By Richard Ikiebe
A curious possibility is emerging from the recent Republican “midterm convention” in Dallas: President Donald Trump may once again be underestimated by the very people who have spent a decade trying to understand and explain him to the world. From events leading to the U.S.-Denmark-Greenland new security arrangement announced last week, the point may become clearer, but that is another story.
This is not an argument that the Republican Party is certain to win the U.S. mid-term elections in November. Available polling says the elections would be difficult for Republicans, and the normal logic of mid-term elections works against a sitting president’s party. Recent polls also give Democrats an advantage on the generic congressional ballot.
The argument is different. Much political commentary on Trump makes the same analytical error of measuring him against the rules of a political game that he does not appear to believe in. Other players may again underestimate his capacity to alter the political equation.
Trump is routinely described as erratic, impulsive, outrageous or unserious. His words are judged against the conventions of presidential language and established political practice. However, what looks like disorder from outside may represent a coherent political method from within.
Throughout his political career, Trump has repeatedly been treated as an aberration: his candidacy was a curiosity; his nomination seemed unlikely; his 2016 victory was an extraordinary disruption; and his 2020 defeat was regarded as a restoration of normality by some. Yet he returned to the presidency.
The deeper problem may be a failure to understand Trump and, crucially, his audience. What sounds implausible within the conventions of establishment politics may not sound implausible to his supporters.
Trump’s language is aimed less at the political elite and Washington pundits than directly at his constituency. His extravagant statements should not automatically be dismissed as haphazard. They can be acts of political positioning: designed to communicate, provoke and mobilise on his own terms.
In an election in which his name is not formally on the ballot, Trump has nevertheless offered to place his political capital beside that of every Republican candidate, state by state. He has asked voters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot”. Given his current approval ratings, it is a considerable gamble. But he appears willing to stake his political standing on it.
The unconventional Dallas convention itself was part of a grand strategy. It was a national television platform for rallying the Republican base, raising money, and imposing a single national narrative on what would otherwise be hundreds of separate congressional contests.
Much of the commentary has concentrated on the length of Trump’s speeches and the unusual optics of a mid-term convention, rather than the political architecture beneath them. It is the recurring mistake of reading Trump by the old rules. The consequences of failing to understand him could be consequential: Republicans retaining Congress.
His proposal to pay every American adult a US$5,000 dividend if Republicans retain Congress illustrates the point. Much of the media dismissed the proposal as absurd or vote-buying, which could be illegal. Critics say it could cost more than US$1 trillion, require congressional approval, and has no settled financing mechanism.
All of that may be true. But the political significance lies in its simplicity: Republicans win; you receive a dividend. The word “dividend” itself recasts citizens as shareholders in the American enterprise.
Winning is the end goal. Whether Congress ultimately approves, modifies or rejects the payment is another matter. A political promise need not be implemented exactly as announced to produce electoral consequences. If Republicans win and Congress later rejects the payment, Trump can say that he fought for it but legislators prevented it. By then, the objective would have been achieve, helped by the supposedly “absurd” proposal.
While Trump changes the language of political communication, his opponents laugh. (Again, reference Denmark and Iceland). Individual statements may seem disconnected or contradictory when examined in isolation. His apparent unpredictability can be deceptive. But Trump needs his audience to believe that he is fighting for them; that the political system is resisting him; and that they have a stake in helping him overcome that resistance.
Seen from this standpoint, there is something intellectually lazy, and potentially dangerous, about treating Trump’s claims as objects of ridicule. When Trump says something outrageous, the important questions are: which constituency is he addressing? What grievance is he activating? What political distinction is he creating? What response or behaviour does he want from his audience?
The danger for Trump’s opponents is that they may be misreading the political world he is creating and operating within. They continue to measure him by established standards while he establishes new ones. They may discover after the election that what they dismissed as political theatre was, in fact, political strategy.
There is no guarantee of a Republican victory. The party faces genuine vulnerabilities, and Trump’s approval ratings remain a significant problem.
Yet, precisely because conventional indicators suggest weakness, the possibility of another Trump surprise deserves serious attention.
Trump’s most consequential innovation may yet be his refusal to seek permission from established political culture about how a president should speak or behave. But will enough voters accept his new rules? If they do, the lesson may be larger than Trump himself: a changing political system cannot be adequately analysed with instruments designed for the old one.
•Dr Richard Ikiebe is a Media and Management Consultant, Teacher and Chairman, Board of Businessday Newspaper
