After two debates starring Republican presidential hopefuls, pundits and the chattering class are still trying to decipher Donald Trump’s appeal and ascendance in the polls. Well, I think I’ve got it. In a nutshell, it’s the carnival season, and what’s one of the great things about carnivals? Cotton candy!
Everybody loves Trump, the cotton candy candidate. The look, feel and smell of the campaign are the things that have some folks so excited. Forget that it’s not filling. It looks good and, boy, is it tasty. That it is all sugar and hot air is precisely what people like.
For the racists, Trump blaming Mexicans for America’s demise and attacking the “Black Lives Matters Movement” with calls for law and order is a convenient and self-affirming truth. For those mad at the Washington political class, his bombast that “they’re all stupid” is simply him giving them a piece of our minds.
If you believe money is corrupting the political process, spending his own money to run his own vanity campaign is the elixir we savor. For those tired of a press corps that seems preoccupied with wanting to be the story rather than accurately reporting it, he is the walking, talking embodiment of, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
In an age that has become increasingly cynical, in which America’s capacity to lead is in doubt, his promise that “with me you’ll win so much that you’ll get bored with winning” sounds delicious and too good to pass up.
How sweet it is. You want to know why Trump is idolized and being sanitized? It’s cotton candy. Now, the obvious problem with that is despite the fact it taste good and looks good, there is nothing there. After the sugar high wears off, the reality hits home: “Man cannot live by cotton candy alone.”
Should we get mad at Trump? No. He’s only selling what so many seem to want to buy. The trouble with Trump is really about the problem with us.
In the 1995 movie “The American President,” Michael Douglas’ character, in response to repeated vitriolic attacks by a prospective candidate, says, “America isn’t easy.” How true. Our politics and economy are, by definition, about competition, which means we have winners and losers. That notwithstanding, we are not involved in a zero sum game. The genius of the American way is that there are multiple pathways to opportunity. When we intentionally try to expand those pathways, it gets better for everyone.
At every juncture in which America has dealt with grievances of injustice, new vistas of opportunity have opened for every marginalized group. Those benefits run the gamut from greater rights to expanded economic opportunities. The civil rights movement not only ended restrictions to equal rights and voting rights, it also expanded rights for white women, Hispanics, gays, you name it. When banks were pressed on the issue of redlining black communities, the ultimate benefit was a surge in home ownership for all working class Americans. The election of an African-American president has given an air of inevitability to the election of the first woman to the position.
America is not irreparably broken, at least not yet. But it is in need of repair. Those politicians frustrated with Trump’s rise to prominence need to offer something more promising, and I don’t mean red cotton candy instead of pink. Reporters who lament Trump’s lack of substance need to stop covering our politics and political campaigns like car crash TV in the name of greater ratings.
For those frustrated by the fractures in our common life, more Americans need to embrace that it’s our diversity that makes our country exceptional and reject any political pabulum that pits us against each other rather than remind us we need each other
We have had enough cotton candy for now. It’s time for some vegetables, as mom used to say. We need something that will make us healthy and whole, “one nation under God, indivisible, with justice and liberty for all.”
Charles R. Stith is director of the African Presidential Center at Boston University and former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania.
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