emerged as a "third" force, breaking with the Whigs over slavery during the Lincoln era. What goes around, comes around, but no mistaking the larger lesson, that two parties can no longer absorb the increasingly diffused voices of the country.
Finally, this domestic duality not only carries historical weight, but also spills over into the international arena. Note the state-federalism tussle that gripped Hamilton, Jefferson, Jackson, and the like right after independence; then Henry Clay's "American system" against James Calhoun's free-trade; "Injuns" versus cowboys; and so forth. It also spills over on to the global playground increasingly: the Cold War mantra of "better dead than red," the subsequent cliché, "you are either with us or against us," and so forth. Pitching Trump's "great U.S.A." as a sine qua non call, anything less can be deemed unacceptable, and relegated to the Democrats, who, in turn, accept the "great" U.S. component of the equation, but prefer to work on the details of becoming great and sustaining that status tangibly more than just gloating with the thought.
A significant crossroads awaits the United States: everything it ever stood for, from free instincts, politics, economics, and morals now confront their very circumscription. Like many trumpeters, the Donald may end up being all sound and fury signifying nothing, but those broader "circumstances" will continue to be rattled until they are resolved.
Dr Imtiaz A Hussain is Professor, International Relations, formerly Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City.
inv198@hotmail.com
Trumping America: A \'con\' politician\'s springboard
Imtiaz A. Hussain in the first of a two-part article on Donald Trump phenomenon | Published: March 09, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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