Analysis: Despite unprecedented displays of power, Trump running as underdog.
Underdog role contrasts with power he wields
After nearly four years in the world’s most powerful post, Donald Trump will formally accept the Republican nomination for president Thursday taking a familiar stance.
As an outsider.
He’ll do that despite speaking from the South Lawn of the White House and leveraging displays of presidential power unprecedented at any modern political convention. During his tenure, he has appointed two justices to the Supreme Court and named more than 200 judges to the federal bench. He’s issued executive orders that stretch the powers of his office.
But he still rails against a “Deep State” working against him at the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies, even though they are now headed by officials he appointed. He accuses the political elite of ignoring the concerns of his core supporters. He says the news is fake and the polls are wrong. He derides the record of President Barack Obama, now out of office for four years. He downplays the continuing crisis of COVID-19 and blames others for the nation’s stumbling response to it during his watch.
To a remarkable degree for an incumbent, the underdog grievances that supercharged Trump’s 2016 campaign for the White House continue to animate his bid for a second term.
“I’m the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness and chaos,” he said in a speech in suburban Virginia on Friday. Being an outsider is part of Trump’s appeal. It’s also part of his problem.
Defiance is his brand. But a reelection campaign is typically a referendum on how the president has performed. Since the 2016 election, Trump hasn’t expanded his standing; he has lost ground. His job-approval rating, at 43.9% in the Realclearpolitics.com average, is below the 46.1% of the vote he carried in 2016.
“He’s using two contradictory images and hoping they both work for him,” said Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College and co-author of
“The Trump Presidency: Outsider in the Oval Office.” “One is draping himself in the White House for the convention, and the other is claiming to be the insurgent, fighting against the Washington swamp.”
Even as president, Trump remains a somewhat solitary figure.
The only living former Republican president, George W. Bush, doesn’t support him. The Republican most recently nominated for president, Mitt Romney, voted to convict him in his impeachment trial. Republican senators in the most competitive races this fall are staying away. And an unprecedented number of former Republican officeholders and appointees have endorsed his Democratic rival.