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The Evolution of a Joke Campaign

From fool to jester to joker to clown.

My new column up at The Week traces the evolution of the Trump campaign. It’s always been a joke. But the nature of the joke has changed over time.

First, Trump was a Shakespearean fool:

A year ago, I asked the question: Why not Trump? It was a funny question for me to ask, I wrote, as I had “barely ever thought about [Trump] over the past 30 years, and never seriously,” and that “Trump’s greatest weakness as a candidate has always been the utter ridiculousness of the proposition.”

But the 2016 election desperately needed Trump. Before his entry, it looked likely that in the end former President Bill Clinton’s wife would face off against former President George W. Bush’s brother. The election would have been pure trench warfare, with both candidates aiming to vindicate their party’s preexisting positions, and avoid any reckoning with the ways in which they have failed. Trump changed all that. Suddenly, what was going to be a slog turned into a circus.

This wasn’t the dispiriting clown car of 2012 in which candidate after delusional candidate did their pandering little tap-dance before the cane pulled them off into the wings. Trump was different. From the moment he descended his golden escalator, Trump dominated the stage — not merely because he was entertaining, but because he exposed the folly of his betters. As Jan Kott said of the Fool in King Lear, Trump also “does not follow any ideology. He rejects all appearances, of law, justice, moral order. He sees brute force, cruelty, and lust. He has no illusions and does not seek consolation in the existence of natural or supernatural order, which provides for the punishment of evil and the reward of good.”

It felt like America needed to hear from a fool like that. From foreign policy to trade to immigration, Trump punctured the comfortable Washington consensus that everybody knew was right even though anybody could see it wasn’t working.

Then, Trump won the nomination, and became the Lord of Misrule:

He treated New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie like a glorified manservant, because everybody likes having a fat guy around. After selecting Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, he leaked to the press that he doubted his own decision, and publicly stated that he chose Pence mainly for reasons of party unity. Then he put on a thoroughly embarrassing convention seemingly designed to repel anyone who wasn’t already a loyalist.

There was something wickedly funny about this, watching those who had conspicuously failed to muster the will to rescue their party from this travesty wrestling with their consciences over just what it would take to cause them to abandon ship. And there was something especially delightful in watching them realize that they had sold their birthright for a mess of potage that wouldn’t even be served.

Then, as his standing in the polls dropped, the joke got darker:

Trump has long trafficked in conspiracy theories, some unfortunately common among a distrustful populace, some tailored to partisan hysteria, some simply bizarre. But increasingly, Trump has prepared his supporters to believe that a conspiracy is afoot against him specifically — and, hence, against them. Warning repeatedly that the upcoming election will likely be stolen, Trump has protected his own psyche and public image against loss at the price of threatening the legitimacy of the democratic process itself. . . .

Add into the mix Trump’s gleeful introduction of some of the most unsavory elements into our political culture, and a new picture emerged, not of Trump the entertainer, but of Trump as The Joker, an agent of pure, uncontrollable chaos.

And now?

Go read the whole thing there for the punch line.

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