When Donald Trump first announced he was running for president, comedians joked that he would put a golden TRUMP sign on the White House. This week, he more or less did, writes John Matisonn.
Trump brands everything. A considerable part of his income comes from projects for which he is paid a branding fee for nothing more than the use of his name.
This week, for the first time in history, large TRUMP-PENCE campaign signs bracketed the mansion’s south portico.
After his speech, a White House crowd of 1 500 people watched a fireworks display that lit up his surname in the sky.
After testing several lines of attack, the campaign settled on the theme that Trump’s opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, is a “Trojan horse” for socialists, who will undermine law and order and destroy America.
Modelled on former President Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign, Rep. Jim Jordan pounded the “law and order” case. Biden would defund the police, defund border patrol, defund the military, and “take away your guns. Democrats won’t let you go to church, but they’ll let you protest. Democrats won’t let you go to work, but they’ll let you riot. Democrats won’t let you go to school, but they’ll let you loot”.
Another pro-Trump legislator, Rep. Matt Gaetz, raised the rhetoric even higher: “They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS 13 to live next door.” MS 13 is an international criminal street gang, alleged to have about 40 000 members worldwide.
By contrast, Charlie Kirk, the 26-year-old founder of the young conservative organisation Turning Point USA, called Trump “the bodyguard of Western civilisation”.
America’s deep divisions were as deep as ever.
As Trump accepted his party nomination for re-election, protests outside the White House condemned the latest videoed police shooting of a black father of three, Jacob Blake, who received seven bullets in his back, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.
Adding to the tension, a 17-year old Trump supporter killed two protesters with his rifle at a protest against Blake’s attack.
Neither incident was mentioned at the convention. Most speeches also either ignored the devastating impact of Covid 19 on lives and jobs, or mentioned it as if it was over or nearly over.
Trump’s critics condemned his violations of the “norms” of democratic behaviour. They were indeed numerous.
But how worried should we, living in a young constitutional democracy whose institutions have also been undermined by a previous president, be at this global trend?
The well-produced Republican Party convention broke multiple written and unwritten rules. Many White House employees probably broke the Hatch Act, which prohibits mixing government and partisan work, but it’s unlikely the Trump Administration will charge anyone for doing what the president directed.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broke a rule he himself approved for his staff, when he spoke live to the convention from the roof of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel while in Israel on official business. Secretaries of State usually avoid political campaigns because they represent the entire country abroad.
With more than usual political cynicism, Trump held two government events at the convention to bolster his re-election: Pardoning a former bank robber who has gone straight, and holding a ceremony to grant citizenship to immigrants.
These events were intended to blunt Trump’s rejection by both suburban and black voters, turned off by his voluble opposition to immigrants and his support for heavier sentences for defendants.
The party broke another norm when it decided not to have a party platform at all, making do with a statement supporting Trump’s re-election. Some saw that as another sign he is building a personality cult, rather than a governing philosophy.
Another obvious taboo he flouted was nepotism. Headline convention speakers are usually mostly party leaders. Presidential nominees usually have a spouse speak one night, and perhaps a son or daughter to humanise the candidate as the good, loving parent the public does not see.
This convention went much further, starring Trump after Trump after Trump. Of course, his wife Melania spoke. All four adult children, Donald Junior, Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany made speeches, most of which were the kind made by aspirant politicians. So did Trump daughter-in-law, Lara, and Donald Junior’s girlfriend, Kimberley Guilfoyle. Both work on the campaign.
Donald Jr, now a top Republican virtual fundraiser, may have political aspirations of his own. His combined 11 million followers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are a vital part of the party’s messaging.
According to the New York Times, Donald Jr fears electoral defeat in November could result in federal prosecutions of Trump, his family and his political allies.
The convention’s nepotism was made more stark by the absence of any former Republican presidents or members. No Reagans or Bushes or family members of the late Senator John McCain attended.
A dozen Republican senators said they would not attend, apparently because there was no social distancing and few masks. The risk of Covid 19 infection was high.
Trump’s last big rally, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 20 June, led to an outbreak that killed an unknown number of supporters, including Herman Cain, a former presidential candidate, who boasted that he had not socially distanced at the event, got infected and died. His name was not publicly mentioned at the convention.
Ivanka has a job in the White House, for which she declines to take a salary. But Trump is not the first president to appoint a family member to his administration. President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert, as attorney-general. At the time, Kennedy joked that he wanted to go out of his house in the middle of the night and make the announcement to an empty street.
Democrats were quick to point out that precedents, once established, are likely to be followed by the next incumbent.
They occurred in an administration whose attorney-general, Bill Barr, has made unusually partisan interventions in prosecutions to favour Trump associates in trouble with the law, and whose president used his powers to commute the sentence of his long-time associate, Roger Stone.
If Trump wins in November, he will have moved the Republican Party decisively towards his unique world view. If he fails, the party will likely face massive soul-searching about what it stands for.
Trump has cut into Biden’s lead in recent weeks.
In some states critical to victory in the electoral college that chooses the president, opinion polls show Biden worse off than his predecessor, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, was at this stage of the last election. Pundits predicting a Biden victory a few weeks ago are now more cautious.
A lot depends on whether swing voters believe that Democrats’ focus on the health and financial damage of Covid 19 outweighs Republicans’ call for tougher policing to reduce crime. Do voters think America’s biggest problem is the pandemic and black mistreatment, or rising criminality and creeping socialism?
Three and a half years of Trump’s presidency have taken a toll on institutions. The firing of inspectors-general, tasked with investigating corruption, has done damage. So have other firings of lifelong civil servants.
Most leading medical practitioners believe the US’ famed Centre for Disease Control and Federal Drug Administration have not stood up to political pressure as well as they had hoped. The consensus of Trump’s critics is that institutional damage will be repaired if he loses in November, though fixing America’s global standing might be slower.
Given the scale and immediacy of world problems from climate change to the pandemic and rising authoritarianism, another four years of Trump would be far harder to reverse.
President Ronald Reagan’s chief speech writer, Peggy Noonan, who guards Reagan’s legacy fiercely, put the old party establishment view succinctly this week: “We are not a third-rate banana republic, but at the moment we’re imitating one.”
– John Matisonn is the author of Cyril’s Choices: Lessons from 25 years of freedom in South Africa.
*Want to respond to the columnist? Send your letter or article to [email protected] with your name, profile picture, contact details and location. We encourage a diversity of voices and views in our readers’ submissions and reserve the right not to publish any and all submissions received.
Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.
