A wise political observation was offered up several years ago by former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour: “There’s no such thing as a bad short speech.”
President Donald Trump and his speechwriters totally ignored that fellow Republican’s sage advice Thursday night in a 70-minute acceptance speech that, while making some stinging points in attacking Democratic challenger Joe Biden, was too long, too repetitive and too self-centered.
It also was delivered in an inappropriate venue and in a manner that disregarded his own administration’s warnings on how COVID-19 is transmitted.
The White House, both by tradition and arguably by law, is supposed to be off-limits to purely political events, but Trump — as is characteristic of his chronic flouting of norms and his autocratic leanings — turned the South Lawn into a campaign rally and potential coronavirus spreader. Some 1,500 supporters sat within inches of each other, few wearing masks, in what looked like an orchestrated repudiation of nearly universal medical and scientific advice, including from Trump’s own COVID-19 task force.
As for the speech itself, Trump focused on a State of the Union-type litany of his claimed achievements. More importantly, he signaled that he believes the only way he can be re-elected in November is to shift attention away from the pandemic and to put it on the unrest in several of the nation’s cities, some of which has been marred by inexcusable looting and destruction.
Just as Trump in 2016 won the White House by stoking fear of immigrants and capitalizing on white discomfort with the nation’s changing demographics, he is now counting on suburban America’s fear of urban protests over racism and police brutality to keep him there for a second term.
He also hopes to paint Biden, whose long history in government has been as a moderate, as a doddering puppet of the radical left of the Democratic Party.
Fear is a powerful motivator, but for this to work will require not only Trump’s conservative base but voters in the middle of the political spectrum to hold the incumbent blameless for the worst racial turmoil in this country since the 1960s. It would require them to believe that Trump, who has done more to exacerbate the unrest than to calm it, would magically be able to make it go away after November.
Most every political speech is checkered with exaggerations, untruths and contradictions, but some of the president’s boastings Thursday night were simply ludicrous.
“I say very modestly that I have done more for the African American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln” was not just an immodest claim. It was an insult to presidential history and an unwitting admission of his own disconnect with Black Americans. Just as Biden can be faulted in his acceptance speech a week earlier for not condemning the rioting that has occurred, Trump made no mention of a single instance of the unwarranted police killings and other violence against Blacks that have sparked the protests, most of which have been nonviolent.
And while the president bragged about the record 9 million jobs created in the past three months, he conveniently forgot the 22 million lost in the two months prior — for a net deficit of some 13 million since the pandemic reached the United States.
Fear may decide the 2020 election. Biden said last week that Democrats fear the damage caused by what Trump would do in a second term. Trump made it plain that Republicans should fear having the opposition in charge. The easy forecast is for a very nasty campaign.
