Well, we finally DO have a quintessential example of someone who is speaking truth to (mouth) power. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has perfectly summed up billionaire Donald Trump’s campaign style. He says Trump is trying to “insult his way into the Presidency”:
GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush hit fellow Republican Donald Trump today, saying on Good Morning America that he thinks “Trump is trying to insult his way into the presidency.”
“It’s not going to work, people want an uplifting hopeful message, people come to this country to pursue their dreams, sometimes they start without speaking English, but they learn English and they add vitality to our country,” Bush told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview.
The second part of Bush’s statement is true.
The entertainment-starved jury is out on the first part. The bottom line is that we’re now in a culture with those who in the past would be considered loud boors, obnoxious loudmouths, or people who didn’t deal in ideas but merely insults and hostility can pitchfork their way into the headlines and accumulate great wealth in many professions in doing so. “The meek will inherit the earth” may have once been a saying, but it’s a fallacy today.
Talk radio helped turn our politics into something akin to professional wrestling, where partisans could listen to a trusted radio friend dump on and demonize one party and one ideology for three hours five times a week. Then you had weblogs which were supposed to have the potential of creating citizen journalism and offering a wealth of citizen ideas, but many political ones are now simply citizen partisans op-eds. Except many blog posts would never make it into a print paper even as as letter to the editor, let alone an op-ed since they are often insults laced diatribtes peppered non-newspaper-standards words. And they often state as facts things that aren’t facts.
So the first part about it not working is not a “given.” As THIS POST notes, Bush is responding after Trump said about Bush: “I like Jeb; he’s a nice man,” adding, “But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.” ABC again:
Trump’s words resulted in an avalanche of criticism from both Hispanic groups and other Republicans who accused him of trying to kill the party. Bush called the United States a “diverse country” adding that “we should celebrate that diversity and embrace a set of shared values and Mr. Trump doesn’t believe in those shared values. He wants to tear us apart, he doesn’t believe in tolerance, he doesn’t believe in the things that have created the greatness of this country.”
Even on that, I’d say partially true. Trump recently met with the leader of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, who was a bit surprised at how polite Trump was in private and unlike the public Trump. So Trump either believes what he says or is pushing the red meat buttons to gain support. He’s eliminating the “dog whistles” most GOP conservatives use on this and other issues and just doing it in shout.
You know your Uncle Irwin is a crazy loon and a pain in the posterior but you don’t shout it. But how would relatives react if one of your relatives said just that?
The Bush family has a long history of trying to work with Hispanics and aspiring for Hispanic support and in the case of Jeb! it’s also personal.
FOOTNOTE TO READERS: I’ve repeatedly said that many Trump supporters seem to be like political Beliebers, viewing Trump as a political rock star, parroting his words and speeches and angrily going after those that dare question him. To be clear: Mr. Trump has a right to say what he says and his followers have a complete right to follow him and repeat his slogans and worship him.
But I’ve gotten several emails angrily saying Trump will win the Hispanic vote or suggesting it. Go this google search page and see what all the polls say about Trump. A bedbug might do better.
If you’re a Trump supporter who believes he’ll win the Hispanic vote, then let me tell you the story about this creature who’ll visit you in the spring, this company that a cousin of mine can sell to you for $15 and a case of Monsters, and a new diet where you eat 5 of these a day and you lose an incredible amount of weight.
Trump is indeed tranforming — and cheapening — our political debate. The danger is that now that some ambitious folks see that it’s working, they have a new role model. The kind of politics Bush is suggesting we return to may be oh, so 20th century to many now.
Photo by Michael Vadon [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.