Donald Trump’s plan to make the GOP convention must-see TV.
And when it comes to the staleness of recent political conventions, Trump is (gulp) right. Calling them boring is like saying one of his xenophobic policy proposals is controversial. The conventions are overly scripted affairs that are devoid of drama not by accident; they’re intentionally crafted to avoid drama in the first place. (They’re not offering substance in place of showmanship either.)
Trump’s secret, meanwhile, isn’t that he’s promising an unscripted event, only that it seems like he is. He isn’t planning a convention where anything could happen; he’s planning one where it feels as though anything could. I believe this is called “reality TV.” As another Trump campaign source put it: “Announcing the vice presidential nominee before the convention is like announcing the winner of Celebrity Apprentice before the final show is on the air. This is one of the only opportunities to create tension and drama in the whole show.”
From: Donald Trump’s plan to make the GOP convention must-see TV.
Oh dear.Report
It’s conventional wisdom by this point that the 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee was selected and announced too early.Report
Fight
Fight
Fight
Maybe they can buss in some “protesters” too 🙂Report
Or: Trump introduces two potential VP candidates and as they’re entering the ring some unruly bastid from the stands breaks a chair over one dude’s back creating a near riot of overturned tables and fling beer cups after which he screams “You’re Fired!!” at both of em, then the camera quickly pans to the actual VP choice elegantly walking down the aisle with poise and grace, and a certain rhythm, bopping to the music, only to be greeted in the ring by a scantily clad Dancer With The Stars, who looks suspiciously like Melania…, and they start grinding to Toby Keith’s surprisingly funky new song “Make America Great Again”…
Now, that I’d pay to see!Report
I like this, but let’s replace the two male vp candidates with hot women and make them mud wrestle. Or jello wrestle.
I gar ron teee that that will draw the crowds.Report
@stillwater
You jest hopefully but…
A few weeks ago I saw a tweet from some journalist that said “The 2016 GOP nominee to President of the United States…” Then there was a link to a gif of Trump body slamming Vince McMahon at some wrestling event.
I wonder how much of Trump’s supporters like that Trump does that stuff and they like it because bougie people like me are horrified that the candidate of a major political party is a completely irresponsible showboater.Report
Some of Trump’s supporters find it amusing that the Clintons are acceptable and BO is acceptable and Trump is not – to a certain sort of mind.Report
All in jest: I’d never pay to see such an event. Hell, Mayweather/Paquiao didn’t move me at all. Now, if it was on free TV I’d definitely tune in….
Also, Saul, I’m sorry to hear of your employment struggles. That s*** sucks. The uncertainty is enough to bring anyone down a bit. Hang in there, tho, and keep working at finding the right fit. And don’t beat yourself up. Nothing good comes from that.Report
I think that it’s not about you as much you think it’s about you.Report
And about then, somewhere in Brussels or Dubai, a group of Chinese bankers or sovereign wealth fund managers look at each other and after an uncomfortable silence someone final asks- “We’ve invested how much in Treasury notes from these clowns?“Report
Hell, Saudi Arabia is already threatening to sell their T-notes over the “9/11 victims can sue SA for damages” bill working it’s way thru congress.Report
Sell baby, sellReport
Why?Report
I do wonder sometimes how we must look to the rest of the world.
The disparity between our military/economic power on one hand, and the absurd and insane party that holds legislative power on the other.
It must be like living on that street where the guy at the end of the block shaves his head, starts stockpiling an arsenal of guns, and muttering darkly about helicopters and chemtrails and “making them pay”.
Kinda humorous, but with that sickening dread where you just know it isn’t going to end well.Report
The disparity between our military/economic power on one hand, and the absurd and insane party that holds legislative power on the other.
Exactly. Everyone is worried about this. Except for folks in the absurd, insane party that holds domestic power, of course.Report
This sort of trash talk may please you for the moment. Ultimately, it impedes you from coming to an understanding of the country in which you live.Report
Complaining about trash talk!?!? Self awareness check requested.Report
Actual footage of what happened to my irony meter.Report
Ultimately, it impedes you from coming to an understanding of the country in which you live.
Oh no, I understand it perfectly. One party is currently insane and absurd.Report
@art-deco
Seriously? Coming from you, that’s pretty f–king rich. Was that the punch line of a joke or something?
If I recall, @greginak isn’t the one in need of having his head removed from his ass nor does he address others here like a belligerent little shit. I may know someone who does though.
So nice to see you again.Report
An aspect of Trump’s appeal is that he irritates the other-directed.Report
Yes, there’s even a name for it. It’s called “spite voting”.
It’s also the mentality noted in the old Soviet Union of “kill Ivan’s goat” where bringing someone else down was preferable to lifting everyone up.
More recently phrased as how some people would be willing to live under a bridge roasting a pigeon over a fire so long as the black guy one bridge over didn’t get the pidgeon.Report
Are you saying he’s a living embodiment of Cleek’s Law? That had been my impression as well, to a significant extent.
If it didn’t run counter to his limousines-and-champagne image, I suspect he’d arrive at campaign events in a lifted truck with the diesel scrubber sabotaged and a big confederate flag flying from the box.Report
@dragonfrog
What’s interesting to me is how the limo and champagne image also goes well with the Reality TV image.
I think part of Donald Trump’s appeal is that he is unapolgetic about his wealth and he lives the high-life. Who are other famous billionaires? The Koch Brothers? Mark Zuckerberg? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Gates and Zuckerberg are well known for their philanthropy or attempts at doing good. Gates is a rather rumpled person. Buffet is known for his life-style modesty. The Koch Brothers are also known more for the money that their give to ideological campaigns and centers like the Mercatus Center and Cato.
Trump? He is know for living large or putting on their appearance of living large. He is all out gaudy in his tastes and I think people like that. It is a “Fuck yeah, this is how I would live if I was rich. All supermodels and limos. Fuck that curing Malaria shit.”Report
Someone on another blog said Trump is a poor guy’s idea of what a rich guy is like.Report
Exactly – he’s basically a capitalist fat cat out of a Charlie Chaplin movie.
Which clubs in your town have stretch limos out front? Around here it’s the ones that cater to guys come in from the oil camps, who prefer to blow their two-weeks-on money during their one-week-off on booze and coke in town, rather than on quads and powerboats in the country.
The actually rich folks may have expensive habits, but they’re not trying so hard to prove to everyone they know even slightly that they have expensive habits.Report
He’s the worst aspects of New Money, what happens when white trash gets rich.
🙂Report
Real wealth is displayed in very interesting ways and signals which are supposed to be subtle.
The really rich wear their dad’s old tweed jacket or shop more discretely known brands.Report
Is this sarcasm?Report
I think it is a tad more complicated. Your source of wealth and how new it is also determines how wealth is displayed. People who got a lot of money in very risky businesses seem to go for the living large and flashy. During the Gilded Age, the financiers and real estate types also had more of a reputation for flash than the industrialists. Since Trump made is money in high end real estate, appearing as a someone living the high life as part of his public persona is a good business decision.Report
Part of me wants to mock Trump for his vulgarism, but my leftist PC indoctrination shames me for classism.
What makes Trump so vulgar? That chooses the wrong wine with the entree? Follows the wrong class signals?
I would joke that he is Homer Simpson having won the lottery but that is unfair to Homer, who has a base sweetness and kindness in his soul.
No- his vulgarity is the outward display of his inner meanness.
His ostentatious displays are the taunting of the schoolyard bully or ghetto thug showing off the wealth from stealing the nerds lunch money or pawn shop protection payment.
For Trump, a car isn’t something to enjoy, it’s a symbol to mark rank. His houses, planes, clothes- these aren’t for a man to joyfully revel in life, these are tools of a deeply angry and hateful person.
It’s the vicious anger, the open crybullying that make him seem like a pathetic urchin who won the lottery and instead of being grateful is determined to exact vengeance on the world.Report
@chip-daniels
Except Trump’s supporters are not exactly poor or even working-class. The real base of Trump’s support is that old enemy of the Left, the petite bourgeois.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/trump-working-class-white-voters-small-business/
Now one of the classic antagonisms in American politics is the petite bourgeois v. grand bourgeois. The grand bourgeois are the well-educated professionals who tend to be income wealthy rather than profit/business/capital wealthy.Report
The Left hated the Grande Bourgeois to. They just could live with them a little easier because the Grande Bourgeois tended to be more libertine in social beliefs.Report
@art-deco’s reputation precedes him on that comment above, but he has a point.
I’ve visited about a dozen countries on three continents in the last six months. I’ve gotten a few questions about Trump, but that’s about it. The idea that the rest of the world either knows or cares about the intricacies of our domestic political status signalling is a bit ridiculous.
In the world of people who pay attention to sovereign risk, in regards to either Treasury securities or other holdings, Trump is a topic, but a minor one. The people deciding whether to hold or sell dollar-denominated assets are paying attention to either market movements or the long-term fiscal health of the country.
Even domestically, the percent of the population with a dog in these fights is a minority. It’s pretty much contained to the aspirational 14% who exist between the proles and the 1% or 2%, or whatever the number of the week is, all of whom tend to be largely non-ideological. Political ideology tends to function like the old saying about middle class values, the poor can’t afford it and the rich don’t need it.Report
In Oct 2008 the wife and i got asked about Sarah Palin several times when were in Britain. They knew about her , read stories about her in the papers ( one couple at a b and b in Cardiff saved us the flashy sunday times in depth report on her. it was actually very good) Some brits were concerned about sarah being one oops away from the presidency.Report
Yes, people ask about presidents and presidential/VP candidates, which is why I get asked about Trump and used to get asked about Bush and Obama.
If I’m talking to a Russian, I might ask about Putin or I might ask a European from a country with a parliamentary system about the rise of far-right parties.
Rarely do people not from a country, or who have some specific interest in the politics of that country, know or care about this stuff to the level of specificity in Chip’s comment.Report
Well, this at least is something Trump is legitimately good at.Report
@james-k
It is but I am still frightened that a convention will have this much damn spectacle. I wonder if the Democratic Party will get a bounce for having a boring but perfectly adult convention or whether they will lose voters for being the boring nerd that no one likes.Report
Bingo. I think people tend to forget that Trump actually has very innate skills as a communicator. I say this without any trace of irony: other politicians can learn a lot from the way Trump ran this campaign. It would be great if other candidates started doing more unscripted appearances; celebrating victories with press conferences instead of pre-written speeches (you’re supposedly reacting to something that just happened for pete’s sake!); calling in to news shows to challenge your critics; and – yeah – actually treating political events like they’re fun. If there’s one possible tiny silver lining to Nominee Trump, it’s that he could infuse some looseness into the campaign.
And need I remind folks here that the last GOP convention was themed around taking an off-hand Obama quote maliciously out of context.Report
Under Trump’s watch, we will not be forced to watch an old man argue with an empty chair!Report
Only if Clinton gets the nomination, in which case it would be a middle-aged woman arguing with the empty chair.Report
Elderly. Let’s be honest here…Report
@morat20
No, he’d just fight with a chair.Report
Trump is the Hearst of our times and we are about to watch the emergence of Citizen Trump but without Orson Wells’ good taste.Report
That’s a very good comparison.
Hearst was also a very insecure, angry man who had incredibly mercurial opinions that shifted mostly by convenience.Report
Ya know, I was at Hearst Castle a couple of weeks ago, and he had money, not taste. He just bought things at auction and threw them up, much of it uncleaned, on the walls. Very little actually came from the same periods as other things in the rooms, and when things didn’t match color or size wise, things were created from whole cloth. It was much more interesting to watch my wife, who has an art history degree, wonder around commenting on what was what and how other things were not what they appeared.Report
“Here’s the Slate pitch… Trump hits it into center field, it’s going to fall in front of Hilary for an error, leading to a home run.”Report
Announcer: Live from the luxurious Plaza Hotel in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, it’s the 2016 Trump Republican Convention Extravaganza! [APPLAUSE]
With special guest stars, Charlie Sheen! Paula Abdul! Danny Trejo! Victoria Secrets Model and Famed African American Tyra Banks! Bruce Campbell! Alf! And Gary Coleman!
Music performances by Celine Dion! Garth Brooks! Adam Lambert! Huey Lewis and the News!
Special appearances by Hugh Hefner, funny man Andrew Dice Clay, Conway Twitty, Ted Cruz and Reince Preibus! Plus the Hooters Dance Team!
And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome you Trump Republican Convention host — Ryan Seacrest!Report
“… Kirk Cameron!, Adam Baldwin!, Jenny McCarthy!, Joseph McCarthy!…”Report
Ted Nugent doesn’t get a shout out?
Not even for his new single, “F*** That B*tch?
After all the hard work he’s done for the cause…Report
Ted Nugent is the old Republican Party. The Donald’s is all about the magic of Vegas and Hollywood!
Which reminds me, I totally forgot to include Gary Busey!Report
and a nice big crop of BernieBros.Report
Well, we’ve got one establishment candidate left standing, and if you don’t dig that sorta thing you’re gonna move towards shakin the tree, yeah?Report
How is this different than any other contemporary national convention?
Before the age of mass communication, conventions existed to nominate candidates and approve a platform. The last contested convention was in 1976 and platforms don’t mean anything. From a procedural perspective, there isn’t much that happens at a convention that couldn’t be done via mail or online. Conventions exist to make speeches and get people excited for the general election; they are and have been reality TV for some time.
This is why it’s so difficult to campaign against Trump. The more the political elite and the media try to make Trump look like some particularly insane or dangerous departure from normal political culture, the more obvious it becomes that normal political culture already was all of those things.Report