Is P. T. Barnum Running for President?

It’s an old saying but those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. The 2016 primaries remind me of what happened eight years ago when Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama fought a monumental struggle over their Party’s choice for Presidential nominee. There was much talk of each candidate not achieving a majority of delegates and how the super delegates might sway the vote in a brokered Convention. These conversations were not limited to the United States.

I can remember how engaged our friends here in London and Birmingham became in the primary process. You couldn’t have a quiet coffee without the subject being mentioned. And here we are, eight years later, watching a fight for the Republican nomination amidst talk of brokered Conventions, defeating Trump and dramatic uncertainty. The American media is in overdrive.

Unlike the 2008 primaries, where the top two Democratic candidates debated ideas as well as slogans like “Hope,” this time around American voters are being wooed by Republican candidates with meaningless phrases such as, “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Isn’t America already great? I suppose it depends on how you define “great.”

The ten word sound bite, often used by Trump, Cruz, Rubio and, occasionally, Kasich, is an old political trick, reducing complex ideas to simplicity, the tactic of the lowest common denominator. If only those questioning the candidates in the Republican debates would ask, “what are the next twenty words?”

It is difficult to judge the campaigns from 4,000 miles away past the inflated rhetoric and scare mongering. Every candidate seems to want to use fear as their leverage into the White House on fear. Trump, in particular, has demonised Muslims, Mexicans and Roman Catholics. And now he has cancelled a rally in Chicago because of the likelihood of violence, induced by his own inflammatory statements. “There are some bad dudes there,” says Trump. Will Chicago do to Trump what it did to Humphrey in 1968?

Fear is an old political weapon in America. In the 1928 Presidential election, Al Smith, the Democratic candidate, was a Roman Catholic. The Republicans continually suggested that if elected, Smith would take his orders from the Pope. It took America another 32 years before they elected a Roman Catholic, despite the revival of the1928 arguments. JFK was not averse to using fear himself. In 1960, he kept accusing Nixon, Eisenhower and their administration of weakness about the so-called missile gap, where supposedly the Russians had been allowed to outstrip America. This was a bald-faced lie but JFK got away with it and stole the election from Nixon into the bargain.

Some years earlier, a Trump-like character was issuing fear statements. Joe McCarthy accused the Truman administration and the President himself of “losing China and being soft on communism.” McCarthy, a blowhard of Trump-like proportions, was finally caught out in lies and died in disgrace.

LBJ, arguably the most successful post-war President, at least in terms of domestic policy, was a dab hand at using fear as a political weapon. In the 1964 election, his opponent, Barry Goldwater, proudly announced that “that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” LBJ played this to great advantage, using slogans such as "In Your Head You Know He's Wrong" and "In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts." Sound bites can really cause damage.

To demonstrate the risk of a Goldwater presidency, LBJ’s team produced the attack ad of the 20^th Century. Using the sun as a background, a young girl is picking petals from a flower to the sound of a count-down. At zero, there is an explosion and a mushroom cloud. The clear implication was that Goldwater would blow up the world, using nuclear extremism in his “defense of liberty.”

I cannot “get” Trump’s political. He has a terrible business reputation. Last week The Sunday Times published an expose about Trump University which conned thousands of Americans to pay for a non-existent real estate education. Trump allowed his name to be used to enhance the Trump brand and benefited financially. He has been behind several failed property developments. CNN has suggested Mafia links. And as for his proud boast that he is spending his own money to fund his campaign, it seems he is lending the money and being repaid from contributions.

Why aren’t debate moderators and Trump’s opponents pinning him with these allegations? Recently, Cruz and Rubio have tried but Trump just talks over them. The angry and downtrodden thinks Trump is representing them and don’t seem to care that demagoguery is substituted for fact. And why is this man permitted to preach violence? He told a heckler at a rally, “I’d like to punch you in the face.” Does the American public want a man who shoots first and asks questions afterwards? Not that far back, George W. Bush did exactly this in Iraq and Afghanistan with terrible consequences. Political memories are short.

What troubles me most about Trump is his affinity with one the America’s greatest hucksters, P. T. Barnum, who described his circuses and freak shows as “The Greatest Show on Earth.” The man was a hoaxer and a con-man. He would say, “The people like to be humbugged.” I can find no evidence to support him saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but this was the effect. Barnum’s famous boast was “I could sell white salmon to anybody,” the point being that white salmon did not exist.

Trump is selling his “white salmon”, talking about making America great again without any substance. There are no policies, no costings, and no details to back the ideas. He says he will remove ISIL. Does he think he can achieve this by bombing or will he commit troops? If the latter, how will he get Syria’s agreement to base American troops?

Trump is an affront to serious politics yet he leads the Republican race. What will happen if he wins? In the movie, The Candidate, Robert Redford’s character, Bill McKay, wins a U S Senate seat, thanks to the influence and advice of his political election apparachik, Marvin Lucas who coins the sound bite, “There’s Gotta Be a Better Way.” The film ends with McKay asking Lucas, “What do I do now?” Were Trump to ask the question, unlikely given his arrogant self-belief, my answer would be, “you’d better produce some white salmon.”