Donald Trump has jumped the barrier at the same time he has jumped the shark. He has gleefully embraced not just birtherism, but raised questions about Barack Obama’s education and whether or not Obama wrote his second book. The consequence? Trump is surging in Republican polls.
He’s surging as Obama is seemingly tanking. Both the Gallup Poll and a new Washington Post/ABC News poll find Obama’s approval ratings match the lowest of his presidency while an ABC News poll finds Trump within 12 points of Obama.
It’s a perfect opening for a “new Perot,’’ or a plain speaking, tough talking Republican.. Trump may have jumped the shark for some voters with his birtherism but with poll numbers like he’s getting he could be a “serious” candidate IF he wants to be.
My grandmother had an old expression: “If I had wheels I’d be a trolley car.”
To many talking heads and new and old media pundits, the symbolism here is that Trump is a potential a 21st century Perot. But he also symbolizes a political shift.
In the 1960s, evening newspapers started dying due to popular network evening newscasts. By 1988, newspapers scrambled to complete when the National Enquirer beat them on the Gary Hart extramarital affair scandal. By the early 20th century, TV news passed from being a dignified information stewardship to a cash-cow entertainment component. Fox News’ ratings, the Internet, and talk radio boosted opinion-based news and helped coarsen political discourse’s tone and content.
The driving force behind these shifts was “Give ‘em what they want” to see, read or hear. Enter Trump.
If Sarah Palin is a talk show personality grafted onto a politician popular due to her sound bite snark, the abrasive, tough-talking Trump is a realty show character who generates attention by creating, pulling in and keeping an audience by giving them what they want to hear – even if it’s baloney.
Trump’s most revealing comment came to Talking Points Memo in responding to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s suggestion that Trump drop the birther issue:
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.