Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Day 2: Media Theme is Convention Chaos

Screen shot of the top stories on the New York Times home page at noon on July 20, 2016.


The front page of the New York Times today says it all: "Day 2: Muddled Messages" summarizes a video showing highlights from the previous night's speeches, which were supposed to focus on the day's theme of "Making America Work Again." Did anyone do that? Basically, no.

The speeches focused mostly on bashing Hillary. Only Trump's children seemed to focus on the nominee himself and what he would do in office. This is what the convention is supposed to be about, for those who haven't covered one before. Next week, you'll get to see a professionally run convention: scripted, controlled, and probably boring. But it will give at least an illusion that the candidate is in charge, the messages were planned and consistent, and the campaign is in order.

The PBS Newshour's convention coverage, which featured six professional journalists in a booth overlooking the noisy hall and several more down on the floor doing stand-up interviews with knowledgable folks from the party, had a similar take on the night's events: No one was talking about Trump except his children, and no one was following the theme for the day at all. HOW is Trump going to put Americans back to work at well-paid jobs? Not a word on that, except perhaps a few lines in the speech from Donald Trump, Jr., the candidate's son, who gave arguably the best speech of the night. The one that might launch a new political career. There's one at every convention. Watch for this young man to propel his own rise in politics from this moment.

So what is the takeaway from Trump's rather chaotic second day? His kids love him. They have the courage to get up and speak. And everyone else just hates Hillary. The day's other Most Memorable Speech was by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (who was supposed to launch his presidential bid from the 2012 RNC, when he got the keynote position, but gave a terrible speech, mostly about himself and not the nominee). Christie's tryout last night for the post of Attorney General in Trump's cabinet (I credit syndicated columnist Mark Shields for this insight) involved a prosecutorial attack, point by relentless point, on Hillary Clinton, with the audience responding "Guilty!" after every point, in response to Christie's cry of "Guilty or not guilty?" But it wasn't about Trump, the person, or his theme of the day.

The media narrative, so far? Chaos reigns at convention and in Trump campaign. The secondary narrative: A party divided.

It is still possible that Trump could pull this limp rabbit, revitalized, out of a hat in his address on Thursday. I foresee one possible way: The "I am my own man and not beholden to anyone" theme. Here's how the argument goes:

  • This campaign was not orchestrated by public relations and marketing folks. 
  • It was done on the cheap. 
  • And the reason is independence. Freedom. Trump is not beholden to anyone. No Wall Street billionaires, oil magnates or even NRA lobbyists are pulling his strings. He is utterly himself. 
  • This was a key ideal of politics in Aristotle's "Politics" and Plato's "Republic," when democracy was just getting started, in ancient Greece: Politicians should be independently wealthy and beholden to no one. 
  • Our system has been corrupted by the aforementioned Wall Street billionaires, oil magnates and NRA lobbyists because of one thing: money. Everyone knows that, when they see House votes on gun control go down to defeat, or fail to even get introduced, despite the fact that 90 percent of the public wants some controls on at least assault weapons, in the hands of the most dangerous people -- the ones on the No Fly list.  

Trump doesn't want that money. And he's willing to put up with a bit of chaos and messy messaging to keep it that way.


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