HOW WE GOT HIM
Primaries began as expressions of democracy. Presidential candidates were often culled by party bosses in proverbial smoke-filled rooms. To supplant these inner circles, the voting public would be given two opportunities to partake: at the nomination stage and then the general election. Tens of millions of citizens now turn out. In 2016, fully 60,542,136 lined up in the nominating cycle, as did 136,787,187 for the final balloting.
On Broadway, theaters conduct “casting calls.” When a new production is underway, it’s announced that anyone aspiring to a part can show up for an audition. And a similar sorting initiates how presidents are chosen. Thus the Republicans set a casting call for their first 2016 debate, to be held in August 2015 in Cleveland, a full fifteen months prior to the ultimate election. After preliminary gleaning, seventeen aspirants were deemed qualified for the event. Sixteen were men and one was a woman, a ratio reflective of the party’s testosterone tilt. The panel included five sitting or former senators, nine past or present governors, a retired surgeon, and two business executives. Of the latter two, one was Carly Fiorina, the only woman, and the other Donald Trump.
Rewatching that initial August 2015 debate makes clear why Trump would surely finish first. What started to his advantage was the sheer size of the cast. Since the time given to each allowed barely a sound bite, attention would go the most arresting presence. Trump’s fifteen seasons on The Apprentice obviously helped. To hold easily diverted viewers, television must make the most of every minute. Trump came prepared to dominate the stage with entrancing verbal tweets. Unlike the other sixteen, he felt no constraints regarding accuracy or civility, let alone paragraphs of policies.
Also bolstering him was the absence of a compelling rival. True, Republicans are not notable for charisma. In 2015, there certainly wasn’t a nascent Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan in the wings. An archetypal corporate favorite, Jeb Bush, was an early casualty, not least to Trump’s ribald jibes.
The American presidency is an august institution and the GOP an esteemed association. To turn its selection process into so open an imbroglio is demeaning and self-defeating. Yet it isn’t easy to propose a repair. What body would be empowered to tell a New Jersey governor or a South Carolina senator that their encumbering the platform would undermine common goals? Nor was there anyone to say that Donald Trump lacked the requisites for the Republican mantle.
Neither party could give a committee so encompassing a power. Lacking a protocol, both are tied to a volatile tiger, hurtled along whatever twists it takes.1 Which is where Republicans found themselves when they saw their primaries giving their nomination to Donald Trump.
Unlike the other contenders, Donald Trump was a polished performer. Like all stars, he created his own following and never lost the spotlight. With the debates as spectacles and raucous rallies as his medium, he knocked off his opponents in quick succession.
Once he had joined the race, it’s worth pondering whether his nomination was inevitable. There seem several reasons to think it was. As noted, he had no challenger with the stature of, say, Ronald Reagan. Established centers supported Jeb Bush a while, but he lacked the spirit or slogans to counterpunch Trump. The rest of the platform was easy pickings. The bottom thirteen, Carson through Perry, together amassed only 1,395,722 followers, not even a third of what Kasich drew by himself.
Mike Huckabee’s paltry 51,947 and Rick Santorum’s shameful 16,827 make clear they were never national figures. Insofar as their cluttering the platform paved the way for Trump, they served as spoilers on his behalf. True, the three runners-up, Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio, managed to assemble 15,504,654 votes. That was 1,941,410 over Trump’s total, indeed a polling majority. Had they caucused, with two agreeing to step down, the third might have prevailed. Or perhaps not.
For practical purposes, the nation’s parties are only shadows of their former selves. They were once disciplined associations, based on the loyalty of their adherents. True, there were regional and factional divisions. But when crucial choices had to be made, the watchword was in a venerable typing exercise: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.”
They are still called parties, but they are no more than an ethereal presence. Both have national committees, with offices and staffs and fund-raising mailings. But they have been eclipsed by other entities. In the Republicans’ case, think of the Kochs and the Mercers, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Club for Growth.2
There’s another lesson of history. We can never foretell whether individuals will emerge to alter the course of events. Such a person was Donald Trump. To be sure, the full reckoning isn’t in. Nor is it clear how lasting his imprint will be. Even so, his personal stamp on a national party has no recent rival.
No one sensed it beforehand, but 2016 was to become the most entertaining election in the nation’s history. This was due, of course, to Donald Trump. (Bernie Sanders made his own contribution.) True, Ronald Reagan was also a performer. And he used the debates to his advantage. Even so, he had paid his partisan dues during two terms as governor of California, where he headed the nation’s second-largest administration. Conceivably, it was only a matter of time before an ego like his would choose to use the nominating process as a personal pedestal.
That Donald Trump won his party’s nomination was far from being fortuitous. It was due to his hard and unrelenting effort. Thus he outflanked and outperformed his rivals, not least by rewriting the rules for how that prize should be secured. (Think back on how conventionally Mitt Romney and John McCain attained their candidacies.)
The general election proved to be a different story. From one standpoint, Trump reached the Oval Office due to a historic happenstance. It was that 1789 and 1804 essentially set in stone an entity called the Electoral College, whose members have the final say on who will be the nation’s chief executive. Trump pinned down 304 of its 538 votes, in the only computation that counts.
Did He Win, or Did She Lose?
From another vantage, it could be contended—as it will be here—that Donald Trump did not win the presidency. Rather, Hillary Rodham Clinton lost it.
Why she bombed has been much discussed and will long be debated. The litany includes missing emails, insinuations by the FBI, closed conclaves with financiers, not visiting Wisconsin. She also found herself facing an opponent who outmatched her in vigor and verve, not to mention a single-sentence message. Plus how she seemed to come across: aloof, stolid, the favored student. What prospect, if any at all, was she pledging for the country?3
Even amid differences in style, Trump and Clinton shared at least one trait. It was a feeling of entitlement. Trump could get away with it, by brazening out any imbroglios. As with secreting his taxes, or fabricating bone spurs to cloak his cowardice, Clinton’s demeanor sent a not-dissimilar message. It was that it was her turn to have the presidency. What came across was that she had paid her dues, which warranted her return to the White House. Of course, such presumptions are seen as less tenable in a woman. Trump could refuse to answer charges by just jutting his chin. Clinton may have felt entitled, but she couldn’t match her opponent in arrogance. At any event, her choice to obfuscate her Wall Street speeches factored in her defeat.
No one would call Donald Trump a philosopher. But don’t be so quick on that score. He presented himself as articulating a vision for his nation and its citizens. To be sure, it was succinct enough to fit on a cloth cap. Yet the fact was that “Make American Great Again” struck chords with lots of people, as did his even terser “America First!” Moreover, this was Trump’s personal credo. His America would have a supra-strong military and an economy that would stare the world down.
It was not just that Clinton lacked a pithy slogan. (“Stronger Together” could have announced a new glue.) She wasn’t the kind of individual who entertains visionary thoughts and dreams. Hence she could only advance what she herself was, a policy wonk who would replicate the texture and tenets of Barack Obama’s popular, if not very inspiring, administration. But even there, she couldn’t replicate Obama’s subdued but good-humored spirit. Compared with both Trump and Obama, Clinton emerged as quite ordinary. Yet she couldn’t be other than what she was.
Nor did Clinton lose because Trump ran a winning campaign. In fact, he attracted a smaller share of the popular total than Mitt Romney, who failed to unseat Obama in 2012. She lost because she failed to enlist men and women who had quite recently shown a willingness to vote Democratic. They were there, in every state, waiting to be lured. They weren’t like the Republicans who truly detested Clinton. They would have been willing to show up for her, if she had given them some reasons to.
And we know the size of that pool. In 2008, it was 69,498,459, the number of people who had turned out for Barack Obama. More to the point, they were Americans who showed themselves willing to vote for a Democrat, indeed one with an exotic name and an African parent. Almost all of them were still around in 2016, joined by new voters. Between 2008 and 2016, the number of Americans eligible to vote increased by a bit over 8 percent. If we adjust Obama’s 2008 turnout to match the 2016 electorate, there were 75,128,851 potential Democrats out there in 2016.
Yet, as we know, Clinton’s majority was 65,677,168. That puts her 9,275,129 votes behind Obama’s first try. (And 3,067,914 less than his 2012 reelection victory.) The hard fact is that relatively few of the missing Obama people veered to Donald Trump. The great majority simply stayed at home. In their view, there just wasn’t enough about Clinton to make going to the polls worth their while.