Unconventional: The Republicans, Day Four

Your questions answered!

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Question: Why did President Trump’s handlers give him a 70-minute speech?

By giving the president so long a text, his handlers obviously hoped its sheer length would inhibit his tendency to go off message into inflammatory or unintelligible ad-libs. In that, they largely succeeded. Obscure digressions were held to a minimum. In the last 20 minutes, the president was so clearly running out of steam that he appeared too tired to ad-lib even if he wanted to. The corresponding downside of having Trump read text, of course, was that, as in most things, he appeared completely bored, delivering even the attack lines in a singsong voice. By the time he got to what should have been his uplifting finale—hailing the American pioneer spirit, celebrating Wyatt Earp and Annie Oakley, the heroism of the plainsmen who crossed prairies in their covered wagons—he sounded like he’d been pushing one of those wagons himself and wanted nothing so much as to be done with the damned thing. For a “bodyguard of Western civilization,” his recitation of the march of civilization was so flat that the audience, prepared to be wowed by the big finish, sat in stony silence, probably also wishing that he’d wrap it up.

Question: Many of the speakers said that, all appearances to the contrary, Trump was a deeply empathetic and caring man. Is this true?

In introducing her father last night, Ivanka Trump said she wished we all could see the president as she could, the caring and solicitous private Donald Trump. Clearly, what would dispel the nation’s misimpressions would be for Trump to allow himself to be filmed or otherwise recorded in his private moments, and, conversely, to refrain from any public discourse whatever, as Melania Trump has successfully accomplished. Since Trump’s public persona is so ineradicably thuggish, only his private moments—reading Emily Dickinson, crocheting, volunteering to be a pallbearer at strangers’ funerals, parking cars at bar mitzvahs—should be made available to the public, particularly to suburban Republican women who’ve been appalled by his conduct and need reassurance.

More from Harold Meyerson

Question: Many of the speakers, including Rudy Giuliani last night, have also attested to the fact that Trump is the hardest-working president we’ve ever had. How do we know that’s true?

The president’s day is a whirlwind of activity. He awakens early so he can get off 30 or 40 tweets while most of America still lazes abed. Then he spends mornings diligently watching Fox & Friends to bone up on the latest in theology, matters of national security, and modern monetary theory. Then come his intelligence briefings, except when they don’t. Afternoons are spent on further documenting the falsity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, proving the guilt of the Central Park Five, repealing Obamacare, and attending awards ceremonies for policemen who do the best job of banging the heads of arrestees when putting them into patrol cars. Then meatloaf for dinner and a nightcap of tweets.

Question: Ivanka Trump noted in her introduction that while her father was one of New York’s most prominent developers, he “befriended construction workers.” Did he really?

Yes. That was in lieu of paying them.

Question: The convention certainly featured a whole lot of African Americans attesting to Trump’s concern for them and their people. That’s quite unusual for a Republican convention, isn’t it?

No. Republican convention delegates, alternates, and spectators have been at least 95 percent white for decades now, so the convention planners always take pains to trot out Blacks and Latinos to convince the viewing public that Republicans are more inclusive than they actually are.

In December 2000, during the long count that followed the Bush-Gore election, Harold Meyerson wrote a piece for the Prospect in which he looked back at that summer’s Republican convention, which had nominated Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Here’s what he wrote: “If you watched the Republican convention [on television], you almost came away thinking that all the governor's acquaintances were black or Latino. (Indeed, there seemed to be just two kinds of blacks and Latinos in Texas: Either the governor was your friend, or he executed you.”

(During Bush’s term as governor, Texas led the nation in executions.)

Question: So what’s the Republican game plan for the rest of the campaign?

Scare the bejeezus out of white suburban women who aren’t hardcore Democrats. These women have been repulsed by the gratuitous cruelty and harsh vindictiveness of Trump’s presidency, and by policies like separating toddlers from their families at the border and putting them in cages. To win them over (or back) to Trump’s column, Trump’s strategists spent half the convention creating what was almost an anti-Trump, who cares about minorities and women and has unseen reserves of empathy and good fellowship. They spent the other half of the convention raising the specter of Black rioters and frothing young Marxists storming a suburb near you, imperiling life, limb, and property values, and alleging that cautious centrist Joe Biden was in a reality a Trojan horse concealing these predators. Republicans will be focusing on that second message for the duration of the campaign, while trying to make the nation forget that, under Trump’s leadership, nearly a quarter of the planet’s deaths from COVID-19 have come right here in the USA.

For their part, the Democrats will focus on Trump’s ineptitude in dealing with the pandemic; on how his conduct in office has both embodied and greatly increased the violent hostility abroad in the land, thereby putting democratic norms in danger; and on his ongoing efforts to strike down the Affordable Care Act, imperiling Americans with pre-existing conditions in the midst of a viral plague.

The Republicans also have a postindustrial Midwest swing-state argument that Trump focused on in his remarks last night: that Biden’s support for NAFTA and the 2000 trade deal with China gutted American manufacturing. Advantage Trump here: Biden sided with big business on these votes, over the opposition of the labor movement and some more enlightened progressives like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders.

Question: There were a number of distortions in this week’s convention. Does any one line stand out to you?

Last night, Trump said:

I say, very modestly, that I have done more for the African American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln.

This kind of thing gives chutzpah a bad name. Megalomania, too.

Question: You watched the Republican convention gavel to gavel. How did you get through it?

Drinks.

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