The virus at the core of our politics
Donald Trump is a cock of the walk with authoritarian tendencies.
As I watched the president’s State of the Union performance — and it was a performance, equal parts Oprah, Ellen, Jerry Springer, The Price Is Right, and going way, way back, Queen For A Day — I was struck by the presidential entrance.
Just as he stepped onto the dais of the House of Representatives, Donald Trump gave the lapels of his suit coat a slight tug. He then paused ever so briefly. Behold me, he seemed to be saying, to the lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, democratically elected like himself to serve in Washington.
At his raucous political rallies, we’ve all seen him walk away from the lectern and mic, to stand momentarily alone as waves of adulation washed over him. On these occasions, Trump lifts his head and sticks out his chin.
The gesture, fairly or not, always reminds me of old black-and-white newsreels of Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, clad in military tunic, taking in the cheers of thousands as he stands atop some stone balcony in the heart of Rome.
Mussolini was a poser, a stick-out-the-chin kind of guy.
I wouldn’t be half so alarmed by President Trump if I had any confidence at all that he would accept defeat in November in the same spirit that, say, Herbert Hoover or George H.W. Bush accepted their defeats after just one term in the White House: private grumbling at the unfairness of it all and complaints about the fickle nature of the American people, but public acceptance of the results of a free and fair election followed by peaceful departure from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
For the life of me, I can’t imagine Donald Trump reacting in this manner to defeat and ouster from the White House.
I fear he will depart kicking and screaming, accusing and slandering both the election and his successor. If he departs at all …
Following his impeachment acquittal the other day by the Senate, the president tweeted a short video of himself remaining president “4eva.” The animated caricature of a political ad concludes with a glowering Donald Trump. The year is 2048 and beyond.
Am I making too much of this? I pray to God I am.
Millions of Americans, including many thousands in Southwestern Pennsylvania, love Donald Trump. Not infrequently, I ask myself, “What do they see that I don’t?”
Republicans are especially admiring of the president. He couldn’t be any more popular among the GOP faithful.
Trump is firmly in charge of the party that once scorned him. It’s a measure of how malleable and whimsical political opinion can be, I suppose, though the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower and Bush senior is also the party of Joseph McCarthy, William Jenner, Lee Atwater, and Newt Gingrich.
I’m old enough to remember 1964 Republican convention delegates directing boos and cat-calls at the likes of Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley in their broadcast perches high above the Cow Palace (that’s in San Francisco) floor. The stalwarts at the Barry Goldwater convention hooted and hollered at Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York and a Goldwater foe.
“The ‘kooks’ dominated the galleries,” campaign biographer Teddy White tells us, “hating and screaming and reveling in their own frenzy.”
Those watching the convention on television were left with an “indelible impression of savagery,” White imparts.
In its way, the 1964 Republican convention was the first Trump rally: furious, raw, full of wrath.
The difference is this: Goldwater operatives attempted to squelch the demonstrations of anger. Donald Trump goes out of his way to fan them.
We are at a dangerous place in our politics: Trump’s carnival barking that passed for the State of the Union was prelude to the Pelosi blunder: Nancy’s ripping of the pages of the president’s speech, in plain sight, on television.
The State of the Union debacle demonstrated just how much damage we’ve endured the last three years.
And at the heart of this damage is a sick presidency and, sorry to say, a sick, sycophant political party.
“It is the nature of parties to retain enmities far more firmly than original principles,” wrote the English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay.
For Republicans, first principles are gone; all that remains is enmity, and Trump.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.