Ripe for a nut
Aleading Arkansas Republican told me last week that Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee and maybe the president.
I dropped the phone, but no damage was done.
Another leading Arkansas Republican, told of that pronouncement, replied, “He’s crazy.”
He may have meant either the other leading Arkansas Republican or Trump.
But I’m not at all sure the other leading Arkansas Republican is nuts. Trump seems to be, but that is sort of the point.
It’s a nutty time that may be ripe for a nut.
If presidential races come down to quadrennial reflections of prevailing national moods, as I’ve long gone around saying, then consider the prevailing national mood as we edge toward the potentially fateful 2016.
It is that people are sick and tired of politics as usual— of big money and the fealty to it and the conflicts from it; of the cautious- speak, and the hollowspeak, and the double- speak; of the insulation and self- perpetuation and the partisan silliness.
It’s that some people are sick of politics because they’re fed up with Barack Obama. It’s that some people are sick of politics because they’re fed up with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.
And it’s that some people are sick and tired of all three, and, while they’re at it, anyone named Clinton or Bush.
If indeed the prevailing national mood is to upturn the dreaded inertia of our current politics, then 2016 would qualify as the worst year imaginable, and the least likely, for the deadly combo of yet another Bush and yet another Clinton.
Thus Trump. By reputation and manner, he is the furthest thing from a Bush or a Clinton that people have found.
He says crazy impolitic things, which people like. He says he has so much of his own money that no one can buy him, which people positively love.
He might say an occasionally non- conservative thing, about rich people’s taxes or the worthiness of Planned Parenthood’s general work. But many conservative dismiss the specific as irrelevant to the more powerful general. And they positively love the idea of a guy who isn’t beholden to a party line— to any party line.
Polls suggest that Tea Party types gravitate to Trump despite the erratic and undependable nature of his conservatism. An insightful pundit wrote the other day that the Tea Party may have been less about doctrinaire right- wing extremism and more about raising hell with politics as usual.
But it’s not merely Tea Party people flocking to Trump and away from Jeb Bush, who is positively languishing, down to 6 percent in the latest Iowa poll. Trump leads Jeb in that one, even among Republican businesspersons.
As the consummate establishmentarian and woefully uninspiring to boot, Bush is perhaps the most doomed of prospects to act as the designated non- Trump.
Bush may in fact no longer be the leading designated non- Trump. There’s Marco Rubio or John Kasich for that.
Jeb simply does not inspire or connect. There is a reason that, contrary to his parents’ supposed preference, his brother George W. became president.
It has to do with that other old adage that political races tend to be won by the best politicians.
George W. had personality and an ability to achieve warm human engagement on a macro scale. Jeb may have been the better- behaving son, but bad boys and prodigal sons are much more interesting.
Jeb’s only ace is that he and his super- PAC have raised an obscene amount of money. But that makes him the poster child for politics as usual, a point that might be advanced by a guy with his own money and a knack for getting free media.
You see, it doesn’t cost Trump a cent to put on Twitter that Jeb is owned by big money and, well, a pitiable wimp, which is the kind of thing Trump might tweet.
And when he tweets like that, the free cable- news exposure flows. So Jeb might spend millions on a commercial that Trump could trump for free.
That’s the strange new dynamic of the Trump phenomenon and what may be the prevailing national mood.
The prospect of Trump’s actually becoming president is still too remote a notion to obsess upon. His negatives are too high for that.
Why, they’re up there with Hillary Clinton’s.
Hillary has no more personality or ability to achieve warm human engagement than Jeb.
So let’s just put it out there: Under the two leading pieces of conventional wisdom in American politics— that presidential races are decided by prevailing moods and that political races are won by the best politicians— we should put under active consideration that Trump- Bush and Trump- Clinton are matchups that play to Trump’s strength.
And as they say in sports, it’s all about the matchup.