Trump's Shadow
The era of Trumpism nears a new crisis
Four more years? I find it hard to believe that anyone is actually amped up for the possibility of a second Trump administration. I find it hard to believe that Donald Trump is happy about the prospect, rather than being impelled by vengeance, pride, and a grim view of what he thinks the country is and should be.
For nearly a decade, Donald Trump has dominated U.S. politics and America’s place in the world. Even during the Biden presidency, interest in Trump outpaced interest in his successor—and that was before Biden’s withdrawal from the race 52 days ago betokened his resignation from the ceremonial, if not actual, role. (It may surprise you to learn that Joe Biden remains president of the United States, as the media has all but stopped covering the actual administration.)
The shadow of Trumpism has colored nearly everything. The style and substance of U.S. politics differs from its pre-Trump era to a degree much greater than, say, before Reagan. Although Trumpism has not produced big structural changes in the way that Lyndon Johnson or FDR’s administrations did, it has wrought a coarsening—or, if you prefer, a liberating—effect on how politics is done.
Trump is a product of television but he is a creature of social media, of the likes, faves, and random thoughts of the timeline or a Facebook wall; he ran into the supports of the structures that divided the private id of right-wing spaces from the public square, and there will be no rebuilding them for a generation. There were always examples of political memorabilia as déclassé as “Trump that b*tch” shirts or “Let’s Go Brandon” stickers, but they were usually displayed more discreetly or only in backwaters. Recently, I encountered a pair of redcaps wearing full Trump gear, head to toe, in the Dallas Fort Worth airport. There was a time such a level of craziness was reserved for the floors of political conventions. And in the same way, there have always been those who believed that some outgroup target of the day was going to eat our cats or dogs or babies, but rarely did you hear the top of the ticket echo them; even Nixon outsourced attacks on Kennedy’s popery to Billy Graham.
Trump’s shadow envelops everything. I am probably stretching the point, but the comparison I keep coming back to is how the reign of Andrew Jackson changed the tenor of U.S. politics. The analogy appeals to me because the Trump era has helped me understand Jacksonian politics more than any amount of reading or scholarship. Ah, I think, so this is how anti-Jacksonsians thought about the vulgarity, the economic illiteracy, the petty feuds, the elevation of those officeholders. It is funny how experiencing life after the “end of history” has helped me understand eras before. I’d rather like to stop collecting any more such experiences; can’t we just go back to Nineties anomie?
Trump has not, yet, changed U.S. policy to the degree that Jackson did, but he has also not, yet, gotten the second term in which such changes could be realized by his more reliable cadres. And, of course, he enjoys somewhat better relations with the Court than did Jackson.
Yet there is a second shadow. The debate showed it plainly. It is Trump himself. The Trump of 2015-2016 could be by turns vile, bombastic, and funny, but he was always lively and surprising—watching politesse be shredded can be thrilling both in the sense of alarm and in the sense of entertainment.
Trump now presents as a shade of that figure. He is tired. Tired in the sense that a faded band playing the same setlist of aging hits in smaller venues is tired, yes. But also physically tired. In the first 2016 general-election debate, he moved. He reacted. He emoted. He projected. Now? He grips the podium like a support. Attack lines land not like a right cross but like a flopping fish.
To check if this was my imagination, I grabbed the transcripts from the first 2016 debate and yesterday’s exchange. I entered Trump’s passages (not including interjections) into a readability calculator and calculated seven different metrics:
Automated Readability Index (grade level): 2024, 4.53; 2016, 5.84
Flesch Reading Ease (scale, 100 easiest): 2024, 77; 2016, 78
Gunning Fog Readability (grade level): 2024, 7.5; 2016, 8.5
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (grade level): 2024, 4.81; 2016, 5.53
Coleman-Liau Readability Index (grade level): 2024, 6.41; 2016, 6.73
Smog Index Readability Score (grade level): 2024, 5.76; 2016, 6.31
Linsear Write Readability Formula (grade level): 2024, 4.56; 2016, 6.24
Ensemble (all together): 2024, grade 6; 2016, grade 7
In other words, it’s not just your imagination. Trump really is less coherent. He really does talk less fluently. The slippage is real.
That he’s less capable makes him no less potent. Hillary, by nearly all accounts, won her first debate handily too. But it does suggest an absence or void at the top of a second Trump administration to be filled by forces unlike those that animated his first. And should that happen, the shadow he casts will be long indeed.
Brilliant and original take. “Four MORE years?” Would make a killer oppo sign to carry at a Trump rally. With all due respect to academia, Professor, you should be doing this full time.