America’s most popular politician styles himself an anti-politician, quite the paradox.
In a recent Economist poll of who Republican voters would want as their candidate for president in 2024 Donald J Trump has not just a plurality but a majority, and not just a 51% majority either. With more than 60% of Republican voters intending to vote for Trump in the primaries he is America’s most popular politician with some margin. On the blog I have been consistently arguing that America has not found a good, or even okay way of dealing with the challenge to the current political system Trump represents. He has consistently undermined faith in the impartiality of the judiciary, a strategy which appears to be paying off handsomely now that he is facing a multitude if lawsuits, civil and criminal. Almost anything Trump does is the opposite of what you would expect a normal politician to do; he is a sort of anti-politician.
Trump’s appeal is based in his outsider status, after all it is difficult to campaign against a political system in which you built your career. In Europe a consistent way to deal with and reduce the power of nativist movements like the true Finns, Brothers of Italy, and the Danish People’s Party has been to legitimise the parties and let them join government. In most cases the strident claims nativist parties about restoring a glorious age since past prove impossible to implement – especially in just one term in office – and the parties’ support declines, sometimes even triggering a split in the party.
Obviously, Trump has already been in office to it will take more than just falsifiability of his claims to bring his support down. Still, I think the same principle broadly applies as with European nativists, if in a different arena than the legislature. If Trump were invited to a fundraiser at a Wall Street bank, or invited to the Oscars, or some other mainstream media spectacle where one might find a politician I think his popularity might decline. It is easy to say that you are different from other politicians, proving it is harder, and while Trump has so far been able to avoid being considered a Washington outsider, it might be easier to paint him as part of the broader ‘Establishment’. I argued in a previous blog post that the best thing for America would be for Biden to pardon Trump on all counts before the 2024 election, and that might have the added benefit of making him appear close with the Washington crowd his supporters so despise.
Trump is popular because of what he represents: the anti-politician. Americans broadly seem to dislike their political system and the people who populate that system. The cleanest solution to the problem Trump presents would be political reform, but seeing as that looks very far off, perhaps the next best thing is making Trump be just another politician. Trump is famous for his mud-slinging, it is only fair that he is one the receiving end for once. Just like combining matter and antimatter leads to mutual annihilation, so too does combining the anti-politician with regular politicanship.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover photo by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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