On Wednesday, August 24th -- with ten weeks left until
Election Day – not one column inch of The New York Times front page was devoted
to the Presidential race. The names “Trump” or “Clinton” were nowhere to be
found.
For The New York Times to lose interest even momentarily
in the Presidential race is like Ryan Lochte turning down a Tequila Sunrise or actually
urinating into a toilet; it may have happened once or twice in the past few
decades, but never when so many of us happened to be paying attention.
Could it be that Trump had navigated an entire news cycle free of mean-spirited, misogynistic, or ignorant bile? Of course not. He
had a nasty twit-for-twat with Mika and Morning Joe, but The New York Times
does not hold itself to the standard of printing “all the news that’s neat to
tweet.”
No, the real explanation for Trump’s temporary
disappearance from page one of The Times was the need to take him back into the shop for
retooling so that he could re-emerge as Donald Trump 3.0.
When software companies announce a major new release,
it’s because the product has been armed with new and powerful features. Donald
Trump 3.0, however, refers to the third change in his campaign’s leadership in
the span of six months, and to the fact that he now moves effortlessly between three
wildly different personalities depending on his audience, the venue, the time
of day, and, for all we know, whether he had tacos for lunch.
Ever since that quiet Trump Hump Day, we’ve been treated
to a ferocious onslaught of three dissonant incarnations of Donald Trump, each aligned with the id, ego, and superego of his campaign management troika.
Personality Number One: The egregiously
disingenuous “softer and gentler” Donald. The reality TV star
finally collided with reality in the form of polling that indicates he might
lag behind “Pond Scum” among African Americans and Hispanics. This version of Trump is now so desperate to recover
lost ground with these constituencies that he is willing to backpedal on the
defining stance of his candidacy: immigration. Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s new
campaign manager, is the superego urging Trump to appear to care and pretend
to repent. It is strategically unwise: suddenly changing your position on your core brand
message is a marketing mortal sin. More importantly, his sudden embrace of
“humanity” in response to negative polling is morally bankrupt.
Personality Number Two: Donald Breit-Heart. This emerging version of Trump is essentially
a character assassin shooting buckshot at Hillary Clinton. What’s most
startlingly about this fusillade is that it is so badly aimed. At the very moment
when newly released emails show suggestions of influence-peddling between the
Clinton Foundation and the State Department, it appears that Trump's new campaign CEO
Steve Bannon has opened an entirely different front, charging that Hillary
Clinton is a bigot who misleads African-Americans into thinking that Democratic
policies are helpful. If this is truly
Bannon’s work, he should be arrested for practicing campaign strategy without a
license. He is burying coverage of a real Clinton liability as he manufactures
an implausible theory that lacks any basis in reality. Bannon feeds Trump’s
basic instinct that lies told loudly and often become truth. The two connect in
a perverse id pro quo.
Personality Number Three: Trump Classic.
Trump’s new handlers can teleprompter him, cut off his Twitter feed, and send
out legions of surrogates, but once Trump has his hand on a microphone, all
bets are off. Alone and unfiltered on a
stage, Trump is a protean blob of gelatinous content, changing his mind in the
moment depending on his sense of the energy in the crowd. In the end, Trump
being Trump means doing or saying whatever feels good to him in that exact
moment, invariably to stoke a crowd into a frenzy of adulation or to demonize
an opponent. It is all and only about ego.
How can we lead an orderly discussion of a candidacy
sliding into multiple personality disorder?
Surely we begin with the flagrantly dishonest pretense of
New Donald # 1, who was hastily reprogrammed by Conway, herself just installed
as campaign manager. A pollster by trade, Conway surely divined that Trump’s
candidacy was on the same downward trajectory and as far off-target as your
average Kim Jong-un missile test.
Her diagnosis: that the election is lost unless Trump can at
least approximate the levels of support among women, blacks, and Hispanics that
Mitt Romney achieved in 2012. So Conway has instructed Trump to “soften” his
positions on some of the most defining aspects of his candidacy.
Toward this goal, the Trump campaign first let it be
known that it was rethinking its entire approach to the immigration issue. A campaign speech on the subject was
cancelled, and when asked whether Trump was changing his mind about assembling
a “deportation force” to deal with undocumented aliens, Kellyanne tersely
replied, “to be determined.”
We’ve been saying for months that it is expected that
candidates “pivot” once their nominations are secure. They realize that to orient their campaign toward “undecided” voters, they must retreat
from some of the more extreme rhetoric often required to secure the votes of
the "base" -- the ideological purists who are deeply involved in the nominating process.
But there is a difference between a seamless pivot on a
secondary issue -- which deft candidates execute with the light elegance of a
waltz progressive step at the Viennese Opera Ball – and Donald Trump’s decision
to “soften” his position on immigration, the bedrock of his candidacy. If you
want a really great example of a candidate pivoting with grace and ease, take a
look at how Hillary Houdini magically glommed on to an array of Bernie Sanders’
ideas in order that she could make peace with his progressive wing. Free
college? No problem!
But in June, 2015 -- when Donald Trump descended an escalator in a presciently apt metaphor for the tenor of his candidacy -- he arrived at a
cluster of microphones to utter the words that would define his very purpose
and mission as a candidate:
“When Mexico sends its people,
they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending
you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing
those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re
rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
He proceeded to spell out in
no uncertain terms that the solution to this “problem” involved no shading and
no gradation. “We are either a country of laws or not,” he would frequently
say. His proposed course of action became as integral to his standard stadium
speech as “Firework” is to a Katy Perry gig. “We are going to build a wall,”
Trump exhorted, “and Mexico is going to pay for it.” The second essential
component of his initial plan was to deport the approximately 11 million undocumented
aliens currently living in the United States. This was the tough, uncompromising,
tell-it-like-it-is talk that enabled Trump to blow away the traditional
candidates – Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz – who wrestled with the nuances and sounded
timid and mealy-mouthed with each new pronouncement on the subject.
No matter how many people said
the wall was impractical, unnecessary, and an ungodly expense, Trump stuck with
it. No matter how many people – most famously, John Kasich – tried to explain
the deporting eleven million people was a non-starter from a practical as well
as humanitarian view – Trump stuck with it. For over a year of his campaign,
immigration was the one piece of policy that Donald Trump had appeared to
define and spell out, even if there were a million missing pieces.
Along comes Kellyanne Conway who now has Donald Trump suddenly raising the idea that such a mass deportation
of men, women, and children might not be sufficiently humane. That is exactly what
most of his Republican opponents and every Democrat in the country has been
saying for years. For Donald Trump to appear to suddenly realize this ten weeks
before the election may be the most naked and ethically compromised ploy for
undecided voters since Richard Nixon promised that he had a “secret plan” to
end the Vietnam War.
News that Donald Trump was
rethinking his policy on immigration sent the Ann Coulters of the far right and
“alt right” into toxic shock. Immigration was supposed to be Trump’s Alamo -- his
bedrock, the essential reason for being for his candidacy.
If there is one true mortal
sin of Republican politics, it is flip-flopping. Republicans used the charge of
flip-flopping to sucker-punch John Kerry in 2004. Mitt Romney was a pin-cushion
for friendly fire after his own flip-flopping in 2012. Well, there is flip-flopping,
and then there is Donald Trump changing course on immigration, which is the
policy equivalent of executing more twists and flips than you saw in two weeks
on the uneven bars in Rio.
How can I convey the
mind-blowing nature of this reversal? Imagine John F. Kennedy modifying his
inaugural address:
“Generally, ask not what you
country can do for you. But it is perfectly ok to change it up once in a while
and ask, hey, what can my country do for me?”
Or perhaps Ronald Reagan on
the Brandenburg Gate:
“Mr. Gorbachev, uh, that wall
– that big one, right behind me? I think that you should consider dismantling a portion of it,
ok? Just that part right over there, in front of the checkpoint, so, uh, people
can come and go as they please. You can leave the rest of the wall; it works
well to divide your east side from your west side, kind of like Central Park.”
Give Conway her due. She has convinced the Donald that
Trump 3.0 must swing for the fences, or perhaps, more aptly, the wall. She
actually accepted an invitation to appear on The Rachel Maddow Show, which was
a bold signal of her intent to reach far beyond Trump’s base. But I believe
that she has made a colossal error by urging Trump to “pivot” on immigration…
this could easily cause a significant number of voters to throw up their hands in
disgust and stay home, or -- worse still -- bolt for Gary Johnson and the Libertarians. Moreover, it causes the Republican faithful to now doubt
everything Trump has said or promised.
Most significant to me? I wish I was seeing more outrage in
the media at Trump’s hollow moral center and his transparent attempt to cloak a
naked grab for votes in the garb of greater sensitivity and humanitarian
concern. This episode, perhaps more than any other, illustrates that this is a
man with no moral North Star. Rather, he navigates with his GPS set for
expediency.
If Trump’s first face of evil was to invert his own
persona in a desperate grasp to appear more “humane,” the second face of evil is
an equally loathsome attempt to invert and “swift-boat” the humanity of Hillary
Clinton. Since Wednesday, Trump has attempted to convince the African American
and Hispanic communities that Hillary Clinton is a bigot, and that the economic
and social programs of the Democratic Party are responsible for the poverty,
crime, and unsatisfactory education that chronically degrade our inner cities.
In the sound-byte of the week as August drew to a close, Trump opined
that our inner cities are worse off than their Third World counterparts. Given,
he reasoned, that the horrific state of life in our inner cities could
not possibly be worse, why wouldn’t African-Americans and Hispanics at least
give Trump a try?
"Our government has totally failed our African
American friends, our Hispanic friends and the people of our country. Period. The
Democrats have failed completely in the inner cities. For those hurting the
most who have been failed and failed by their politician — year after year,
failure after failure, worse numbers after worse numbers. Poverty.
Rejection. Horrible education. No housing, no homes, no
ownership. Crime at levels that nobody has seen. You can go to war
zones in countries that we are fighting and it's safer than living in some of
our inner cities that are run by the Democrats. And I ask you this, I ask
you this — crime, all of the problems — to the African Americans, who I employ
so many, so many people, to the Hispanics, tremendous people: What the hell do
you have to lose? Give me a chance. I'll straighten it out. I'll
straighten it out. What do you have to lose?"
As with all things Trump, the factual inaccuracy is
breathtaking, and he once again offers no specific policy proposals, no
concrete ideas, and not a single innovation to address the issue he has defined.
There, in a nutshell, appears to be the final rationale
for a Trump presidency. If you think everything in America is as bad as it can get, then you know for certain that a vote for Trump won't make it worse. In
a candidacy devoid of logic, tautology is king.
Many, of course, view Trump's supposed "outreach" to African Americans and Hispanics as a still more cynical ploy: that he is merely pretending to be sympathetic to the troubles in our inner cities as just one more way to "appear humane" to the undecided white voters in swing states that he really needs.
Before we depart the Breit-Heart of Darkness driving
Trump persona #2, we should mention the alarming strain of misogyny that has
flared up intensely since Bannon’s arrival. The conspiracy theories about her
health and “stamina” were of course incubated and turned viral on
Breitbart.com. The Times also revealed that Bannon himself was accused of
domestic violence in the 1990s.
If, in total, you get the sense that Trump personalities "one" and "two" are more or less diametrically opposed, you've got a good grasp of the mess. If Kellyanne Conway is the campaign's Freudian "Superego" trying to pressure Trump to become a kinder, gentler guy, then Steve Bannon is the campaign "Id" stoking Trump's most base and vile instincts.
Of course, who does that leave in the Freudian role of campaign "Ego?" Oh, that's just too easy...
Finally, we arrive at Trump 3.0 Personality #3, which we will just call “Trump Classic.”
His new handlers are quickly discovering that they are simply
the latest employees to be mis-tweeted by The Donald, and they are learning
very quickly just how untrainable this bunking bronco truly is. Donald
continues to say and tweet whatever it is that just reached the exit of his elementary
canal; sadly, most of his character-assassination-in-140-characters is ready to
drop just when his staff is fresh out of Charmin.
Trump’s twitter-fit against Joe Scarborough was typical;
he could not hold back on the crude innuendo, implying that the Morning Joe
team was doing more than just co-hosting. Trump tried to savage Mika
Brzezinski, labeling her an “off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!”
In what universe does a pattern of misogynist attacks on strong news women make
good sense for a Presidential candidate?
But by the week’s end – incredibly – he appeared to be
back on track with back-tracking double-backing, suddenly telling CNN that he
was actually sticking to his original position on immigration. You could spend
a month at the International House of Pancakes and not see that many waffles
stacked on top of one another.
Finally, reaching an epic level of tweetle-dumb, Donald
Trump could not hold back when the wires reported that NBA star Dwyane Wade’s
cousin had been killed by random bullets in Chicago. Donald Trump actually
tweeted this:
“Dwayne Wade’s cousin was just shot and killed walking
her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE
TRUMP!”
Yes, Donald Trump did spell Dwyane Wade’s name
incorrectly, and yes, a candidate who is the midst of a massive effort to appear "kindler and gentler" actually used the horrible murder of an innocent victim as an opportunity to solicit votes.
What could possibly be lying in the road ahead; what
cruel, self-involved, digitally improvised roadside device will Donald Trump
heave to top that? For it is no longer a question of will it happen; it is only
a question of what and when, and how far down this prolonged escalator
ride to the ninth circle might last.
Yes, it did get worse last week and we must assume the
trend will continue. For starters, we used to have only one Donald Trump, and
now we appear to have three: “Kinder and Gentler Donald,” “Breit-Heart Donald,”
and “Donald Classic.”
Fitting, perhaps, for me to close with three thoughts on
Trump 3.0:
1. As a
marketing professional and communications strategist, I am stunned at the rank
amateurism of his communications team. Casually and hastily reversing field on
your brand’s most bedrock message is the mark of someone who is in way over
his -- and her -- head.
2. As
someone who believes that our leaders should have certain deeply held and
consistent beliefs and principles so that we know where they stand, I find
Trump’s disingenuous and transparently-timed pandering flip-flops morally
repugnant.
3. However,
as an American, I am ecstatic that numbers one and two are happening.
Because with this level of strategy and this vacuum of
principle, the all-new Trump 3.0 is just three faces of evil on a fast track to
nowhere.
