Trump’s Genius

Rick Shenkman is the editor of HNN. His newest book is Political Animals: How Our Stone Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (Basic Books, January 2016).


If there’s one thing everybody – left, right, center, earthling or Martian – can agree on it’s that Donald Trump projects a larger than life image. Wherever he goes he draws huge (HUGE!) crowds. His poll numbers are eye-popping. His ability to fend off the shooting arrows of fact checkers is little short of stunning. Ladies and gentlemen: We stand in the presence of political genius.

But it’s here where I part company with the conventional wisdom. His genius doesn’t lie in his ability to make himself look good in the eyes of his supporters. Rather, it’s his genius to make his supporters feel good about themselves in his presence.

But before I explain myself let’s first understand why we think the Trump campaign is all about Trump. This almost seems like a foolish question. Of course, it’s about Trump. He’s the candidate! When a person throws his hat in the ring he puts himself in the spotlight and we focus on him (or her, as the case may be). We study the way they talk (in the case of both Trump and Bernie Sanders, we take note of their thick New York accents), how they style their hair (in Trump’s case, hair draws an outsized amount of attention), and their rhetorical ticks (Trump is rightly famous for his; his scorn for losers, fondness for the word “huge,” and his appropriation of the word “humane” for policies that are anything but, are sui generis).

While the candidates put out position papers on various important topics from taxes to immigration, the media tend to focus on the candidates themselves. This makes sense given the way the human brain is configured. What we humans find most fascinating are other humans. What we love to talk about more than anything else is how other human beings look, what they’re doing, and what we think of them. This is called gossip and it’s our number one topic of conversation.

So it’s natural for us to think that elections are about the candidates. But in the end they are always about us. What counts is not what the candidates look like or how they talk but how they make us feel about ourselves. It’s not, then, as is usually argued, just politicians who are narcissistic. So are we, the voters. How the candidates make us feel is paramount.

Take Bernie Sanders. How do his supporters feel in his presence? They feel idealistic. People who have been offended by the excesses of Wall Street hear his denunciations of bankers and demands for justice with profound sympathy. This is why he’s connected so strongly with so many. He’s constantly validating their feelings.

This is what all successful politicians do. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he ran for office and slyly suggested that the Silent Majority were right to resent hippies with long hair and war protesting draft-dodging students. Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign validated the voters’ contempt for Washington corruption. Four years later Ronald Reagan validated the voters’ feeling that the country under Carter was on the wrong track.

Many were surprised by Barack Obama’s ability to draw support from whites in his first race for the presidency. But he benefited greatly by his ability to offer them redemption from the choking accusation of racism, which had been hung around their necks for years. As the conservative scholar Shelby Steele astutely observed, by voting for Obama whites finally could clear themselves of the charge that they were guilty of keeping the black man down and owed him something.

Take almost any of the common explanations for voter behavior. What each one is really about is the voter’s feelings. We hear, for example, that the voters this year crave authenticity. What this is about is the build-up of frustration voters have long felt with slick Madison Avenue Ken and Barbie candidates.

To be sure voters have multiple reasons for selecting one candidate over another. Some voters opt for a straight partisan ticket. Others vote on the state of the economy. Still others cast their ballot for the party they think will best meet their needs as measured purely by self-interest. And some, of course, pick the leader they’d like to have a beer with. But all of these explanations turn on the voter’s feelings. A partisan voter who goes for a particular party feels the reward of loyalty and bonding. When the economy seems to be the driving factor in a voter’s decision it is the voter’s own feeling of prosperity that forms the basis of their choice. The question is never really how the economy’s doing, it’s how the voter is doing.

Pundits may fall into the trap of talking about elections as if it’s the candidates who matter, but the way our brain works only our own feelings count. Social science studies show that our choices are generally the result of automatic processes over which our conscious brain has little control and little awareness, if any. (You can tell if your reaction is automatic simply by determining how quickly you reach a conclusion. If your response is whip fast it’s an automatic reaction.) Because we’re complicated we may have multiple automatic reactions. These have to be sorted out by the conscious brain. But all involve the emotions. Our brain ultimately makes the decision which is the most emotionally satisfying. Once we make a decision our brain rewards us for our decisiveness by convincing us that we have made the right decision.

Which brings me back to Donald Trump. How he makes his voters feel is not in question. Like nobody else in this year’s election he has validated the feelings of voters who for years have felt neglected, put upon, and vulnerable. The mainstream media may think of them as dumb – let’s be real, this is how they’re regarded by elites – in his presence they feel smart. Here, after all, is a billionaire businessman running for president who continually validates their suspicion of immigrants and fear of terrorists. Elites have made them feel badly for feeling what they’ve been feeling. Trump makes them feel good.

This is Trump’s genius. He’s making people scorned as dumb feel smart. This is the big irony of the 2016 election. Who'd have thought that Trump, who plasters his name on everything he builds, would be the one candidate most sensitive to how others feel?

Say what you will about Trump he's figured out that politics isn’t about the candidate, it’s about the voters. This is something long-time politicians like Hillary Clinton should have learned long ago, but often have trouble remembering after spending years as the center of attention. The result? Even at this stage in the campaign cycle, on the eve of voting, it's not clear what her voters are supposed to be feeling when they pull the lever for her. Is it fear? hope? what exactly? The answer to that question is unknown and that it is suggests she still hasn't made a convincing case for her election. She should learn from Trump, who, no matter what happens in Iowa, has proven he knows how to appeal to voters, whether he can get them out to vote for him or not.

I am not recommending that Hillary or other candidates mimic his demagoguery. Trump's appeals to fear are not good for democracy. But there are many ways to reach people on an emotional level without providing cues that trigger fear responses. Sanders has figured this out. Hillary needs to.



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I've said this from the beginning. He's a very good talker and it's about how you make someone feel about themselves, when you're with them, not how you make them feel about you.
He's smart, that's for sure.

Trump is bad for America.
Sanders is worse for America.
Clinton is the worst for America.

If we have this limited pool of candidates to elect from, our country is surely doomed.
It’s a matter of voting for bad or for worst; loss mitigation.

IndependentThoughts wrote:Trump isn't good for America.
Sander is worse for America.
Clinton is the worst for America.

If we have this limited pool of candidates to elect from, our country is surely doomed.
It’s a matter of voting for bad or for worst; loss mitigation.

Hello Independent

This is more on what people are attracted to which the article is very accurate, as I doubt many on here would wish for Trump to get in, myself included, and you know my views on Clinton also. Sadly this is the problem not only in the US but the UK, voting for the best of a bad bunch

Sanders would be the idealist choice in this election. When it comes to experience on the world stage, reliability and electability (something the GOP apparently stopped caring about after 2012), Clinton is the choice.

I'll say it here and now -- it's going to be Clinton defeating Trump in this year's election, probably by at least 5 points. I would love to see Sanders get the nomination, but at the end of the day, dumb people decide these things, and not enough dumb people think of Sanders as famous.

I'll agree with the premise, though -- Trump is great at manipulating people.

Trump plays on fear, and hypes up the 'other' as a dangerous enemy. He sets himself up as the hero to the idiots who fall for his spiel. He is clever in the nastiest possible way.

Eilzel wrote:Trump plays on fear, and hypes up the 'other' as a dangerous enemy. He sets himself up as the hero to the idiots who fall for his spiel. He is clever in the nastiest possible way.

I agree with you Les.  Trump is a talker.  But that's all. In fact, I would say he's a loud-mouth, at a time that rednecks are being outspoken. So he fills the seats.

The real comparison is to Barack Obama, one of the greatest communicators in the history of the US, and equally, one of the great thinkers and innovators as well.  We haven't had a great speaker/thinker like that since Thomas Jefferson.

By contrast, Hilary is mundane, and unfortunately, Sanders doesn't have that savoir faire it takes to be president and lead.  I like Sanders' ideas, but on balance, I also want to see women set the precedent of a female in the White House, pushing for women's issues.

Hilary has done her service, but wouldn't it be great to have a Wendy Davis or an Elizabeth Warren running for the office?  I want somebody a bit more to the left than Hillary.

Hilary Clinton is an idiot.
Her husband fucked another woman, lied about it, got caught lying and she stood by him like a stupid numpty.

I would think many women, and young women particularly, have little respect for her.

eddie wrote:Hilary Clinton is an idiot.
Her husband fucked another woman, lied about it, got caught lying and she stood by him like a stupid numpty.

I would think many women, and young women particularly, have little respect for her.

and for doing so .....
she is gets to be the first female president .....
if they have their way

She isn't dumb, she is just in a dirty game, She is a  lawyer after all
ever wonder How she became a politican? she wasn't until after she stood by the president
then given a 'safe' senate seat to become the first female senator for New York...
and then 'Rail Roaded' all the way to the white house.
there is no way she should beat Sanders, based on the quality of person and previous service.
....Unless you could previous services to big money and the power players.

I wouldn't be half suprised if she has her own plans for some Handsome Interns in the oval office

In fairness Eds many women and men stand by a partner who cheated on them; just because we wouldn't doesn't mean those who do are idiots (even if the reason is very dirty as in veyas example lol).

And regardless, Bill Clinton was a decent President (by political standards). We absolutely should not judge our politicians or decide them based on what goes on in theor sex lives.

Republicans don't care who is the victim, it's just about how much mud they can stir up.

They are such Christians that they forget about Newt Gingrich.  Or the many others:

Senator John Ensign (R-NV.) confessed to serious cheating on his wife with a staffer and caught paying hush money to the husband, his chief of staff.

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), confessed to serious cheating on his wife after leaving his state unsupervised for a week.

Senator Larry Craig (R-ID.), caught in a gay sex sting operation in a Minn. bathroom.

Senator David Vitter (R-LA), found to have been a client of prostitutes in D.C. & Louisiana.

Rep. Mark Foley, (R-Fl.) forced to resign when he was found to be having inappropriate communications with male pages.

Bob Packwood, Senator (R-Ore.), resigned in 1995 under a threat of public senate hearings related to 10 female ex-staffers accusing him of sexual harassment.

Bob Livingston (R-LA) was about to replace Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House until he resigned in disgrace when it was revealed that he admitted to had been involved in several adulterous affairs, (while attempting to crucify Democratic President Clinton for having done much less)!
Bob Barr (R-GA) the principal sponsor of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, has been married three (or is it now four) times.  And at a party in 1992, Barr actually licked whipped cream off the breasts of two women, neither of them his current wife.  Now that's family values!

Bill Thomas (R-CA) This 11-term Republican is chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Health.  In June, (2003?) the Bakersfield Californian reported that Thomas, who is married, was having an affair with health care lobbyist Deborah Steelman, who steered huge campaign gifts to Thomas' war chest.  In an "open letter to friends and neighbors" (voters), Thomas did not deny the relationship, but said during his legislative career, "  . . .  Any personal failures of commitment or responsibility to my wife, family, or friends are just that, personal.  I have never traded a public responsibility for a personal one and I never will."

Dan Burton (R-Indiana) was the Chairman of the House Government Reform & Oversight Committee.  He hated President Clinton so much that he publicly called him a "scumbag".  Following an expose, Burton was forced to admit that he fathered an out-of-wedlock child, a fact he denied for years.

       He has yet to admit, however, that during 38 years of marriage he has committed adultery with dozens of women, sexually assaulted others (including a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood), and kept mistresses on his campaign and public payrolls – to the tune of at least a half-million dollars.

Charles Canady (R-Fl), Judiciary Committee member.  A leading opponent of abortion, Canady lied to his constituents about his adulterous affair with Sharon Becker, which caused her divorce from Florida businessman Robert Becker.

Dick Armey (R-TX): as an economics professor before entering Congress, was accused of sexually harassing female students, according to the Dallas Observer.

But my all-time favorite is Helen Chenoweth (R-ID): one of first to condemn Clinton, admitted to having a six year extramarital affair with a married associate.

The Spokane Spokesman-Review tells us now she claims a pardon from a higher authority: "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it," she revealed. (She has since divorced and remarried – no doubt with the Lord's blessing!-)  Thanks god...check's in the mail.  Apparently, it was god hiding under the bed with this one.

Eilzel wrote:In fairness Eds many women and men stand by a partner who cheated on them; just because we wouldn't doesn't mean those who do are idiots (even if the reason is very dirty as in veyas example lol).
.

No, no...Les, wrong way. We want to vilify her, not praise her.