Clinton v. Trump

A few days after writing the piece below, and having read yet more articles about Trump's doings and sayings, as well as accounts of the failure of his "handlers" to rein him in I formed a new judgment about the entire Trump phenomenon. I now believe that Trump does not at all want to be president of the United States and is perfectly content to have Hillary Clinton assume that burden. His activities in this pre-election period will significantly enhance the Trump brand, with large additions to the coffers of Donald J. Trump.

Some Comments about the Campaign for the Presidency and an Evocation of Future Historians Who will Explain it All

   With the nomination of Donald Trump at the Republican convention at the end of July, we have entered a period in American politics of what I can only call wacky, near-surreal. Barring unforeseeable circumstances—and with three months to go, there is plenty of time for them—those 90 days are likely to end on November 8 with Hillary Clinton’s election to the presidency. While we are still at the beginning of this interesting period (as in the Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times) a pattern has clearly emerged. 

   Hillary is diligently going about the business of being a “standard” candidate: making speeches at rallies in states she needs to win. She prosaically sets forth her positions on various issues, interspersed with swipes at her opponent.

   Trump does two quite different things. Once in a while, he makes a formal speech on a specific topic, following the teleprompter and, presumably reading the prose produced by his writers. (I note that these policy speeches are always followed by a critical NYTimes editorial.) But most of the time in his campaigning, Trump shoots off his mouth on a miscellany of topics, with just about no support  or even detail given to any of them. The FactCheck teams have a field day; Trump does not get a high grade.

   How long will this go on, to start talking about the future? Mike Pence, Trump’s chosen candidate for vice president, has been urged to persuade him to withdraw his candidacy. That won’t happen; it’s not in Trump’s character. That nuttiness will go on to election day and may yet take forms that cannot be predicted.

   Turn now to consider what we get by way of accounts of the populations who support the two candidates for the presidency. To begin with there are two constantly cited ingredients in this battle. Hillary is regarded as highly experienced in the activities required of a president, but is also repeatedly characterized as dishonest, not trustworthy. As for Trump, the main point for his supporters is said to be that he does not walk on the paths of politics as usual, but comes to the scene from the perspective of something of an outsider. He is also regarded by many as simply unqualified to be president.

  But besides stating these reasons supporters and opponents have of the two candidates, we have frequent and detailed accounts of the classes of people who are for and against. By far the largest amount of prose on a discussion of the race is devoted to endless polls reporting who is for and against: younger white votes with (or without) a college education; African Americans living in the South; older women; men in certain income brackets and much, if not endlessly, more. Sometimes, but certainly not always, the polls also cite such reasons for the putative voters’ views as are given in the previous paragraph.

   What the journalists tell us in this period before the election, to sum up, is who (which class of people) is for whom—and that in some detail—and what reasons they give for supporting their candidate—and that in a quite cursory way.

   But note, most if not all that is thus written is descriptive and tells us, when true, what is the case. That, after all, is the main job of journalism: to give an accurate account of what is going on in the world, in greater or lesser detail. It tells us virtually nothing about why what is being reported is happening. For that we must mostly go beyond journalism to history.

   I grant that the distinction between the two pursuits is not as sharp as just stated: journalists also give accounts of why the events they report on have occurred and historians must of course tell the tale the course of which they propose to explain. Thus among the accounts one reads of these electoral goings-on are some stabs at explanations as to why, but the main burden of historical analysis will fall on the shoulders of historians of American politics and most probably on those practicing this craft a few decades after the event and more future still. 

   As I see it, there is a huge job ahead of those who will want to explain what has been going on since the end of the two conventions. What makes uneducated white voters go this way and African Americans that way? Those are issues best raised by those historians of the future.

   In the (too-long) interim, I follow the unprecedented and quite nutty course of the campaign for the presidency in 2016—with considerable distaste.