The Trump phenomenon

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[/audioplayer]Ronald Reagan wooed America with sunny optimism. From the offset, Donald Trump has offered something much darker. He began his presidential campaign on 16 June by declaring that the ‘American dream is dead.’ He said that the country was being run by ‘losers’. ‘We have people that don’t have it,’ he said. ‘We have people that are morally corrupt. We have people that are selling this country down the drain.’ He insisted that only he, Donald J. Trump, had what it took ‘to make America great again’.

This was not ‘Morning in America’; more Midnight in America. Trump’s pitch was gloom, insults and arrogance. Strangely enough, however, that turned out to be exactly what millions of American voters wanted to hear. By trashing the United States and comparing his country unfavourably to himself, Trump tapped into something deep and powerful in the American psyche. Now there are only a few days left before the presidential election process starts, and ‘The Donald’ continues to storm the polls. He probably won’t be president, but it now looks as if he probably will be the Republican nominee — the heir to Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower. It’s a mind-boggling phenomenon.

In the early days of the Trump campaign, commentators on both sides of the Atlantic refused to take Trump seriously. They laughed at his vanity, his facelifts, his fake hair. Some said that he was running simply to promote his TV show, his businesses and his book (his earlier tilts at the presidency did appear to have been PR stunts). Others thought he was another Republican cabaret act; similar to Herman Cain, the pizza magnate who enjoyed a brief success in the 2012 race for the Republican nomination, but with extra ego on top.