Columnists
The Big Pivot
You’ve got to hand it to Doug Ford. He has used the gift horse of the COVID crisis to transform his image from that of ‘angry old guy’ into ‘benevolent Uncle Doug’—a regular sort who just happens to occupy the Premier’s office and who has no special knowledge, but who asks lots of questions of the experts and follows their advice. Right now, he could probably win a second term of office in a cakewalk,
And then there is Doug Ford’s country cousin Donald Trump. Going into his personal COVID days of reckoning in Walter Reed Hospital, Mr Trump was wearing his ‘angry old guy’ persona. He had trash talked and filibustered his way through the first presidential debate and was itching for more opportunities to lash out at Joe Biden. The only problem was that he sat consistently behind Mr. Biden in the opinion polls, and his debate performance didn’t help him much.
When Mr, Trump steps back into the public eye following his brief incarceration, he will have a lot of ’splaining to do. How come he led his followers to believe that the coronavirus was just a hoax, or if it wasn’t, would go away of its own accord? How come he said that wearing a mask was just for sissies like Mr. Biden? How come his team can’t even get the facts straight about the severity of his own condition?
Mr, Trump’s exposure as a bleary eyed, puffy faced man who has been sideswiped by his brush with vulnerability presents him with a golden opportunity to change his approach. He could start by taking a page from the Doug Ford playbook, ditch the ‘angry old guy’ persona that has marked his presidency and pitch himself as ‘benevolent uncle Donald’, a regular guy who has been humbled by his hospitalization. He will have to eat a lot of crow, and admit that his own arrogance has stood in the way of a more effective response to the crisis. That should help him retain some loyal supporters, and attract some new ones.
But turning himself into a kindly uncle may not swing him enough votes to keep his presidency: still bolder action may be required of him. And above all else, Mr. Trump wants to get re-elected. Criminal and civil lawsuits await him once he ceases to be president. The position he takes on the political spectrum is secondary, He couldn’t care less about the future of the Republican party.
As the opinion polls show, there are a lot more Democrats out there than there are Republicans. So why doesn’t he do something all those Democrat voters will like? He can experience a strategic conversion on his way to Damascus at the same time as he eats his humble pie: he can renounce the decisions he has made over he past four years and adopt the Democratic platform as his own.
Gone, among other things, would be the trashing of Obamacare; the tax benefits for the rich; the withdrawal from the Paris Accords; the courtship of the extreme right wing; and the limitation on the number of refugee admissions to the equivalent of one canoe load per year. As a gesture to indicate his serous intent he could do something like withdrawing his nomination of Amy Comey Barrett to the Supreme Court and instead nominating someone who is willing to stand behind the Roe v. Wade decision.
Any disadvantage he would suffer by losing Republican voters who liked his former MAGA policies would be more than made up for by the vast numbers of Democrats taking a second look at him. He has to roll the dice.
What you would be left with is a straight popularity contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden—a contest Mr. Trump and his brand would stand a good chance of winning because people couldn’t bear the thought of waking up each morning without finding some fresh Trump outrage to complain about. His new pitch would be “Admit it America—life without me in charge would be a heck of a lot less interesting than it is now. All you’ll have to look forward to is more COVID and climate change. Better the clown you know than the one you aren’t sure of.”
Yes, it has come to this. Mr. Trump’s best hope of sticking around is to ask the American people to stand what they have known as Trumpism on its head and vote Republican to get Democrat policies as the prize. Who the winner in all this would be, I leave to your imagination.
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