The GOP’s Final Night: A Full-Metal Demagogue on Fantasy Island

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If rhetorical excess were the sole qualification for the presidency, Trump would win again hands down. I trained as a scientist during the analogue era, so my personal Lie-O-Meter has a needle with tiny pegs at the ends of its range. When Trump called his reluctant and half-hearted pandemic mobilization the largest since World War II, my needle nudged the “pants on fire” peg. When he said that Biden had called for a complete shutdown of our economy—a “surrender” not a “solution”—my needle hit the peg so hard it bent.

When Trump claimed he had done more for African-Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln, my needle wrapped around the “pants-on-fire” peg, disabling the meter. (Ever heard of Harry Truman, who desegregated the entire US military, or Lyndon Johnson, who secured and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended Jim Crow in law, if not in fact?)

With my Lie-O-Meter thus disabled, I had to let professionals produce a full tally of all the lies, half-truths and exaggerations in Trump’s hour-and-ten-minute speech. I laud them in advance for doing this onerous but necessary work. If no one calls him on them, Trump will double down on lies.

My mind then turned to general themes, of which I found four. The first was classic demagoguery, going back through Hitler to Caesar. Trump claimed that Biden had betrayed the people for an unnamed “elite,” and that only Trump would fight for them.

This claim might seem a small variation on his earlier boast that “Only I can fix it.” But it could be far more effective. The mad rush toward globalization, which threw millions of Americans out of jobs and created our oligarchy, was endorsed by, if not a product of, our elite “thinkers.” Distracted by the shiny abstractions of “efficiency” and “profit,” they forgot basic cause and effect, which outsider Ross Perot had discerned. The Dems can moot this theme by pointing out how little Trump has done to bring jobs back, including his failure to rebuild our infrastructure.

The second theme was one the entire convention so far had telegraphed. Biden, the GOP claimed unanimously, has been hijacked by “far left radicals” and socialists. This claim is harder to sell because: (1) Biden beat Sanders and Warren on precisely this question; (2) Biden is well known as an ideological moderate; and (3) socialists are not generally understood as “elite,” so Demagogic Theme 2 conflicts with Demagogic Theme 1.

Trump’s third demagogic theme was one of Democrats encouraging violence and hobbling the police. It was just such a law-and-order theme that put Richard Nixon and Bush I in the White House.

But its effectiveness for Trump today depends on how events unfold. The American public has more immediate worries than increasing protests and lawlessness: the ever-worsening pandemic, the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, and the prospect of more flooding to come. As the New York Times reported, the increasing frequency of severe storms (if not the global warming that causes them) is already moving public opinion toward abandoning flood-prone areas rather than repeatedly rebuilding them. Whether protest-triggered violence stays atop these disasters in the public mind depends in part on the efforts of Democrats and progressives to contain it, at least until the election.

The final general theme offered Democrats a good opening to attack. It was, in essence, a head-in-the-sand approach. Virtually the entire positive thrust of this final night of the GOP Convention was to tout the pre-pandemic economy—for which Trump took full credit while inheriting it from Obama. Trump promised he would conquer the pandemic and that a good economy would return. He ignored the entire subject of global warming or—if you prefer “conservative” political correctness—the self-evidently increasing frequency of devastating storms.

This willful ignorance of unpleasant facts gives the Dems obvious openings, especially if things go south. Trump’s hundreds of admirers before the White House podium were packed together, without social distancing. They were cheering, chanting and rising and sitting together, with only a tiny minority wearing masks. If the pandemic worsens, the media will repeat these clear transgressions of scientific advice in an endless loop, and the GOP and Trump will suffer for them.

An implicit theme that could counter the “law and order” push was the Republicans’ own lawlessness. Never since the White House was built over two centuries ago has it been used for a political campaign. Arguably the Hatch Act forbids doing so. Yet Trump used it for the Republican Convention and produced a Fourth-of-July-style fireworks display over the National Mall and the Washington Monument.

This and Trump’s earlier military parade are the kinds of things that the Soviets did in Red Square and the Chinese do in Tiananmen Square today. They are not things that democracies do, for they confuse the awesome power of the state with partisan politics. These facts probably trouble Biden supporters more than Trump die-hards, but they might have some effect in influencing undecided voters.

One final feature of Trump’s demagoguery is worth noting. Although his words were fiery, his delivery was not. His raspy voice lacked timber and volume, and his tone lacked emotional affect, so much so that he seemed to be just going through the motions.

My first reaction, quite early in the speech, was to think, “This man is sick; he might have heart disease or be coming down with Covid.” But I’m a world-class hypochondriac. The source of his weakness might have been as simple as him having been told to stick to his script if he wanted to have a chance of winning, and him finding no pleasure in stifling his usual random ad-libs. (Discipline comes hard to Trump, which is why most military leaders can’t stand him.)

And so the GOP’s grand exercise in denial and demagoguery limped to its anticlimactic conclusion. When it was over, I heaved a sigh of relief.

But I had had to watch it. Until mid-November, we will not know whether this election marks the revival and restoration of our democracy or its end.

Evil is indeed banal. Whether this banal demagoguery will repel voters or draw them deeper into the Pit is hard to foresee. But the answer could fix humanity’s fate for much of the next millennium. If our own democracy, with all its checks and balances, succumbs to such crude authoritarianism, what others can long remain standing?

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