I am going to use one of my precious New York Times gift links for Ezra Klein’s huge article: What’s Wrong With Donald Trump? You can think of it as a bookend for the hugely controversial piece he wrote in February: Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden. In that earlier article, Klein reluctantly concluded that the Democrats should replace Biden on the ticket, and while it got huge blowback at the time, it was the correct argument. Now he’s made what will no doubt also prove to be a much-argued-about analysis with respect to Trump’s psychological fitness, as well as the basis of his appeal.
I look at Klein’s piece in two somewhat disparate ways. As an attempt at pure rhetoric and persuasion, it’s a tour de force. But in order to succeed as persuasion, it can’t fully overcome an accusation of sane-washing. Brendan and I discuss sanewashing at length in our latest podcast. One definition is “the act of minimizing the perceived radical aspects of a person or idea in order to make them appear more acceptable to a wider audience.” In the context of New York Times coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign, it’s really a bit more than that. Taegan Goddard has a piece of the subject up on Tuesday at his Political Wire site.
The Times has apparently decided that this moment in American history is not unusual. It’s just another election between a normal Democrat and a normal Republican.
And the future of democracy is just another issue — like immigration, tax cuts or inflation.
It’s a remarkable failure by the country’s most important news organization.
Goddard wasn’t referencing Klein’s piece on Trump, but we can consider it an additional piece of evidence. Without question, Klein asks us to consider Trump and his presidency in the best possible light, but only in the service of making an all-the-more devastating rejection of his candidacy for a second term. And, in fairness, Klein couldn’t be more explicit that Trump is not normal and that this election is unusual.
In fact, Klein’s thesis is that Trump’s appeal is based almost entirely on a very unusual character or personality trait, which is an off-the-charts lack of normal inhibition and self-control. This leads him to do and say things that no other politician would say or do. The first advantage of this is that his unpredictability makes him entertaining. In a sense, paying attention to him pays off in a way watching one more iteration of a standard campaign speech never will. The second advantage is that many people wish they were less inhibited in their own lives and interactions, and seeing someone act with no filter projects a kind of fearlessness that they admire. Some see it as such a sign of strength (because it contrasts with their own perceived weakness) that they feel Trump is uniquely suited to protect them. What’s new about Klein’s analysis here is that it doesn’t rely on the specific content of Trump’s message. Yes, saying racist shit that a lot of people think but are afraid to say is a key element of Trump’s repertoire that fits nicely here, but so does mocking John McCain for being captured by the North Vietnamese. In other words, what works for Trump is bigger and broader than simple white nationalism or reactionary populism. There’s a fearlessness factor that is created by his inability to control himself.
An example of Klein’s sanewashing is his treatment of Trump’s 39-minute trance-dancing at the recent rally in Oaks, Pennsylvania. While many saw it as evidence that Trump is in a steep mental decline, Klein describes the episode differently: “Trump did not freeze up on that stage; I’m not going to accept that. He did not lose where he was in the moment. If anything, he was all too present.” In Klein’s mind, it was everyone else who “really have no idea what to do,” but Trump wasn’t confused or melting down at all. He was just being his uninhibited self, and that’s part of what makes him such a beloved figure.
But if these elements of the article can be hard to swallow at face value, they aren’t meritless either as rhetoric or analysis. Rhetorically, Klein is giving the benefit of the doubt in order to keep non-Trump haters on board for what comes later. Relatedly, he asks us to consider why, if Trump is such a danger, his presidency wasn’t so disastrous. This is isn’t because Klein didn’t see disaster in Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic or January 6th, nor does he deny that Trump well deserved his two impeachments. But he’s talking to people who remember the country and world at peace and the economy humming prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. And he’s setting them up.
Because the whole lengthly lack of inhibition discussion is just a precursor for explaining why his second term won’t be like his first. In his first term, his advisors, the “Deep State,” congressional Republicans, various cabinet members, the judiciary and high-ranking members of the Pentagon routinely ignored, stalled, countermanded and otherwise thwarted many of Trump’s completely unhinged and often illegal orders. All those guardrails have been or are in the planning process of being removed for a second Trump term, meaning that his lack of inhibition and self-control will manifest in disaster.
For many MAGA fans, this is what they think they want. But, as Klein points out, one of the routine defenses of Trump from his supporters is that we should not look at what he says, which is often hard to defend, but instead look at the results. And if you’re willing to grant some good results, like NATO members paying more for their defense or a reduced level of border crossings, then maybe you think Trump’s unconventional ways are required to overcome the obduracy of blockheads in Washington DC. But, no, Klein argues, the lack of inhibition and self-control only worked, insofar as they did work, because others provided those functions for him while he was president. All signs are that this will not happen in a second term precisely because those who said ‘no’ the first time aren’t going to be there the second time. Hell, the Supreme Court even went so far as to rule that the president can commit crimes with impunity so long as he can argue that they were carried out while fulfilling some presidential duty.
If you think about Klein’s piece as a closing argument in front of a MAGA-friendly jury, it’s probably about as good as can be done by a left-leaning journalist. He doesn’t waste time and effort arguing about things that are ultimately unconvincing, He says, “hey, your guy has some attractive traits and he did some good things as president,” but here’s why it worked the first time and won’t work the second time. And, I think, he made the case in a way that’s pretty hard to refute. At a minimum, it should give a lot of soft Trump supporters a moment of self-doubt.
On that level, it’s an impressive effort from Klein, and a solid bookend to how he began this campaign, by giving Democrats a permission structure to force Biden out.
