PRESIDENT TRUMP TAKES WASHINGTON BY STORM (WASHINGTON, MICHIGAN)
President Trump spoke at a rally last week in Washington, Michigan, an empty geographic expression (there is no downtown), running along a north-south highway between Utica and Romeo. The “town’s” one claim to fame is the Octagon House, a preserved eight sided nineteenth century farm home, nestled in undistinguished sprawl. In what appeared to be campaign hyperbole President Trump told his jam-packed audience that he would rather be there in Washington, Michigan than in Washington D.C. And, given the treatment he received at the Correspondents Dinner (which he had avoided by coming to Michigan), he may have been telling the truth.
That rally in Washington featured many of the president’s greatest hits. He revisited the size of the crowd at his inaugural. He managed to arouse the excited crowd with his “beautiful great big wall”. He revisited his oft times repeated attacks on Hillary Clinton who has, in fact, not been a rival of his for over a year and a half and, at this point, seems unlikely to really be “locked up”. So, the crowd’s enthusiastic responses seem likely to fall on deaf ears.
It is clear that Trump loves these rallies (He may also enjoy the fact that the tax payers now pay for nearly everything.). The pre-election rallies and the media publicity he got from them were really almost his entire campaign. Donald Trump proved to have a real genius for moving the angry crowds who came to his rallies. It was not always very difficult. Just as audiences attend comedians’ performances to laugh, they came to Trump rallies to be angry. The rallies had another hidden advantage for Trump; he didn’t have to know anything. By the time most candidates reach the point where they can be presidential contenders they have put themselves through years of preparation. They know the political system in great detail. Donald Trump knew almost nothing but he didn’t have to know very much to talk about “a great big beautiful wall,” and to demand that Hillary be “locked up”.
We are living in an entertainment culture. People in the past often thought that the purpose of life was to work and to get ahead. Now, many have come to believe that the purpose of life is to be entertained. Young people now often really do want jobs but only so that they can buy more entertainment. Try to go to any restaurant and not be “entertained” by endless music (elevator music has long ago left your local elevator). Music is everywhere, along with the televisions on every wall. Your car has to have “connectivity,” so that it can become a traveling entertainment center. We are surrounded by constant, never ending, entertainment.
In that kind of world, politics will naturally be viewed as just another form of entertainment. And politicians with no tradition at being entertaining will have to become more entertaining to survive. When Donald Trump began his campaign, he was one of seventeen Republican candidates. Every other candidate knew more about traditional politics than he did (Trump only became a Republican to run). But in the end he defeated them all because he was the perfect entertainment candidate. He understood that many voters simply didn’t care about anything that traditional candidates had to offer. They wanted to be entertained and they worshiped celebrity. Those were things that Donald Trump, more than all the other candidates, understood.
When people attend their local high school football games, they yell and scream at the players out there on the field. They want to “kill the ref”, massacre the people on the other side. But they really aren’t going to do that. Everybody in the noisy stands would be shocked into silence if someone were really killed. The Trump rallies are like those football games. The attendees are part of the show. They know that they are supposed to be angry. They know that they are supposed to be mad and chant “lock her up”. In a traditional political rally they may sit almost silently while someone talks at them. Here they get to participate, to have fun. It certainly was true that many of them were not real Republicans, and it was also true that they didn’t really care to learn any more about the government than they already knew. But, Donald Trump didn’t know anything about the government either. He thought that really trying to talk about it with his audiences would have been boring, and he was right.
To argue though that those people were incapable would be wrong. To them the rally was entertainment. They got to perform, to play a part. What they did, in an entertainment culture, made sense. The rally performers were really playing a part in political theatre. Most certainly they knew that the wall might not be built and that Hillary, in real life, was not going to be locked up. Donald Trump did speak to them, in their own language, about the jobs he was going to bring back, jobs for them. He was going to “drain the swamp” in Washington and get rid of the kinds of people who didn’t care about people like them. What the rally crowds didn’t realize was that for Trump the rallies were theatre too. He didn’t really take any of it seriously.
When Trump did get to Washington he was unprepared and overwhelmed. Donald Trump has always sought the respect of the real business elite (something that his life style and his gold tower had failed to produce). His cabinet and agency appointees reflected his desire to please those people. They were overwhelmingly wealthy people who had very little interest in benefiting the people who came to those rallies. The “tax reform” he promoted and signed will help his rally supporters not at all.
Still, the economy is doing well, the stock market for the moment is doing fine, and there are low paying jobs available in many parts of the country. The effects of Donald Trump’s strange off-again, on again, tariff war have yet to have much impact. In Washington D.C. Donald Trump still seems all at sea. Harassed on all sides by investigations, befuddled by policy details he doesn’t understand, served by an ever changing staff that is fearful, overwrought and exhausted, Donald Trump waits for his Mar-A-Lago week-ends. But, in a rally in Washington, Michigan, Donald Trump could return to the only part of the presidency that he truly enjoys. In Washington, Michigan Donald Trump could, for an hour and a half, be himself!
H.J. Rishel 5/3/2018
