Trump is Not the Carnival Sideshow -The Political "Normal" Is
With Donald Trump now out of the presidential race, can we take a moment to consider the context in which he existed?
First, here’s Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank with the conventional bit:
"Having Donald Trump in the presidential race gave it the feel of a carnival.
"ABC News described his “roller-coaster flirtation” with a run for the
White House. The Post’s Chris Cillizza wrote of the “circus-like
speculation” about his presidential aspirations. The New York Daily News
put Trump in clown makeup and called him “Sideshow Don,” while the
Post’s Jennifer Rubin dubbed him “Trump the Clown.” President Obama
himself used the term “carnival barker” in an apparent reference to
Trump.
"But I think a different theme-park metaphor might be more relevant to
the last 90 days of the Trump pseudo campaign: the House of Horrors.
He showed us how truly scary our political system has become…."
Here’s where I beg to differ. Donald Trump is only one of many reminders of what is a bigger problem. It is not
that nutsos and self-promoting empty shells running for president are
signs of “how truly scary our political system has become.”
What is scary is how elections themselves have very little to do with
anything—yet they suck up a tremendous amount of energy from the media
and the public, leaving little left for the hard work of actually
figuring out how to make a go of this country and this world.
They principally provide material for distraction. There’s a reason
that many of the people who spend a lot of their time thinking and
talking about celebrities’ private lives, and/or memorizing the
statistics of scores of sports stars, also derive deep satisfaction from
the seasonal political game. It…is….an….amusement.
For even Dana Milbank gets an entire column out of how much he finds
Trump emblematic of “our political system, which rewards hucksters.”
That’s the kind of theme that makes columns go round.
No, the bigger problem is that we fail to properly study the system itself in terms of the “non-hucksters” who get to the top.
How is it, do you suppose, that an exciting reformer like Obama would
turn out in so many ways to be rather like the other men who came
before him?
How do you suppose it is that the ones who really seemed even a tad
fiery, who talk a lot about big money, about accountability for the
Pentagon and the CIA, who talk openly about ordinary people getting
screwed, that sort of thing—the Howard Deans, the Gary Harts, the John
Edwards’, the John Andersons—for one reason or another never manage to
get in? Usually, they don’t make it through the primaries. And it’s not
just because some of them have an eye for the ladies, or whatever their
personal defect supposedly is.
The truth is there’s something wrong with our shining democracy itself.
The range of permissible options seems permanently constricted.
Do you want some war overseas, or a lot? Do you prefer that workers
give away all of the gains they’ve made in the past century, or just
many of those gains? Do you want to do nothing about climate change or
make some noise but still do very little? Do you favor one group of
investment bankers determining economic policy—or another? Which Ivy
League crew is your favorite? What’s your flavor—Dick Cheney or Rahm
Emanuel?
The Donald Trumps, the Sarah Palins, and their ilk are not a sideshow
to the real, substantive campaign. They are a distraction so that, by
comparison, the rest can seem to offer us something.
When in fact, they do not.
(More to come on this subject)
