Global economist David Malpass uses his latest Forbes column to explore the reasons for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s appeal.
DONALD TRUMP has tapped into the public’s anger by decrying unfair trade practices, insecure borders, bad schools, failed health care reform, uncontrolled national debt, arbitrary regulations, a social safety net that fails minorities and the poor, entrenched government corruption, subordination to political correctness, multibillion-dollar payments to Iran and rule by executive order.
The anger is aimed at the bad results–flat wages, $19 trillion in debt, rich lobbyists, weakened defenses, Iranian funding of terrorism–and is heightened by the government’s unresponsiveness. There’s a sense that the government won’t change course, no matter how badly it’s doing.
Trump’s complaints have been more detailed than his solutions, which has brought criticism from those accustomed to policy-wonk campaigns. The losing 2012 presidential candidate had offered a 59-point plan called Believe in America. It meant well, but was too long and left many voters bored with its complexity. To voters the solutions shouldn’t be elaborate–the goal is to reverse course. The government had spent $800 billion on “shovel-ready projects” that disappeared into the ether, and then it made no effort to fire the failures. That and dozens of other federal disasters should have been used to galvanize voters in 2012.
Trump has inspired more emotion than traditional politicians. Some of his words have been thoughtless, mistaken and divisive, but many others have hit home, as shown by record primary support. President Obama lashed out at Trump after the nightclub killings in Orlando but left himself open to Trump’s haymaker that Obama seemed madder at Trump than at the Pulse killer or Islamic terrorism. Almost anyone watching Obama’s seething attack would understand Trump’s point.
High emotions are unsettling, but upheavals have to be emotional in order to succeed. Even the signers of the Declaration of Independence were blunt and loud, blaming the king emotionally and by name: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” That’s not to equate our current malaise to the colonists’ or to elevate Donald Trump; it’s to invite and defend an emotional presidential campaign aimed at upheaval.