The furor over Donald Trump is getting more intense by the minute. Talk about a brokered Republican convention not only continues but is growing fiercer and fiercer. There's so much conversation about the House Speaker Paul Ryan being the GOP nominee that one would come to the conclusion that he is already out campaigning. And the culmination to all this anti-Trumpism was certainly, definitely the liberal Boston Globe's front page, which featured a "parody" of what America would be like under a Trump White House.
And an even-halfway-reasonable, even-halfway-sane person looks at all this and says to him-/herself: Has this country--or at least the part of it that deals specifically with politics--gone bat-shit insane?
I mean, let's get a grip, shall we? All this furor, all this to-do about Trump is and always has been at best ridiculous and at worst outright paranoid. The fact is, this man and his candidacy--and, for that matter, the notion that he'll actually be elected to the presidency--are and have always been flat-out ludicrous. They have all been, to say it directly, all flash and no substance.
For two reasons.
First, the cold, hard reality is that Donald J. Trump does not have and never did have a hope in hell of being elected President of the United States of America. I mean, after all, take a good look at Trump's candidacy, all right? Take a good look at how the man has blatantly insulted Mexicans, Muslims, women, the disabled; how he's made audiences literally raise their hands and pledge their support to him (as the Texas Senator Ted Cruz pointed out, running for the presidency amounts to undergoing "a job interview"); how he's nakedly warned that there'll be "riots" if he's not named the Republican standard-bearer (it was the Ohio Governor John Kasich who very aggressively pointed out that a key function of any political leader is to do all he/she can to quell major-league violence before it starts); and, finally, look at how so much of his campaign has consisted not of discussing issues or laying out programs but of engaging in childish name-calling and snide personal digs (and in initiating petty and self-indulgent feuds with the media and with Fox News in particular). The fact is, this man, as, of all people, Jeb Bush has pointed out, has not conducted himself "like a serious candidate." Indeed, a central reason for his political rise--and I've dealt with this in earlier times--is because of the celebrity he's already garnered as a "reality-television" personality (To take up another point I made in the past: Is it any surprise that one of his leading celebrity supporters is his sister attention skank--and Apprentice co-star--Omarosa Manigult-Stallworth?). The truth is, if by some happenstance Trump becomes the GOP nominee, voters will take a good, solid look at him and his political behavior and will very quickly fully realize that the American Presidency is serious business, capital S, capital B. They will very quickly fully realize that, to quote Obama, holding said office is "not hosting a talk show. It's not hosting a 'reality' show. It's not entertainment." And thus once voters put aside this anger they've (supposedly) been harboring--and cease being dazzled by Trump's "reality-TV"-supplied celebrity--they will, to quote one since-folded Democratic campaign, "run away from [Trump] with hair on fire." (Those who have backed him because of his [supposed] disdain for political correctness will, once the uber-substantial general election gets underway, very quickly fully realize that if disregard for political correctness is all they want in a president, they should go for the genuine article and initiate a movement to elect Howard Stern or Bill O'Reilly)
Secondly--and this ties it all up--even if Trump by some miracle (or act of God, or whatever) does get elected to the White House, the fact is he will not be able to carry out any of the quasi-Hitlerian programs he's been proposing. The reality is, as the former J.F.K. aide Theodore Sorensen pointed out in his classic Watergate-themed book Watchmen in the Night: Presidential Accountability After Watergate, there is very little that a president--any president--can accomplish on his/her own. As Sorensen meticulously explained, a president needs his/her cabinet, he/she needs congressional approval and assistance, he/she certainly, definitely needs public compliance and support. Indeed, it was Sorensen who in the aforementioned tome pointed out that, concerning Watergate, there were many, many misdeeds that Richard Nixon wanted to carry out but had to abandon because he couldn't get the agencies he needed to go along with him. And regarding Sorensen's then-boss, what's often overlooked is the fact that, concerning presidential domestic initiatives, Congress stopped John Kennedy many, many times. And for all our condemnation of Lyndon Johnson's--and Richard Nixon's--Vietnam policies, in point of fact, those policies would not have been possible--or, at the very least, would not have continued for as long as they did--without Congress consistently supplying funds for them and without many of its members fully backing them.
Thus all the hand-wringing and head-clutching that's being done about Trump, all the doomsday scenarios and tales of woe that have been and still are weaved around the notion of his being elected to the White House can be summed up in the title of one of Shakespeare's most towering works: Much Ado About Nothing.
