The Donald Trump Moment

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/opinion/campaign-stops/the-donald-trump-moment.html

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Gail Collins: Arthur, lately we’ve been starting our conversations by predicting the next primary winners. If you have a more innovative answer than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, tell me instantly. Otherwise I’m declaring a primary prediction truce.

Arthur Brooks: I’m afraid I’ve got nothing new to add here. Trump and Clinton are coming off crushing victories in New York and are leading in all the states that vote Tuesday. The Democratic nomination is all but sewn up, which leaves the question of what Bernie Sanders will do next.

At least the Republican nomination still has some drama in it. Depending on who you ask, the new, temporary non-aggression pact that the Ted Cruz and John Kasich campaigns hashed out is either a long overdue and common-sensical move or a grave display of “establishment” treachery. It’s far from guaranteed to work, of course, but both those camps needed to give it a shot.

Gail: Yeah, the barbarian hordes are galloping down the mountain and the two towns at the bottom agree to work together on improved streetlights. I don’t know, Arthur. You’d need something more than a mutual agreement on ad buys in Indiana and New Mexico to stop this train. Gosh darn if it doesn’t look as if Trump is going to be the Republican presidential nominee. Never thought I’d be writing that.

Arthur: For a lot of people it seemed like the Zombie Apocalypse: an entertaining theme on television but not something that happens in real life. Turns out it can happen in real life.

Gail: Americans love zombies. Not sure I’d want to see them on CNN, eating the interviewer’s brains, but it would certainly be must-see TV.

On a gentler note, I predict Sanders will soldier on for a while, but he’ll have to choose if he wants to build a movement within his party or just be the guy who’s hoping that if he demeans Hillary long enough, he’ll get a chance at the nomination.

Arthur: Which road are you hoping he takes?

Gail: Bring back the “I don’t care about your damn emails” Bernie and let him debate Hillary about the issues every week. True, that doesn’t sound like a ratings grabber and if it’s a choice between civilized conversation about trade on one channel and the brain-eating thing on the other, I can’t promise you I’d stick to trade myself. But the Democrats really don’t have much left to do until July, and they ought to spend some time in reasoned discussion.

Arthur: You mean conducting civil discourse as if the other person weren’t the enemy? That’s so retro.

Sometimes I wonder about these candidates on a personal level. Do they actually believe that being friendly and respectful is a sign of weakness? Are they authentically this contemptuous of others? Or is it all some weird sort of show? I find myself cringing all the way through the debates, the same way I can’t stand to watch a reality show where people say terrible things to each other. And I’m not exactly a conflict-avoidant person.

You’ve been covering this for years. What’s your take?

Gail: Well, in my experience they’re all pretty civil in person. In public this has been a strange year. You have one Republican who yells for a living. And on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton gets criticized for raising her voice in public when she’s pitted against a guy who works only in mega-decibels. During the last debate she and Sanders truly did seem sick and tired of each other.

But generally, I’d say that when people go into full-howl mood they’re frightened for some reason.

Arthur: Ah, yes, fear — the primal motivator. There is a lot of literature suggesting that leaders can be effective by manipulating the fears of their followers, but I’ve never seen anything suggest that acting on your own fear is a good leadership strategy.

So what are they afraid of? Losing? Being humiliated? And why is there no fear of looking nasty and foolish? Sign of the times, or specific to these candidates? Or has it always been this way? Help me here.

Gail: This is when I’m supposed to bring up the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Why can’t we go back to L-D? Here’s the reason: Life was veeerrry slow then, and people had a stupendous attention span. So they flocked to an event in which the first candidate spoke for 60 minutes; second candidate spoke for 90; first candidate got the last 30. Outdoors, in front of a huge crowd with no microphones. Today, we’d have to have a Lincoln-Douglas Twitterfest.

Arthur: I can see it now:

Abraham Lincoln (@honestabe): @stephen4sovereignty Stephen, your pathetic Kansas-Nebraska Act was just an attempt to compensate for the fact that you are only 5’4”. Sad!

Gail: Face it, this is the Donald Trump moment. Even if he doesn’t win the presidency, he’s defined the campaign. And this is not a man anybody could take seriously if the conversation was in measured tones.

Arthur: That’s a hypothesis that is about to be tested, I think. Most recent indications suggest that Trump will try to moderate the pugilism that characterized his campaign up to this point. Is it possible? Will it work? We shall see.

Gail: Yeah, I know we’re supposed to be getting a new Trump. Could happen, but I doubt it’ll last if he feels he’s losing the crowd’s attention. And it’s hard to imagine him sticking to someone else’s script. It’s not that he’s less duplicitous than the other candidates. It’s just that his mind doesn’t seem to work that way.

Arthur: Let’s get into some advice. I know you think Trump is beyond help and beyond the pale so I won’t ask you to advise him. But what advice would you give Hillary?

Gail: For the primaries, her strategy has been to emphasize how close she is to President Obama, under the theory that most Democrats are Obama fans. Once she moves on to the general, that’s going to change and I, for one, can’t wait. The poor public has to think it’s going to get something new. She has to explain how a Clinton administration would be different — and better.

Also, I would vote for sending Bill home, or maybe abroad. He’s a tremendous politician but the public needs to be really sure this is her race, not his. Or theirs.

Arthur: So give me the contours of the course you’d like her to chart in the general. What big policies would you like to see? (And what country should she send Bill to?)

My own view is that with the nomination sewn up, Hillary should run as a reasonable centrist and resist the pull of the Sanders-loving left, no matter how intense the gravitational field feels out on the campaign trail. Adopting the themes of political reconciliation could even pull in a few million quiet people on the center-right. But of course I would think these things.

Gail: Well, that’s why everybody likes you so much. As the less elevated thinker, I’m sort of nodding off at the idea of all that moderation.

Arthur: Not sure all of our readers would agree with you, but that’s nice of you to say. I could probably say, “I love puppies,” and some would denounce it as right-wing propaganda.

Gail: Actually, if Trump is the nominee I could see Clinton doing exactly what you’re recommending. If all you need to do is remind people you’re sane, it’s easy to play it safe. But that would be a disappointment. If there’s anything that’s been clear this year it’s that the public wants some real change in the way our economy operates — one that raises up the bottom half, using money that comes, in one way or another, from the overstuffed financial elite.

Arthur: The key is that offering up new ideas doesn’t require becoming a spittle-flecked simulacrum of her challenger. In fact, the best way to raise up the bottom half — if that’s the real goal — is actually pretty sane stuff. Putting kids’ interests first when it comes to education, proposing tax reform that would stimulate job growth — these kinds of steps would give a huge lift to vulnerable communities and could also bring conservatives and liberals together. On the other hand, offering a boatload of free gimcrackery and vitriol against wealthy people plays well on campuses, but it doesn’t help poor people at all.

By the way, my advice to Donald Trump or Ted Cruz might look surprisingly similar.

Gail: Let’s pursue that thought. If the Donald called you up tomorrow and asked for your counsel, what would you tell him?

Arthur: Two things: Bone up on innovative policy based in real free enterprise principles, and stop kicking down. Two big criticisms that limit support are deep uncertainty about his concrete views on most issues and an apparent cruel streak toward weaker people that goes beyond the rough-and-tumble of normal politics. The policy-light, insult-comedy entertainment that drives the big rallies also drives high unfavorable ratings among everyone not at rallies. Unfavorables matter less in the primaries (especially when one candidate gets about 80 percent of the media coverage), but are practically dispositive in the general.

Gail: Well, with advice this reasonable it’s hard to imagine any takers, this year at least. But we can hope.