The ‘banality of crazy’ risks putting Trump back in power
◆ The Republican presidential hopeful’s rhetoric is becoming increasingly incendiary, writes Martyn Mclaughlin
And so we have reached the end of the beginning. Or is it the other way around? The confirmation this week that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have secured the presidential nominations of their respective parties all but confirms a scenario that once seemed unthinkable, but which in truth, has long been inevitable – this November’s US election will be a rematch of 2020.
Take a deep breath, it will be a long eight months. But it is what might follow that ought to give the greatest cause for concern. For the first time since 1912, a former president will challenge the incumbent in the White House, and the stakes could not be higher.
Millions of decent Americans once thought it inconceivable that a figure so toxic, divisive, and chaotic as Mr Trump could ever ascend to the presidency. They were proved wrong in 2016. Now, eight years on, during which time Mr Trump has been found liable for sexual assault and financial fraud, and indicted for plotting to overturn the vote that ousted him from power, there are disconcerting signs that the election is his to lose.
Mr Biden has surrendered what had been a modest but steady advantage in the polls. This month, a New York Times/ Siena College poll gave Mr Trump a 48 to 43 per cent lead among registered voters. This is despite his adoption of an increasingly incendiary and fascistic stance. Or perhaps because of it.
In decades to come, historians will marvel at how some of his remarks received such scant scrutiny from a media that still struggles with how best to cover his authoritarian tendencies for fear of amplifying them. In recent months, he has ruminated on the prospect of the former US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff being executed, a theme he riffed on during a speech to California Republicans, when he vowed that under his rule, shoplifters could expect to be shot. It is testament to Mr Trump’s inexhaustible capacity for mayhem that such comments were not more widely reported, but the failure to do so betrays the institutional impotence that threatens to aid the 77-year-old’s tilt for re-election. The political scientist and writer, Brian Klaas, hit upon a choice phrase when warning against the false hope of simply ignoring Mr Trump. He called it the “banality of crazy”, a numbing trend which creates plausible deniability for the electorate.
There is a reasonable argument to be made that it is too late to switch into reverse gear, but with as many as 10 per cent of voters still undecided, according to an Emerson College poll last weekend, it would surely be negligent not to try. After all, when prominence has been given to some of Mr Trump’s most repugnant comments, such as his reflections on the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, voters recoiled.
It is vital to continue to shine that light as the race for the election intensifies. It is an exhausting and at times thankless task, and one that is unlikely to change the opinion of the vast majority of die-hard MAGA supporters. But if it helps avert the US from choosing disaster this autumn, it is an ordeal worth enduring.