One of the more frustrating aspects of the Trump presidency has been the widespread tendency to attribute political acumen to his “method.” The basis for this has been the unwavering support of 38% of the public, plus another 8% who are inclined to support him. Since nothing he does shakes their faith in him, the argument goes, he’s a canny political savant.
Abundant evidence refutes this, but the coronavirus may finally be the event that makes it broadly clear to the public, the media, and those 8%. The starkest example was embedded in a Bloomberg piece about Trump’s catastrophic national address:
“The hastily drafted 10-minute speech had undergone last-minute edits from the president and one of his senior advisers, Stephen Miller, after other aides had left the room, one of the people said. Among the changes they made: deleting a sentence where Trump said he and Melania were sending their prayers and love to people suffering from the illness.”
Trump is not an effective politician. Politics in a democracy is the exercise of power accrued by coalition-building. When a Black guy whose middle name is Hussein builds a substantial majority of support, that’s skillful politics. Trump is a demagogue—a leader who appeals to prejudice, fear, and hatred to rally one part of the population against another. It sometimes works when used against minorities, but because of its base nature, it has a very fixed and rigid ceiling—exactly what we’ve seen in Trump.
The standard political move is always to reach out to everyone. It doesn’t matter if you feel that way or not; it’s just politics 101: no downside risk and the foundation on which you build rally-around-the-leader support. Demagoguery 101 is a little different: use every occasion to drive hate, fear, and prejudice. Thus we have Trump blaming Obama, calling the virus a “foreign” flu, and banning immigration.
These aren’t mistakes, they’re calculated tactics Trump has used since the “Mexicans are rapists” speech. Similarly, politics 101 tells you to err on the side of an over-abundance of caution, because underestimating a crisis is political suicide. Trump lacks that sense, and he’s playing off the demagogue’s rulebook of denying any error and blaming foes (Democrats, bureaucrats, immigrants, and foreigners).
Demagoguery isn’t without its merits. It fixes in undying support. Trump’s entire (albeit short) political career is a case in point. But it’s not consistent with actual democracy, because politicians need to build coalitions. That’s why demagogues flourish in weak democracies or dictatorships. It’s why Trump is unlikely to survive a bad crisis.
Everything that’s happening now emerges from Trump’s failures as a politician. He has no instincts to even fake the things he doesn’t believe (caution, empathy, support). Many successful politicians are not empathic, compassionate humans (some research suggests the profession has a disproportionate number of sociopaths). But they understand what the job entails and they fake it. A huge part of the confusion about the Trump presidency is the expectation that he will behave like a politician and engage in routine political actions. If we understood that he isn’t a politician but a demagogue, it would not only make his behavior more understandable, but more predictable. His actions since coronavirus arrived have been entirely predictable if we use the right lens.
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