Activity

As one of those familiar with one of Catherine’s sayings, “Just a Taste”…
One of his campaign managers, Paul Manafort, admitted at one point that Trump was simply “projecting an image.” Who’s surprised? Americans have a taste for a “democracy of manners,” which is different from real democracy. Voters accept huge disparities in wealth, while expecting their elected leaders to appear to be no different from the rest of us. By talking tough, by boasting that he’d love to throw a punch at a protester, candidate Trump pretended he was stepping down from his opulent Manhattan penthouse to commingle with the unwashed masses. Wearing his not-so-classy bright red Bubba cap, and crooning at one rally, “I love the poorly educated,” he built upon a recognizable strain of American populism. Campaigns have long relied on shallow ploys and vicious rhetoric. In the first decade of the twentieth century, William Randolph Hearst’s campaign strategist, Arthur Brisbane, said: “The American people, like all people, are interested in PERSONALITY.” Even then they knew. The earlier billionaire (worth seven times what Forbes says Trump is worth; three times what Trump says Trump is worth) was a more credible populist.
He was a staunch union supporter who said: “Wide and equitable distribution of wealth is essential to a nation’s prosperous growth and intellectual development. And that distribution is brought about by the labor union more than any other agency of our civilization.” Yes, he said that while running for president in 1904. Politicians have learned to appeal to (and exploit!) the class discontents of the ordinary voter. An astute observer wrote in 1924 that American voters preferred to “cherish the unrealities they have absorbed” based upon “the primal instinct to defeat the side they hate or fear.” It is just as true today. To his supporters, Trump’s tactlessness and personal vindictiveness scored points, while his lack of policy understanding was overlooked. His fans reveled in his promise to “stick it” to “Crooked Hillary,” and her imagined core base of Washington insiders and too-smart-for-their-own-good Ivy League professionals. Many Trump supporters said they were drawn to him because he “speaks his mind,” and voiced a “raw honesty.” As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat concluded early on, Trump was the anti-candidate, totally unpredictable. He wasn’t just playing a part but was refusing to be anything like a scripted politician. The nasty nicknaming of his opponents (“Low-Energy Jeb,” “Little Marco”) was one-half schoolyard bully bravado and one-half public relations branding. Yet his most consistent pitch was to speak for the “forgotten Americans,” those whose class identity and Middle-America sensibilities put them at odds with all politically correct liberals. His utter lack of civility made him the voice of the nonelite outsider.8 That is where the Sarah Palin model came in. The half-term Alaska governor was the ultimate outsider. She was selected as the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee because John McCain’s camp bought into the conceit of reality TV, that anyone could be turned into a viable candidate if given the right makeover. She both intrigued and flabbergasted, whether she was pictured shooting caribou from a helicopter or tripping over standard syntax in her Fargoesque accent. Her appeal was the opposite of Barack Obama’s: whereas she was associated with the rural backwater of Wasilla, he was a hip, savvy Chicagoan. Trump seemed to want it both ways—a man of means and glamour and a man of the people; on the first front, though, he was a most ironic example of urban sophistication. The New Yorker bragged about his Wharton MBA degree, but he sounded like a working stiff from Queens. He loved to describe himself as classy, but his outlandish way of showing off his wealth put him squarely in the camp of the nouveau riche. He ignored his inherited wealth and status and proclaimed himself a self-made millionaire. His trophy wives, his gold-accented Louis XIV furniture, and his passion for seeing his name plastered on anything and everything undermined any effort to project the highbrow appeal of old money or the intellectualism of Ivy League graduates. His bragging ways first led him into TV camp as an occasional player in WrestleMania, before going on to star in The Apprentice. None of this activity (or its contradictions) bothered his working-class voters. Just the opposite: it forged a bond. Every time he spoke, he rejected PC etiquette. He was “one of them.”

Isenberg, Nancy – “White Trash” Penguin Publishing Group