"Call me Donald" might be the opening line if the 2016 presidential campaign were a novel. Or perhaps, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times-no, actually it was just the worst of times." Either way, that's what this campaign has most come to resemble: a sprawling, outrageous, seriocomic novel aiming its satirical blade a the heart of contemporary American politics and society, focused on a protagonist occupying a space somewhere between antihero and outright villain.
Think about what the plot of this campaign has involved. The protagonist made a dramatic entrance, shocking and enthralling observers with his immediate and unadorned demagoguery, and his bizarre brand of charisma that captivated the media. Then he vanquished a passel of primary opponents, who tried and failed to fight him in the gutter where he dwelt so comfortably. All the while his supporters growled like an awakened beast, providing moments of drama and violence to propel the story forward. Then came the general election with one surprising set piece after another, each one illuminating some aspect of his twisted character.
Granted, there are a few details that are a bit too on the nose, violating the first rule every fiction writer learns: "Don't tell me, show me." If this were a novel, our protagonist wouldn't just come out and say things like "I'm really rich" or "I have a very good brain"-the author would find more subtle ways of showing us how insecure he is about his wealth and his intellect. So yes, the actual Donald Trump may be too over-the-top even for satire. But we've benefited from periodic flashbacks that fill in our protagonist's backstory: the harsh father he seeks to outdo, the sojourn to military school, the extraordinary string of business failures and penny-ante cons, the early marriages and infidelities, the string of victims (economic and otherwise) left in his wake. There are so many great scenes, like the comical vignette in which he pretends to be a PR agent, phoning reporters to trumpet his business genius and sexual magnetism, in the service of the attention and admiration he so desperately seeks.
And oh, what a cast of supporting characters! The eastern European model wife, plainly uncomfortable on this stage, who's publicly humiliated in the pettiest of plagiarism scandals, then is never heard from again. The two reptilian sons and the daughter smarter than both of them put together, her father's favorite in the creepiest of ways. The bare-knuckled campaign manager, clearly out of his league, replaced by the smarmy lobbyist ousted in his turn when his ties to foreign dictators becomes too much to bear. The aging jester who would make the campaign into a year-long version of "The Aristocrats." The gaggle of close advisers, each more scuzzy than the next, from the former mayor screeching vulgarisms to any camera in sight to the Machiavellian campaign CEO who wants nothing more than to sow destruction, to the slithering TV executive who arrives at the campaign with dozens of victims of sexual harassment on his tail. The scenes of this group together must have a David Mamet feel, full of rapid-fire dialogue illuminating exterior depravity and interior moral degeneracy.
And that's not all. There's the wacky doctor and the wise but crotchety accountant, not to mention the parade of people our protagonist fights with: the TV host who should have been on his side, the beauty queen willing to tell the world how he treated her, the upright judge attacked for his ethnicity, and the parents of a fallen soldier-all targets of his wrath. Then there's the running mate, a severe and censorious man who in another time would have been putting independent-minded girls on trial for witchcraft, but who now attempts to ride this careening campaign to save his own faltering career.
And there's the media chorus, ranging from the outraged to the sycophantic, the dogged pursuers and the ones hyping the spectacle and counting their profits. And we haven't even gotten to the story's antagonist, a complex supporting character in her own right, flawed yet resilient, the protagonist's opposite in so many ways. There are more compelling characters than in Game of Thrones, and there's only one kingdom's throne being fought over.
And now, we might be arriving at our protagonist's final undoing, even before the votes are cast and counted. If this were a novel, that scene might be just a bit more dramatic and focused-instead of the emergence of a video from a few years ago, we'd have a climactic scene where his ugly words are spoken and simultaneously broadcast to a crowd of his supporters, their faces falling in shock and disappointment as his true ugliness is finally revealed to all.
But in our reality, most of those supporters are barely miffed. They've followed Trump so far down into their own moral depths that when he's revealed bragging about his ability to commit sexual assault with impunity because he's famous, his top media advocate responds, "King David had 500 concubines, for crying out loud," and throughout the land, Trump fans tuned into the channel of family values nod their heads in agreement.
So this may be a fitting end for this satire's biting commentary on contemporary America (even if conservatives might condemn the story's heavy-handed liberal moralizing), as the craven politicians tolerate our protagonist's attacks on Muslims, African Americans, and Latinos, only to turn their backs on him when his caustic gaze is finally turned on a white woman. But does our protagonist lack the complexity to be a truly great character? Perhaps. There seems to be no repellent character trait he does not contain and almost no glimmer of virtue to be found within him.
Yet the story can come to a redemptive end, as his cons are exposed, his sins are laid bare, and his greatest fears are realized. As we reach the conclusion of the tale, our protagonist is becoming just what he worked a lifetime to avoid being: a loser, a chump, a schmuck. Not just the most hated man in America, but the most laughed at. So even if the story wasn't quite believable at times, we may be left with the satisfying feeling that after all that happened, justice was finally done.
