Battle for White House takes pantomime turn but tycoon fails to deliver
DESPITE having dominated the world of showbiz for more than a century, pantomimes never really caught on in the US.
Perhaps they are too knowing, too risqué, but in Cleveland on Thursday Donald J Trump did his best to revive it as a populist art form, producing an idiosyncratically personal production – a long one at that.
His was a speech that promised thrills and spills but never quite delivered.
Mr Trump declared there would “be no lies”, but the oration was a fact-checker’s gold mine, while the Republican nominee said he’d share his “plan of action for America”, the detail of which seemed to have ended up on the cutting room floor. A trade deficit? “We’re gonna fix that!” Bad trade deals? He’d turn them “into great ones”. A sluggish economy? “I’m going to make our country rich again!”
There was, however, full audience participation. The 20,000 or so delegates at the Quicken Loans Arena were in the mood to be entertained and Mr Trump was careful to throw them all the old favourites, bashing the “liberal media”, name-checking Israel (“our greatest ally in the region”) and, of course, attacking the Wicked Witch of the East, Hillary Clinton. Chants of “lock her up”, “USA! USA!” and, more disturbingly, “build that wall!” punctuated the speech.
Mr Trump’s Democratic rival emerged, predictably, as the main pantomime villain, frequently booed and held responsible for all the ills of the world, even the rise of IS.
And if Mrs Clinton was the villain of the piece, then Mr Trump presented himself as the saviour, someone who’d not only “Make America Great Again” but rid the US of the “crime and violence that afflicts our nation”.
At times Mr Trump sounded more moderate, eschewing any mention of abortion, thanking evangelical supporters for their support but adding: “I’m not sure I totally deserve it”, and a remarkable line (for a Republican convention) promising “to protect our LGBTQ citizens”.
At an hour and 15 minutes Mr Trump’s soliloquy could have done with the benefit of an intermission. Near the end he sounded hoarse.
His rapport with the audience, however, was patchy. Whole sections of Mr Trump’s speech elicited no response at all, and at one point he asked – somewhat randomly – “how great are our police?”, drawing inevitable applause.
And then, having promised the best of all possible worlds, his speech ended with the Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want and a cascade of balloons. The obligatory standing ovation was muted. Had the curtain fallen on the prospects of a Republican Presidency? We’ll find out in November. Hope, hysteria and hate at the Republican Convention. See The Herald Magazine.