Trump alone
What the world saw in Cleveland on Thursday night, as Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president, will be remembered long after the flurry of news that soon overshadowed it. The speech returned again and again to a brutally negative diagnosis of the national condition and to the brusque assurance that Trump alone can fix it, and quickly. It continually foregrounded the candidate himself—down to the visual setting, which proclaimed not a party or slogan but simply the name TRUMP, in letters visible from central Pennsylvania.
The speech was also notable for what it did not do. One absence many noted: there was literally nothing in the way of policy details. I noticed others as well. There were no allusions to the touchstone events of American history—not the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Depression, World War II, the civil rights era, or anything else. The only reference to one of Trump’s would-be predecessors was not an encomium to Washington or Lincoln or even Reagan but a jab at LBJ. There was no rhapsody about the family or the community or the church, building-blocks of a greater society. There was not even the cheapest paean to hard work, struggle, sacrifice, or ingenuity.
Instead, Trump offered an astonishingly paternalistic and infantilizing speech. It was one long list of personal promises to vanquish foes and distribute the spoils.
