The Trump Phenomenon

How the Politics of Populism Won in 2016

Peter Kivisto

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781787143685
• eBook ISBN: 9781787149205
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Gouvernement américain

On November 8, 2016, American voters surprised the world by electing a rank outsider with no previous political experience, businessman and celebrity Donald J. Trump, to become the 45th President of the United States after one of the most divisive and contentious campaigns in recent history. In this short book, Peter Kivisto analyses how this happened, focusing on who Trump is and the narratives about him and his candidacy that evolved during the campaign, who his supporters are and what their worldview is, and the role of the media, right-wing Christians, and the Republican Party in making Trump's victory possible. 

The Trump phenomenon must be viewed as a manifestation of right-wing populism, a movement which has serious implications for democratic values and practices, and this book examines how it took hold in America to put one of the most controversial presidents ever elected into the White House.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

On November 8, 2016, American voters elected Donald J. Trump to become the 45th President of the United States. He was a candidate who had been widely criticized, described as authoritarian in his leadership style and whose psychological fitness for office was frequently called into question, with mental health experts concluding that his behavior reveals what could be an undiagnosed personality disorder. American voters elected him despite Trump being viewed as an unusual candidate running a highly unconventional election campaign. They did so even though negative views of him have been as high as 70%, which suggests that some people who viewed him negatively nevertheless voted for him. They did so even though he was a central figure over several years in stoking the birther conspiracy theory that sought to delegitimize the election of the nation’s first black President. They did so even though his bullying and name-calling of his Republican rivals was uncivil, revealing a lack of respect for those he competed against for the nomination. They did so even though his braggadocio is adolescent and incessant (claiming, e.g., that his “IQ is one of the highest” and that he has the “world’s greatest memory”). They did so even though Trump demonized Mexicans as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers and suggested that the Mexican government was responsible for orchestrating their migration to the United States. They did so even though he called for a ban on all Muslims entering the country, a violation of constitutional protections of religious freedom.

They did so despite his repeated threats to send Hillary Clinton to prison, the sort of threats one expects to hear from cult-of-personality dictators, but not from a candidate vying for election in a democratic nation. They did so even though a standard part of Trump campaign rallies and in numerous tweets was to call reporters “dishonest,” “scum,” “slime,” and “liars.” They did so even though he repeated conspiracy theories and gained support from far right groups. They did so even though Trump’s frequent use of his Twitter account was often viewed as revealing a lack of self-control.

They did so despite a history of misogyny, and in bragging that was caught on a hot mike that because he was a celebrity he could sexually assault women. They did so even though he was accused of mocking a reporter with a physical handicap. They did so even though he claimed Senator John McCain was not a war hero because after his plane went down during the Vietnam War, he ended up a prisoner of war. They did so despite his verbal attacks on the Khan family after Mr. Khan had spoken at the Democratic National Convention — Muslim Americans and a Gold Star family whose middle son, a commissioned officer in the US Army, was killed in Iraq. They did so even though his saber rattling has unnerved high ranking members of the military and the intelligence community. They did so despite a history of investigations and reportage on his business career that questioned Trump’s own claims regarding his business acumen. They did so even though at the Republican Party convention, Trump’s self-belief led him to contend that in addressing the problems confronting the nation, “I alone can fix it.” They did so even though his repetitious claim that he would make America great again was never followed up with realistic policy proposals. Rather, they appeared ready to believe that he was going to spend massively on infrastructure and on building up the military while simultaneously slashing taxes and containing the deficit. Unlike the majority of adult Americans who did not vote for Trump, those who did appeared to be willing to engage in a form of magical thinking.

How was a person so many people, in public life and privately, had concluded was unfit for the office elected to lead the largest and most powerful democracy in the world? And what does it mean for that democracy? Does it mean that little will change as Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker implied shortly before Election Day in a column bearing the headline, “Calm Down. We’ll Be Fine No Matter Who Wins.” Or does turning over the reins of power to such a person constitute a genuine test of the robustness of American democracy, or even more bleakly, an existential threat? Laying my cards on the table, I would gladly present Ms. Parker with the Dr. Pangloss Award for 2016, while concurring with conservative columnist, Michael Gerson, when he wrote in the Washington Post two weeks before the election that, “It is the first time in my political lifetime that I have seen fragility at the heart of American democracy.”

This book is an effort to offer an account of Trump’s political rise and ultimate electoral victory, and in doing so it seeks to identify some of the implications of what it might portend for the future. It will discuss events leading up to the election and beyond as the Trump operatives geared up to take over the reins of government on January 20, 2017, but it stops with the swearing in. What happens once this administration begins to govern is a topic for another day. The book at hand proceeds by first exploring who Donald Trump is, the goal of which is to sketch out three analytically distinct but nevertheless intertwined anti-Trump narratives that have emerged and acquired sufficient robustness to have a continued impact on public opinion. It includes a narrative about his psychology or temperament, one concerning his long career in business, and the third addressing his political worldview. Trump’s life has been both vividly on display in the public eye as he has enthusiastically sought attention throughout his business career, but aspects of his world — particularly regarding his business holdings — are far from transparent.

Next the book looks at who supported him, seeking to discern who they were and to understand why they voted for this celebrity businessman. This gets into more complex territory, and one can assume that political analysts — journalists, social scientists, and political operatives — will be working over voting data for some time to come. Nonetheless, we do know quite a lot about his supporters and do not need to wait for the future for some basic answers. In addition, there is a large body of scholarship that has offered varied accounts of voters who have in other places and times opted for authoritarian candidates running as populists. I will frame this analysis of Trump voters considering that body of work.

Third, I look at those forces that enabled, or made possible his, in many respects, unlikely success. While not the only forces, the three most significant are the media, the Christian Right, and the Republican Party. The book concludes with an analysis of Trumpism as a manifestation of right-wing populism and will use insights from scholars who are involved in producing comparative analyses of this movement in Europe and North America at a historical moment where it has become a phenomenon of major political significance on both sides of the Atlantic.

I make no effort to present anything remotely resembling the last word on the topic. I see it rather as a preliminary reconnaissance, and am fully aware that there is already underway a veritable cottage industry of critiques of the Trump phenomenon and the fruits of such labors will begin to appear soon. My hope is simply that this slim volume will contribute to that needed conversation. More than that, this is a moment when such dialogue must be a prelude to actions devoted to defending democracy. But such actions will take place in an uncomfortable time and space. Indeed, on the last day of 2016, Donald Trump tweeted the following message: “Happy New Year to all, including my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!” A colleague forwarded this message to me with the subject heading: “A crazy Trump tweet that sums up the next four years?”

The uncomfortable time and space I refer to was recently diagnosed by sociologist Neil Gross as an indication that a large swathe of the American citizenry is experiencing collective trauma, a term he sees deriving from the seminal theorizing of the early French sociologist Émile Durkheim. He contended over a century ago that when the bases of social solidarity are undermined by challenges to customary shared beliefs and practices rooted in norms, values, and ritual behaviors, people can collectively suffer from what Durkheim called anomie, but which might more familiarly be described as a feeling of alienation or disorientation. This is the feeling currently experienced by many anti-Trump Americans, according to Gross, and the reason goes well beyond the fact that the polls predicted a Clinton victory. He writes:

For progressives, moderates, and “Never Trump” Republicans, the political order they long took for granted — defined by polarization, yes, but also by a commitment to basic principles of democracy and decency — is suddenly gone. In recent decades, Democrats and Republicans rarely agreed on substance, but all candidates for major office were expected to adhere to fundamental ethical norms, like “don’t threaten to jail your opponent” and “don’t celebrate sexual assault.”

Mr. Trump’s victory signals that that world, with the assurances it offered that there were some lines those seeking power wouldn’t cross (or the American electorate won’t let them cross), is no longer. (Gross, 2016, p. 3)

In short, for a large swath of the American population there is an uncomfortable sense that serious damage has been done to the body politic and to the well-being of civil society. The following three chapters, which can be read as an effort to offer an account of how this damage was inflicted, will reveal that there is no simple or quick fix. The root of the problem transcends Trump, who should be seen as a consequence rather than as a cause of a systemic failure to inoculate the democratic process from the clarion call of authoritarianism.

CHAPTER 2

DEMOCRATIC CULTURE AND CIVIC VIRTUE

Consider the following propositions. First, democracy is to be preferred over authoritarianism. Second, no democracy in the past has been as democratic as it might have been. This point was underscored by President Barack Obama in his last international speech while in office. Speaking in Athens on November 16, 2016, he reflected on that city’s “most precious of gifts” bequeathed to the world, the idea of democracy. At the same time, he went on to note that “the earliest forms of democracy here in Athens were far from perfect — just as the early forms of democracy in the United States were far from perfect.” Third, no currently existing democracy is as democratic as it could be. Fourth, the persistence of democracy over time cannot be taken for granted. What follows is premised on these propositions, though it is the fourth one that will be its focus. Put simply, the question raised in this and the following two chapters is whether or not democracy in America — however flawed it might be — is currently threatened by a degrading of its democratic culture and with it a shared sense of bedrock civic virtues that in normal times guide the actions of both ordinary citizens and elected officials.

Democratic political systems are characterized by three key procedural patterns that set them apart from despotic alternatives and, in fact, are intended to serve as barriers to antidemocratic tendencies: institutionalized mechanisms insuring that citizens can play a role in governance, limitations placed on the power of leaders, and a commitment to the rule of law, which supersedes that of any leader or segment of the citizenry. Democracy when it works well provides governance that is both responsible and responsive to the needs of citizens and the best interests of the society at large.

Yet, in contrast to that civics class overview of democracy as an ideal, the real world is rather different. This should not be surprising insofar as politics is the arena in which competing views and interests vie with each other for power in seeking to direct public policy and governmental action in one direction or another. As an arena of contestation and conflict, typically politics plays out with an admixture of civility and incivility. When the latter gets the upper hand, we enter into the territory of what political scientist Susan Herbst calls “rude democracy.” A level of incivility ought to be considered par for the course, but only if incivility does not trump civility. When it does, the culture of democracy is degraded.

That culture is nurtured in civil society, which is that “space” — sometimes a physical space, but more significantly a symbolic space — wherein, as Yale sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander (2006) has argued, conceptualizations of social solidarity and justice take shape and are various resisted, revised, or reformulated over time. When the civil has an edge over the uncivil, solidarity is construed in an expansive and inclusive way, whereas when the uncivil has the upper hand, a more constrictive and exclusionary view of solidarity takes hold. Likewise, polar contrasts will be found in views surrounding topics associated with justice, freedom, and equality predicated on whether articulated in a civil or an uncivil frame.

In Alexander’s analysis of Barack Obama’s electoral victory over John McCain in 2008 and again, with Bernadette Jaworsky, in an analysis of the 2012 re-election victory over challenger Mitt Romney, considerable attention is devoted to the narratives that both sides sought to promote — narratives that both projected their respective candidates as models of civic virtue and their opponents as in key respects falling short (Alexander and Jaworsky, 2014). These narratives constitute a central part of the script in the drama of democracy, and the fate of a candidate hinges on the extent to which the citizen audience finds one narrative more convincing than the other. As Alexander observed at the outset of The Performance of Politics, “In the course of political campaigns, those struggling for power are subject to a terrible scrutiny. This is critical because, once power is achieved, it gains significant independence from civil society” (Alexander, 2010, p. 7).

In this regard, the evidence suggests that voting is more a matter of leadership selection than it is an issue-oriented focus in which ordinary citizens are intent on, in the words of the late political scientist Robert Dahl “determining the policies” that will come to define an understanding of the good society. It’s not that issues are unimportant at election time, but rather that they play a secondary role to settling on a preferred candidate worthy of one’s vote. In making their decisions, voters are not atomistic individuals, but rather are grounded in various social identities, some of which are more salient than others. Insofar as this is the case, people’s political choices are made on the basis of what political scientists Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels call their “partisan hearts and spleens.” Social identities provide people with political predispositions that make them more or less amenable to the appeal of contrasting campaign narratives.

Narratives are socially constructed. As such, they are not the product of any one individual, but rather take shape as an interactional outcome of numerous voices. Those voices originate among those sectors of the population most engaged with politics: journalists, editorial writers, and other voices in the media, various experts and intellectuals, and people who make a living off of politics. The purpose of narratives is to persuade the large majority of the citizenry that pays scant attention to politics until election season to either support or oppose a candidate. Thus, as Table 2.1 indicates, narratives are constructed by depicting as binaries various civil virtues versus uncivil vices: responsible versus irresponsible, knowledgeable versus ill-informed, reasonable versus irrational, and so on. What distinguished the 2016 campaign from previous ones was that the winner of the election had been the subject of not one, but three negative narratives. Furthermore, the narratives’ creators could be located on both the political center-left and center-right, part of what historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. at the dawn of the Cold War called the “vital center” essential to protecting an imperfect democracy from the temptations of authoritarianism. It is that vital center that today, in the view of Yale sociologist Philip Gorski, “is threatened by a new set of centrifugal forces.” He stresses that what he means by the vital center is decidedly not a “mushy middle that splits the differences between the Left and the Right.” Nor is it Third Way that makes irrelevant the Left-Right divide. Rather it is seen as a “political vocabulary that enables dialogue and debate between Left and Right,” the purpose of which is “not to end debate but to restart it” (Gorski, 2017, pp. 1–2).

Table 2.1. Civil versus Uncivil Leadership Traits.

Civil Virtues	Uncivil Vices
Responsible	Irresponsible
Knowledgeable	Ill-informed
Reasonable	Irrational
Even-tempered	Vengeful
Self-disciplined	Erratic
Respectful	Disrespectful
Law-abiding	Corrupt
Honest	Dishonest
Motivated by a commitment to public service	Motivated by self-interest
Respect for the rule of law	Contempt for the rule of law
Calm	Excitable
Prudent	Rash
Articulate	Inarticulate

One can read the three narratives that will be described in this chapter as emanating from the voices of individuals located in the vital center. Despite their political differences and backgrounds, the particular accounts they present reflect a shared perspective on the Trump candidacy as antithetical to the healthy functioning of a liberal democracy. Of course during the campaign positive narratives also developed that were wholly supportive of Trump, and many commentators and Trump supporters questioned the negative narratives outlined in this chapter. Supporters viewed Trump as a successful businessman, a take-charge guy, someone who understood and spoke for “the forgotten” men and women of America — and it was that view, those narratives, that, of course, won out in the end. But what follows specifically sets out to examine the “narratives of opposition” that evolved around Trump the candidate, and became the dominant narrative of the mainstream media, leading many to believe he could not and would not win, setting into context the discussion that follows on why he was able to win. How was someone so vilified by so many able to gain the highest office?

Who is Donald Trump and how did many arrive at a particular consensus about him? In answering the first question, the short answer is this. Trump was born on June 14, 1946, one of five children born to Fred and Mary (née MacLeod). Trump’s paternal grandfather was a German immigrant whose lucrative business ventures staked his son Fred, who in turn bequeathed — estimates vary considerably in the complicated world of Trump businesses — between $40 million and $200 million to his son. Trump’s brashness and quest for celebrity status provided him with widespread name recognition. Because his main business ventures were initially rooted in New York City, he would not necessarily have become a recognizable figure at the national level. However, his ability to gain notoriety about his personal life in the tabloid press and his willingness to be a frequent guest on such programs as Howard Stern’s shock jock radio show helped considerably to make his name familiar across the country. Likewise, his widely touted book, The Art of the Deal, first published in 1987, served to promote him as a successful businessman whose insights could be profitably employed by would-be entrepreneurs. But perhaps the most important vehicle for gaining national name recognition was his role as host of The Apprentice, a reality television program that first aired in 2004.

Despite this very high profile role in the spotlight, the reality is that Trump was not well known — or at least he wasn’t until his announcement to run for the Presidency on June 16, 2015. One reason for this lack of familiarity was, quite simply, that the media didn’t take his candi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Democratic Culture and Civic Virtue
• Chapter 3 The Trump Voter: Labeling the Baskets
• Chapter 4 Institutional Openings to Authoritarianism
• Chapter 5 Postscript
• References
• Index