The Revolt That Failed
Dispatches from Cleveland
So we find ourselves at the ghost convention — a beautiful apparatus built to contain substance, but in which lives only a vacuum. An event made for TV is now made of TV. And TV is made of nothing.
One cannot criticize the convention staff. They have done their damnedest. They have striven more than reason demands to put on a showcase. In any other year, this would be the victory party before the victory. Instead, Paul Manafort decided to attack host Governor John Kasich for abstaining, setting off a raucous first day that didn’t end until Melania Trump parroted Michelle Obama’s convention speech nearly verbatim.
Earlier, the rebellious resistance to Trump attempted a coup of sorts. A vote was sought on accepting the rules. Senator Mike Lee, backed by the ever so polite Utah delegation, tried to force a roll call floor vote. And in some sense they succeeded. Forget Ken Cuccinelli tossing his credentials on the floor in a meaningless act of defiance. They drove the presiding officer from the stage. They forced Team Trump to fudge the vote totals. They revealed a farcical charade for what it is. Senator Barrasso emerged from the wings to set things straight. Order of sorts was restored. I guess.
But the point was made. The Trump camp committed a foolish error. Instead of letting the vote go through and fail, they goosed the numbers, ignored the delegates on the floor, and made clear that RNC leadership is committed to having a normal, stage-managed convention come hell or high, combustible Cuyahoga water.
One imagines a reanimated Shelby Foote memorializing the lost cause as the camera pans and scans cracked sepia photos.
“The spirit of the rebel units was strong and their effort was notable in its enthusiasm. But the forces of the Orange Menace occupied the high ground and the heat in the convention hall was too great. In the end, despite the nobility of the insurgents, the force of gravity was too much. And all was lost.”
The assembled operatives shouted at television screens in speakeasies. Then drank away the agony of futility.
The blowout party of the night was held at the Cleveland Aquarium. The displays are less than inspiring. Fresh water fish drift around in atavistic patterns. A school of piranha seems bored. A nurse shark rests in something like the fetal position in the corner of the shark Aqua-Tube. The grey reef sharks in the aquarium have bloodied their hyper-sensitive noses by banging against the glass.
Further on, the band is singing “Sweet Dreams” in a major key. Because this is new country: anodyne and digestible but unmemorable. It satisfies the crowd but does not move.
Which is the more appropriate metaphor for the doomed attempt to stop a craven idiot from hijacking the party? If you know, you’re a better reader of events than me.
The problem with the effort to dump Trump was baked in: it came solely from the right and made no serious attempt to broaden its base of support.
Worse yet, it relied on Cuccinelli, a man the center of the party regards as inept and untrustworthy in equal measure. The last cycle saw incumbent senators spend $24 million in the primaries fighting off Cooch’s army of slack-jawed acolytes, propped up by Senate Conservatives Fund. Every one of the insurgents went down to defeat, some more ignominiously than others. But people remember. Ken Cuccinelli is not a man who can be trusted to look out for anyone other than himself. When he began to bargain with the Trump team to close primaries — an asinine goal as many states don’t even have party registration — it was par for the course. So while nobody doubts Lee’s earnestness, his chief ally in the effort is as appealing as a hungry viper.
All of this is not to say the opposition to Trump and Trumpism is dead. The rules having been imposed by force are rules that will only be followed insofar as they can be forced. Nobody has a reason to behave now. Moreover, in making martyrs out of the anti-Trump forces on the floor, The Donald’s dimwitted goons have allowed him to be embarrassed and have made the entirety of the race hang on their platform and candidate. This is Trump’s campaign now. The coming defeat is on him, his lampreys, and the fools who accommodated him.
At minimum the heat kept the silliness in check, at least outside the arena. Some vestigial workers party led a march. A woman ran around in a full body root suit emblazoned with corporate logos. CNN, full of breathless excitement, tried desperately to make it seem like “a moment,” whatever that means. But this was a festival for house cats: self-involved, disorganized, and ultimately decorative.
Inside the arena was a different matter entirely. Any line between convention and Wrestlemania disappeared when Melania Trump took the stage. Not content to wait, Herr Trump introduced his wife with a brief soliloquy and a detached kiss on the cheek. Queen, a band less than devoted to the female form on display, provided the soundtrack of his entrance. Then Melania preceded to plagiarize the sitting First Lady’s convention speech, which is the sort of ridiculous ad hoc approach we’ve come to know and loathe from the Trump campaign. It won’t matter of course. Sloppiness has apparently become part of the appeal.
The third Mrs. Trump had to follow Rudy Giuliani, still clinging to the mantle of “America’s Mayor” despite America’s manifest indifference to him. This is not meant as a criticism of Giuliani’s handling of 9/11, which even his severest critics acknowledge was exemplary. Rather, I marvel at Giuliani’s ability to revert to his pre-9/11 disfavor with the public. The would-be law and order campaign is running on a law and order agenda dyed in the wide-lapel wool of the late 90's. It’s lost its touch.
They seated Giuliani, who gestured exaggeratedly throughout his speech and afterward, next to Bob Dole. Dole, the hard man, the broker, the dry wit, the bent but unbroken hero. Dole is the reason I got into politics, which he called a noble profession. I believed him. Dole was paid lip-service by the convention program as the only living previous GOP candidate to attend. I have nothing more to say on the matter.
The rest of the night saw a parade of other speakers. LTG Mike Flynn, turfed out of the Defense Intelligence Agency by President Obama (who gave Flynn, a Democrat, the job in the first place), railed against Clinton and the threat of Islamic terror for well past his allotted time — an utterly unsurprising outcome for anyone who has ever met Flynn. The mother of one of the four Americans killed at Benghazi spoke. Chachi also took a turn because of course he did.
Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa stepped to the podium and shone. She is a natively gifted politician. She speaks on security issue with eloquence and deep personal credibility. In any other context, her speech would have been the subject of the media chatter afterward. But because of Flynn’s prolixity, the crowds were pouring out of the arena throughout her speech, heading for the bars. And just to make sure no substance snuck through last evening, Melania Trump’s ham-handed aping of Michelle Obama dominated the late night coverage. Because of course it did.
Full of booze, boredom, and disdain, I vaguely remember seeing Willy Robertson on the stage with an American flag bandana. Robertson knifed Bobby Jindal in the back during the primary to jump on the Trump Train, and here he was, addressing the public in full faux-redneck regalia, Central Casting’s idea of country. Omarossa is here somewhere as well, now designated Trump’s African-American outreach director, a group that gave him literally 0% support in two recent swing state polls. The line between reality television and the material world is now non-existent.
And with that in mind, your humble correspondent will sign off. There’s more ridiculousness to record and more people to offend as we travel through the looking glass and into the surreal alternate universe of Trump. But hey, I didn’t come here to make friends.
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