“If you’re an undecided voter … it has the lineup of a festival concert that you just don’t want to go to, because there’s not a single band you want to see.”
In a normal presidency, this would be a week spent wooing that elusive band of independent voters, unspooling new policy ideas, or putting forward a message that caters to some part of the electorate beyond the loyalists hell-bent on voting for Donald Trump no matter what. That’s the convention Trump needs, but not the one he wants. What the Republicans are delivering instead is a four-day coronation, a paean to a president who’s trailing in the polls and aggrieved that a country with a few other things on its mind—disease and economic despair—isn’t showing him sufficient gratitude. Joe Biden is “going to be your president because some people don’t love me, maybe,” Trump complained to Fox News this summer. “And, you know, all I’m doing is my job.” Day after day, Republicans have dispensed with the notion that the convention is really about anything other than pleasing the man in the West Wing restlessly working the remote. That much was evident when party officials abandoned efforts to develop a new platform laying out what they believe and might want to accomplish. There’s no new agenda, just Trump. But if the convention is about soothing the president, rather than reintroducing him to the nation or giving swing voters a reason to take a fresh look, why not save everyone the time and expense and spend the week giving interviews to sympathetic anchors at Fox? The takeaway wouldn’t be all that different. A common convention practice is for the nominee to be scarce and build suspense for the big, primetime speech on the final night. Trump instead is giving continual cameos. Last night, he made full use of the White House as a partisan backdrop, presiding over a pretaped naturalization ceremony for five new Americans, even as he’s choked off various forms of immigration and staked his legacy on a still-uncompleted border wall. The approach could be self-defeating: Trump’s sheer ubiquity may devalue the acceptance speech he’ll give tomorrow, ending the convention. (Joe Biden appeared a few times at last week’s Democratic National Convention, but wasn’t as frequent a presence as Trump has been.) Newt Gingrich, the former GOP House speaker and a Trump ally, laughed when I broached the idea that the president’s approach could fall flat. “No, because he’s Trump,” Gingrich told me. “He understands that he’s the star. He’s the reason they’re coming to the show. His first understanding is, ‘If I don’t keep you entertained, I can’t communicate with you, because you’re turning me off.’” Heading into the convention, Trump advisers previewed the tone as upbeat and optimistic. Trouble is, Trump is neither.
