As Donald Trump continues to lead the Republican primaries south of the border, the question must be asked: What are our American friends thinking? Here’s a loud-mouthed, arrogant, classless boor who wants to make the Mexican government pay for a wall between the two countries.
He insulted war hero John McCain (who, you recall, endured years of torture by the North Vietnamese). He implied of Megyn Kelly, an aggressive TV anchor who skewered him during a Republican political debate, that she was having her period.
And he called Anthony Weiner, the husband of Hillary Clinton’s closest aide, a “perv sleazebag.” Although admittedly, he had a point. Weiner resigned from Congress after emailing nude pictures of himself around the Internet under the nom de phallus “Carlos Danger.”
So why is Trump cleaning up? It’s said his popularity lies in trenchantly rejecting the country’s entire system of government and everyone in it. He cares not a whit about verbal errors (or worse), and neither do his supporters.
There is a huge and growing disgust among Americans for politicians of all stripes, and as a self-proclaimed outsider (he made billions in real estate), Trump gets marks for calling it as his fellow citizens see it.
Perhaps. But personally, I think there’s a different explanation. The movie Animal House comes to mind.
A bunch of frat boys (Don’t know much about history, Don’t know much biology) get drunk, scoff at authority, hold food fights and attend a university whose founder’s motto, inscribed on his statue in the college square, was “knowledge is good.”
The movie wasn’t intended, of course, as a model for public administration. But part of America’s fascination with Trump is perhaps the amusement we all feel in watching slapstick humour. Unfortunately, the Donald is serious.
Now, it’s not as if we haven’t had our own share of vaguely demented leaders. Prime minister W.L. Mackenzie King, as we all know, believed in ghosts and spiritualism.
Reading tea leaves was apparently beyond him, but the man began each day by examining his shaving cream for portents of what lay ahead. He was also “self-righteous, egotistical, petty, vain, moralistic, paranoid, selfish, self-centred and vindictive,” according to his biographer.
Sir John. A. Macdonald was frequently drunk in Parliament.
Alberta’s Ralph Klein was frequently drunk in public. He threw a book at a 17-year-old page on the floor of the legislature. And his remarks about then-Conservative MP Belinda Stronach don’t bear repeating in a family newspaper.
B.C.’s second premier, and founder of the British Colonist (one of the forerunners of this newspaper), changed his name from William Alexander Smith to Amor de Cosmos. He got into fistfights, cried copiously in public and suffered an irrational fear of electricity.
But let’s face it, this is nowhere near Trump country. And the reason bears thinking about.
We might not greatly admire our governments — indeed it’s a rare moment when any prime minister or premier gains even a 50 per cent approval rating.
But we do not perceive Ottawa or the provincial capitals as the basket case Washington, D.C., has become. We don’t have the spectacle of Clinton or Trump conceivably spending $1 billion on their campaigns.
Our House of Commons isn’t elected every two years, as the American House of Representatives is, with the consequent endless fundraising. And our constitution wasn’t written by clinically paranoid men who meant to shackle government, rather than empower it.
We’ve been spared our own version of Trumpery, in other words, because when it comes to the big things, we largely get it right. We’re a decent, politically moderate country in a world where that is an increasingly rare accomplishment.
