‘The Deplorables’
Donald Trump’s inauguration this week will be as notable for those absent as for those present. Ben Stanley reports from the Divided States of America.
Located just two minutes walk from the White House, Washington DC’s Blair House has been called, by Time magazine, ‘‘the world’s most exclusive hotel.’’ From great statesmen like Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle to sitting prime ministers and presidents, it has accommodated some of the 20th century’s top dignitaries.
In six days’ time, New York property mogul Donald J Trump will wake up in the four-story Federal-style residence, as every incoming president since Jimmy Carter has, on the morning of their inauguration.
The last one who didn’t was Richard Nixon.
As is tradition, Trump will eat breakfast with his family at Blair House and sign the building’s famous guest book (flick back a few pages and he’ll see Vladimir Putin’s name as a former guest) – before heading out for a church service nearby, which will be episcopal for the former reality TV star.
From there, Trump will head to his new official home – the White House – where he will wait with outgoing president Barack Obama before heading to the US Capitol where, above the building’s famed Western steps, he will become the 45th President of the United States of America.
Last month, I walked the streets of Washington DC. For all intents and purposes, it appeared indifferent to the changing political tide. Tourists took photos, barmen poured pints – and it was hard to get a car park.
The iconic movements of American democracy rose above it all; the White House, the US Capitol, the Lincoln and Jefferson Monuments.
Prone to idealism and whimsy, I felt, in them, a solemn silent grandeur uncommon to Kiwi eyes. When the Capitol and White House were being built in the late 1700s, New Zealand was a frontier land where Maori and Pakeha were still making their initial connections.
Standing in the Newseum, I looked at the salvaged door from Room 214 at Watergate Hotel – and thought about how reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought down Nixon. I thought about Trump’s own toxic relationship with the press. I thought about Trump’s 167 day streak without a press conference, that ended this week.
At that Trump Tower presser, which swerved from smug to farcical at times, he’d call CNN ‘‘fake news’’ for its recent story of campaign connections to Russia, despite being the very man who relentlessly pushed the falsehood of Obama birtherism.
That morning, he wondered, on Twitter, if the United States was Nazi Germany, because of intelligence leaks.
At the very same time, back in Washington, cabinet appointees Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions were grilled on the Hill. Republican senators, in command of the House, were already pivoting against the Trump White House.
Even to the most hardened, engaged American political wonks, it’s been an exhausting few weeks.
The night before Trump’s presser, Obama delivered his Farewell Address in his hometown of Chicago. I was there when it happened, sitting in a Mexican restaurant in Palmer Square, 10 kilometres north of Obama’s gathering.
I was mostly surrounded by Latin Americans in the restaurant. I saw one woman starting to cry a little bit. Her daughter looked at her, in surprise, and hugged her. She hugged back.
In a stirring speech from one of the most gifted orator-presidents, Obama warned against the threats to American democracy.
‘‘We weaken those ties when we define some of us as more American than others; when we write off the whole system as inevitably corrupt, and blame the leaders we elect without examining our role in electing them,’’ he said.
Obama brought a rare dignity to the White House. When he said being a father was the thing he was most proud of in his life, I believed him. When I saw him wiping away a tear talking about Michelle Obama, I understood its sincerity.
Trump presents, and promises, little of that authenticity. In its place is a bravado and overconfidence formed by years of tabloid limelight and property wheeling and dealing.
Yet his insecurity is obvious; it has bubbled out on Twitter time and time again. Talking about his own inauguration, he has claimed it would be one of the best ever and has boasted of DC being sold out of inauguration gowns. The reverse is actually true, according to the Washington Post.
‘‘The focus for this president, since he is a celebrity, is really on the place, on the people,’’ Tom Barrack, Trump’s inaugural committee chairman, told the Post.
There will be crowds of Trump’ supporters – as well as historicallyminded rubberneckers – lining Pennsylvania Avenue when he takes his motorcade to the Capitol.
Keeping in tradition with all Kiwi ambassadors before him, Tim Groser, New Zealand’s own official representative in Washington, will be there, and get a prime seat. Escorted by State Department officials, Groser will sit among 1600 of Washington’s biggest players on the main platform for the swearing in, before heading to Blair House afterwards for a special luncheon.
But the Hollywood stars and big name musicians won’t be there; they’ve been turning down inauguration invites in droves. Indeed, the other big take-away from Obama’s valedictory address was an attempt to lobby people out of their social media bubbles, and enter into a real discourse – however uncomfortable – about the state of their nation.
Cut through the noise, and it’s clear that both sides in the United States are as guilty of creating that schism as each other.
Actress Meryl Streep received widespread praise for her takedown of Trump at the Golden Globes. While much of her speech was justified, she made a statement clearly illustrating the broad divide: ‘‘Hollywood is crawling with foreigners and if you kick them all out, all you have is to watch is football and mixed martial arts.’’
To say football and MMA are fixations of a cultureless America seems to prove a degree of the detachment and aloofness that right-wing critics of ‘‘Hollywood liberalism’’ accuse them of.
The week before Obama’s speech, I travelled to Eastern Kentucky coal country to learn about a US political enigma – a county that voted Republican for the first time since it was founded in 1868.
It was a part of America where the University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball and football reigns supreme. Where conversations