Trump hasn’t changed politics
Billionaire’s rivals continue to run conventional races
One of the many paradoxes of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy is that it has dominated politics without changing how politics are practiced.
Despite Trump’s prominence, his rivals are not aping his tactics. They advertise on TV when they can afford to. They stay on script. They don’t use the word “stupid” to describe voters in Iowa.
No one else ridicules a woman’s personal appearance, denigrates the service of a famous POW or cites FDR’s wartime roundup of immigrants as a happy precedent.
No one else has dispensed so readily with conventional virtues, such as modesty (“I’m really, really smart”). And no one else has been denounced by everyone from Dick Cheney to J.K. Rowling (who pronounced Trump worse than Voldemort).
Trump has given voice to an angry, alienated segment of GOP voters that will not easily be placated, much less enticed to follow the eventual nominee if Trump founders.
How to assess his long-term impact? No one knows how he’s gotten this far, much less how long he’ll go.
When Jeb Bush spoke to a Jewish group in Washington this month, he said his father wasn’t watching CSI anymore. “He’s now watching Fox again, trying to figure out Donald Trump. That’s his main goal in life,” Bush said. “Hard for a guy like that to understand the Trump phenomenon.”
It’s not just 41. John Geer, a renowned Vanderbilt political scientist, sounds as discombobulated as a freshman in one of his classes: “No one has a solid explanation for this phenomenon, and I am no different.’’
Any analysis of Trump’s success comes with a Trump-size caveat: In a large field, before a primary ballot has been cast, he has managed to attract only a plu
rality of Republicans, as measured by polls. It’s not clear he can expand that into 50-plus-one in the primaries, let alone the general election.
Above all, his campaign’s ultimate impact “depends on how it ends,’’ says Dan Schnur, who worked on John McCain’s presidential campaign and teaches politics at the University of Southern California. There are at least four possibilities: Trump is nominated; he loses and supports the nominee; he loses and snipes at the nominee from the sidelines; he loses and runs as an independent or on a third-party ticket (which he said last week he would not do).
There’s one more possible outcome, which is that no matter what Trump does after the primaries, his campaign will have so alienated groups such as Hispanics and women that it costs the GOP the election.
Sal Russo, a founder of the Tea Party Express movement who worked in 1992 for independent candidate Ross Perot, says that if the GOP unites around another candidate as its nominee, “then none of the machinations of the campaign will matter. All the primary opponents will be forgotten and inconsequential to the general election.’’
Take 2008, he says. Hillary Clinton, the unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination, was not a factor in November. Four years later, onetime GOP primary polling leaders such as Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann had no impact on Mitt Romney’s race against Barack Obama.
If Trump crashes, which has seemed imminent for months, he may be remembered only as a cautionary tale, along with failed demagogues such as Louisiana populist Huey Long (“Every Man a King ”), Sen. Joseph McCarthy (“Communists in the State Department”) and George Wallace (“not a dime’s worth of difference’’ between the Democrats and Republicans).
Still, Trump’s success would seem to make him an appealing model. John F. Kennedy’s victory in 1960 created a demand for telegenic, charismatic young Democrats. Flinty sincerity like Ronald Reagan’s still makes Republicans swoon.
But just because Trump does it doesn’t mean everyone can. Elizabeth Wilner, vice president of the Kantar Media consulting firm, calls him “an incredible anomaly.’’
What lesser mortal could successfully emulate a candidate so rich, so bombastic, so opportunistic, so New York? Trump is a billionaire who claims independence from special interests, and a network TV star and best-selling author with peerless name recognition. He has the sharp elbows of a Manhattan real estate developer and the PR savvy of a veteran of America’s most competitive news market.
In this sense, Trump is like The Beatles or Frank Lloyd Wright — an intuitive genius. “You shouldn’t use him as an example of anything that could be replicated,’’ says Kip Cassino of Borrell Associates, a media consulting firm.
John Zogby, a pollster, says he doesn’t believe Trump’s particular talents will dissuade others from following his lead. “If we keep going down this road, someone else will come along and say, ‘Trump had the right ideas. He didn’t play it just right.’ ’’
Experts say Trump’s campaign has featured innovations and insights that could inform campaigns in the future. SOCIAL MEDIA Every campaign pays it lip service. But Trump has become the king of Twitter, collecting 5 million followers and counting. The site is fast, free and perfect for the middle-school put-downs at which he excels. Zac Moffatt, cofounder of Targeted Victory, a digital media consulting firm that works with Republicans, calls Trump “a look into the future of how public figures will behave online.’’ FREE MEDIA How ironic: The candidate who could buy all the airtime he wants hasn’t needed to. Every candidate wants free media, but only Trump has been consistently able to get it, by making news and generating ratings. It’s all the more impressive this year, given the large field. Much of the coverage is derogatory, but given the news media are held in contempt by Trump’s followers, “it just gives him more juice,” says Tobe Berkovitz of Boston University, who’s worked on national campaigns. VOTER ANGER The most conservative Republican voters have been angry for years. Witness the Tea Party re- volt in 2010 and the results of the midterm elections of 2014. “There’s this persistent feeling ‘the party’s not paying attention to me,’ ’’ says Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall College poll. A movement famous for having no leader found one in Trump, who has tapped discontent with government dysfunction, economic stagnation and demographic change. HOT RHETORIC Trump revolutionized what can be said in a national political campaign — denigrating the POW heroism of John McCain and implying a female debate questioner was menstruating. Trump says things that would end most campaigns yet push his poll numbers higher. “As far as his supporters are concerned, there’s nothing he can say that goes over the line,” observes Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan. “There is no line.’’
Campaigns have foundered on far less, Madonna says. He’s reminded of a 2004 Democratic candidate’s demise after his oddsounding cry on the night of the Iowa primary: “All Howard Dean did was scream!” PLAIN LANGUAGE Ted Cruz sounds as if he’s speaking at a Harvard-Princeton debate. Trump sounds as if he’s talking to New York ironworkers. When was the last time a national campaign announced a major position, as Trump did when he proposed barring Muslim immigration, with a phrase like “until we know what the hell is going on.’’ Trump repeats his favorite adjectives as if they were Scripture, notably “weak,” “fantastic” and “great.” OUTSIDER APPEAL Everyone runs against Washington, including (especially) those who’ve made careers there. But Trump, who had never even run for school committee, is the real thing. He has made what was a qualification for office — experience — a liability and inexperience an asset. If Trump wins the nomination, he will have come further from outside the mainstream than anyone since utility executive Wendell Willkie, the GOP candidate in 1940. SPONTANEITY AND CANDOR To fans, Trump has been as refreshing as a thunderstorm on a hot summer day. Voters tired of scripted, traditional campaigning delight in his willingness to say whatever seems to come to mind. The contrast with more conventional campaigners, such as Jeb Bush, has been devastating. In such a stultifying milieu, says Mitchell McKinney, who teaches at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, “even the outlandish has its appeal.’’ A POLITICAL LEGACY It’s possible Trump’s biggest impact on politics is yet to come.
In recent years, Republicans have succeeded in channeling the party’s base, or conservative wing, in support of relatively moderate nominees such as McCain and Romney. Now loosed, the passions of that wing may not be easily directed. Even if Trump doesn’t get the nomination, those passions could lead to the nomination of a candidate sufficiently far to the right to ensure the election of a Democrat.
Or it could lead to a more fundamental schism, including a third-party candidacy.
The GOP establishment faced the 2016 election determined to avoid the internal stresses that weakened Romney in 2012, McKinney says. Instead, Trump has made them worse.
There’s a lesson here, Schnur says: “When you unleash your base, it’s unrealistic to think that they’ll stop at your goals. … The bases of both parties are capable of wreaking the havoc Trump is causing.’’ He cites the early success of Bernie Sanders, a selfavowed socialist, against the wellfinanced, well-known Hillary Clinton. “Just because a Sanders can’t win this year doesn’t mean one won’t in the future,’’ he says — especially against a less formidable centrist than Clinton.
The usual outcome when a party’s id takes over and a candidate such as Barry Goldwater (conservative Republican, 1964) or George McGovern (liberal Democrat, 1972) is nominated: electoral disaster, followed by a retreat to the center — not a congenial place for the likes of Donald Trump.
“You shouldn’t use (Trump) as an example of anything that could be replicated.”
Kip Cassino, Borrell Associates