DEN TANDT AND McPARLAND,
Dismissing him reminiscent of past dismissals
Cl ever people everywhere — on Canadian Twitter, that is to say — believe Donald Trump imploded in his first televised presidential debate with Hillary Clinton. If that’s true, the next two outings should be a matter of mopping up. Clinton must have the White House in the bag. Hmm.
Trump uttered falsehoods Monday evening, repeatedly, and deployed a word, braggadocious, that describes him perfectly. He was unschooled. He dissembled. He evaded. He blustered. He fumed, huffed and puffed. He sniffed a lot and took multiple sips of water.
Trump brought Rosie O’Donnell into the conversation, for heaven’s sake, and cited one of his own surrogates — right-wing talk radio jock Sean Hannity — as the ultimate arbiter of his position on the 2003 U. S. inva- sion of Iraq. Ridiculous! He touted the excellence of his new hotel in Washington. He bragged about earning US$694 million last year and about previously not having paid federal income tax. “That makes me smart,” is what he said. Madness!
Except, t here’s t hi s : Trump neither spoke nor behaved differently than he ever has, in any previous political encounter. The dismissals of his chances now are eerily reminiscent of similar dismissals, from the very same sources, before he began his inexorable ascent. Yet here he stands.
Granted, Trump’s support among black Americans, constituting 13 per cent of the population, and Hispanic Americans, constituting 17 per cent, is nigh zero. Among white Americans, the GOP’s support erodes as one travels up the scales of income and education. Trump cannot possibly put together a majority with just the workingclass white, older men in the Rust Belt who have formed his base. This is the received wisdom.
Yet until now, the received wisdom about Trump has been dead wrong. It seems wise to consider that it might be again.
Trump was egregiously unprepared in this debate, yes — and thus bizarrely, hypnotically compelling. He is always unprepared. He shot from the hip, interrupted constantly, got testy with moderator Lester Holt, and said numerous things politicians never, ever say.
No one watching the performance could imagine any of it was planned. Trump is serenely comfortable with his message — even when he’s lying, for example, about the Iraq invasion, which he is on record as having supported. Trump’s shtick does not rely on fact. It relies on marketing. Marketing is the hammering home of a simple message the seller knows the audience wants to hear, regardless of the truth.
Here’s a bet: In a week, most of Twitter will have f orgotten t he details of Trump’s numerous falsehoods Monday, because he’ll have uttered new ones, perhaps more outrageous. But viewers will remember he said this: On trade, bring back our jobs and stop the dastardly foreigners from stealing them away. On gun violence, crime and race, impose law and order in the inner city. On national security, smash the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — and force the feckless Europeans ( and Canadians, surely) in NATO to do some of the work, for once in their worthless lives.
It is a pastiche of impossible pledges based on false assumptions. As a program of government it is ludicrous. But in a season of populism primed for change, it will resonate.
Clinton, on t he other hand? She was measured, thoughtful, unruffled, technocratic, well- prepared — everything you’d expect of a Washington insider, former senator, former secretary of state, former first lady, and policy wonk of 30 years’ standing.
She smiled often, as every politician since time immemorial has been ordered to do by his or her debate handlers. She never, for a moment, appeared angry. She arrived, shook hands with her opponent and the moderator, made her points, many of which were excellent, got in her jabs, shook hands again, and walked serenely away.
But Clinton also appeared, to my ear, passionless — so caught in the trap of performance that nearly every word seemed canned, except during a pivotal late exchange about national security, in which she clearly had the upper hand and knew it. Her love of policy detail is legendary. But her penchant for wonky platitudes we’ve all heard countless times (“I want us to invest in you. I want us to invest in your future. That means jobs in infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, innovation and technology …”) feeds into the narrative that she is a politician like all the rest.
Clinton could have done herself much good by letting the veil of rehearsed serenity drop, long enough to reveal genuine fury and incredulity at Trump’s bigotry, lies, misogyny, false promises and narcissism.
This isn’t to say Nov. 8 is in the bag for Trump, either. The weight of common sense and fact and his predilection for braggadocious self- immolation may yet sink him. But it is to say the outcome remains wholly unpredictable. Politicos, experts and polls are out of the loop, as they were in the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote.
HERE’S A BET: IN A WEEK, MOST OF TWITTER WILL HAVE FORGOTTEN THE DETAILS OF TRUMP’S NUMEROUS FALSEHOODS MONDAY, BECAUSE HE’LL HAVE UTTERED NEW ONES, PERHAPS MORE OUTRAGEOUS. — COLUMNIST MICHAEL DEN TANDT