You Can’t Always Get What You Want

On Thursday night, at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention, it became official. Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for President of the United States. In a long and rousing speech, clocking in at one hour and 15 minutes, the billionaire real estate developer turned politician described a bleak assessment of the state of America with a promise that he alone could fix it. Depending on your viewpoint of the man (and who doesn’t have one), it was either inspirational or depressing, unifying or divisive.

Promising to fix virtually everything with our foreign and domestic policy, it was humorous to hear, minutes after the conclusion of the speech, the Rolling Stones hit “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” If Trump can accomplish 20% of the things he promised Thursday night, he will be the greatest president in our nation’s history. He won’t be able to do this of course but the choice of the song might have attempted to make the following point: the lyrics of the song go on to say “but if you try sometime to find, you get what you need.”  I’m probably giving way too much credit for the choice of the music but the point would be, to me and all of the other Americans who are still distressed over the Trump nomination, that we didn’t want him but we need him.

Trump’s campaign slogan from the beginning has been “Make American Great Again.” During the four day convention, the campaign featured theme nights of “Make America Safe Again,” “Make America Work Again,” “Make America First Again,” and “Make America One Again.” In his acceptance speech, Trump made his best attempt to offer a vision that would be positive for the vast majority of the country, putting forth an effort to make America “One.” But he shouted much of his speech, playing to our fears of job losses, crime and terror. You could say that the theme of his speech was “Make America Afraid Again.” In the post-event coverage, the pundit class offered predictable responses depending on their ideology. On CNN, Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord called it a speech in the mold of FDR’s in 1932. Democratic strategist David Axelrod countered that FDR said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” while Trump’s message seemed to be “be afraid, be very afraid” (a reference to the old Jeff Goldblum movie The Fly).

Did this speech accomplish what Trump needed? Did he unify the Republican party, especially 24 hours after the convention snub from Ted Cruz? Did he reach out beyond the angry Republican base that fueled his ascendance to the top of the ticket? Only time will tell of course but I offer a few points:

• Because he deviated from traditional Republican orthodoxy on so many levels, Trump is potentially appealing to tens of millions of voters who feel that the “country club” GOP has left blue collar America behind. His key departure is in his opposition to the free trade deals that the GOP has championed for decades.
• Trump did not talk about abortion. He didn’t talk about God. But he did reach out to the LGBTQ community. I didn’t even know what the “Q” stood for (it stands for “questioning”). He was talking about the LGBTQ community in the context of the Orlando massacre at a gay nightclub but I heard something else with what he didn’t say. The GOP party platform calls for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Trump, by NOT talking about it, made a clear signal that he has no intention to follow the party platform on that topic. His unspoken message to the LGBTQ community was this: “if you’re a one issue voter (gay marriage), that issue is off the table for my presidency.” The same is true for abortion. Of course he’s been saying he’s pro-choice, but does anybody think that reversing Roe v Wade is part of his “Make America Great Again” agenda?
• On many occasions he presented himself as the “Law and Order” candidate, with respect to both foreign and domestic terrorism. As left-leaning pundits are quick to point out, this was a strategy employed by Richard Nixon in 1968. Nixon won the presidency that year of course. If Trump can get that to stick, he’s going to have a shot at winning in 2016. It seems like every night we’re hearing about another ISIS-inspired terrorist attack. Every time this happens may accrue to Trump’s benefit.
• When addressing Hillary Clinton’s “crimes,” the partisan crowd of delegates started chanting “Lock Her Up,” as they’ve been doing all week. Trump wisely did not join them: he said merely “Let’s beat her in November.” I don’t know how many people noticed but I’m glad he’s not in the “put her in jail” camp.
• Trump, as he has on the stump, made a play for the disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters, repeating his claim that the Vermont Senator was beaten by a “rigged system.” Normally a Republican candidate, especially a billionaire candidate, would have no appeal whatsoever to the passionate supporters of a self-avowed socialist. But Trump, like Bernie, has been passionate about how “disastrous” trade deals have screwed over the American worker. Today there was added fuel in a Wikileaks release of emails showing how the Democratic National Committee was plotting against Sanders during the primary. If Trump can siphon even 10% of the Bernie supporters away from Hillary, it could make a difference.
• He promised a whole bunch of things: he’ll reform the Veterans Administration, he’ll rebuild the military, he’ll destroy ISIS, he’ll get free-riding NATO nations to pay their fair share for our mutual defense, he’ll rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, he’ll bring back jobs from China and Mexico, he’ll negotiate great trade deals, he’ll lower taxes for everyone, he’ll provide school choice. I could go on and on and on. The point is that he provided virtually no specifics about how he’ll do it; he just said that he would do it, “believe me.” Don’t expect him to provide any of those specifics between now and election day. He has learned that people vote based on emotion, not on facts. In 2008 Hillary Clinton made fun of Barack Obama’s lofty goals, saying “the skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.” It is an absolute fact that Obama won a landslide victory on the “Hope and Change” and “Yes We Can” slogans and his promise for a post-partisan America. Trump also could win with the mere force of his personality, that “I can do it.” He has already proven himself expert at dodging questions about details. It will drive the media nuts but most of the country doesn’t care.
• In a troubling sign if you’re a Trump supporter, the candidate simply can’t let things go. One of the biggest stories of the convention was Ted Cruz’ non-endorsement speech on Wednesday in which he got booed off the stage. Trump’s initial Tweet included the line “no big deal.” But he couldn’t help himself: on Friday, he dwelled on Cruz, saying that he “wouldn’t accept” the Texas Senator’s endorsement if it was forthcoming in the future and repeating the idiotic theory that there might have been a connection between Cruz’ father and Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK’s assassin). “There was a picture on the front page of the National Enquirer, which does have credibility,” Trump said. He added that the Enquirer “should be very respected.” Earth to Donald: you won, you vanquished Cruz, he was humiliated on Wednesday. Get back on message!

I’ve been humbled too much about this crazy campaign season to offer any conclusion about whether this convention helped or hurt Trump. A lot of it depends on the Democratic Convention next week. You can expect Hillary and her subordinates to paint Trump as a dangerous, unprepared and unqualified demagogue. But they run a risk, even if it’s unintentional, of being the party solely of oppressed minorities. If the takeaway from the Democratic convention is all about giving citizenship to illegal immigrants, about how police officers are killing black people, and how the Republicans will take away the right to choose and the right to marry, they may lose the white vote badly. In our polarized society, we will likely never see a bigger split in the presidential vote along racial and gender lines. That will likely produce a second Clinton presidency but I’ve given up trying to predict this political campaign.

What will be interesting to see is to what degree Hillary Clinton dominates the female vote. Normal logic would say that she should trounce Trump with women voters. She has the history-making “first woman president” glass ceiling to break while he has a litany of sound bites on tape that disparage women. But if there’s one thing that Trump accomplished this week, he showed the nation that he has a wonderful family. Despite the normal family strain of three marriages, his adult children all seem to be marvelous and well-adjusted human beings.

The best two speeches of the week were from Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday and Ivanka Trump on Thursday. Ivanka was simply magnificent. Besides being stunningly beautiful and charismatic, thus able to capture anyone’s attention, Ivanka painted a side of her father that may have surprised the casual observer. Besides extolling her father’s virtues as a parent, she told the story about how he hired women for executive positions, how he has paid women equally for equal work, saying “politicians talk about wage equality, but my father has made it a practice at his company throughout his entire career.”  She also potentially took a wedge issue off the table by indicating that Trump would champion paid maternity leave. You can expect to see Ivanka on the campaign trail and the TV talk show circuit throughout this campaign. She and her older brother Don Jr. are Trump’s biggest assets. The Trump children humanize the candidate and deliver this message: if Trump has such wonderful adult children, he must not be the ogre that people say he is.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Bodig