It’s a dark time for Americans
It was like watching a train wreck: you couldn’t look, but you couldn’t look away, either. The Republican party simply collapsed this week, as tens of millions of people watched its convention on television. It lurched from the chaos of a plagiarized speech and general poor planning into the uglier spectacle of an aggressive crowd, who booed, jeered and insulted whenever they encountered a person or idea with which they disagreed.
“The party I was part of is dead,” said Meghan McCain, daughter of Republican Senator John McCain. It is difficult to disagree. The Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight D. Eisenhower has now produced Donald Trump as its representative. A textbook demagogue, Trump has triumphed because he channels the fear and anger of many Americans who are left behind by a rapidly changing economy and left fearful by too much gun violence.
There’s nothing wrong with fist-pounding rhetoric and plain talk, by itself. The pain felt by millions of Americans whose dreams have evaporated and whose difficulties were previously disregarded by politicians of all stripes is authentic, and Trump speaks to it. But he has also poisoned this connection with a barrage of careless and mean-spirited insults. He sneered at John McCain’s military service, and called him a “loser” for having been a prisoner of war in Vietnam. (Trump himself never served in the military.) He threw personal insults at his Republican opponents and their families. He made contemptuous remarks about women, Mexicans and Muslims. Among his most ludicrous statements was his suggestion that the father of opponent Ted Cruz was associated with Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy. No wonder Cruz did not endorse Trump in Cleveland. No wonder so many other Republican leaders stayed away from the convention altogether.
Any student of politics understands that one can be a disagreeable person and yet be an effective politician. But it’s not clear that Trump has effectiveness beyond rallying his base. His chance to appear presidential and to shine on policy issues was squandered in his final speech. He made some concrete proposals, including protections for gays and lesbians, a continued hard line on immigration control, and said the United States should get more support from other NATO members. But overall, the speech was almost entirely lacking in specific policy detail, and on the all-important issue of the economy, he had almost nothing to say.
Trump may be accurately pinpointing the anxiety of workingclass Americans, but it is now clear that he has no plan to actually help them. We hope, for the sake of our friends to the south, that the Democrats do better this week with their convention. As flawed as presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton is, she is capable of developing thoughtful policies that at least show she’s trying. If that sounds as if we’re grasping at straws, we are.