Trump’s Triumph

Accidents do happen in politics. The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United Unites on November 8 was not exactly typical. It was peculiar, if not unique. Trump sold himself to the electorate as someone who was ineligible to be the leader of a modern state and commander-in-chief of its armed forces. His language was belligerent and divisive. Should an American president be in the open using language long discarded by the flower children? He offered no apologies for what he said, to whom he said it and how he said it. Normally, that would be a turn off for most people, or at least for men and women who value the need for building bridges using a civil tongue.

Trump denigrated women; he denigrated religions and religious institutions; he denigrated orphans and the poor; he denigrated women; he denigrated blacks and other minority groups. There was no better way for a man to say to the electorate: reject me. But the more uncouth he was; the more belligerent he was and the more combative and abusive he was, the more he attracted the electorate to himself.

During the nomination, we watched as the handsome young senators with finesse and a civil tongue fell off the perch one by one, until he was surprisingly the only one standing among the Republicans. It is an unlikely story.

I would imagine that in the weeks ahead, political pundits would crack their fecund brains trying to pin point the Trump magic. How did it happen that a man detested by almost everyone found the love of most people in the ballot box? A mystery.

I will occupy myself with something less esoteric. As I see it, three things worked for the man. The first is that Americans are not yet ready to have a female commander-in-chief. I think they have tried and failed to convince themselves that they cannot sleep peacefully under a woman president. It would take years for them to find someone like Hillary Clinton. But then they are not even searching.

The second is what typically happens when everyone has shut in the dark horse. It bolts out and upsets all calculation at the wrong moment. I am willing to bet the Democrats believed this was in the bag. They did not seem to bother too much towards the end of the campaign about what a Nigerian pastor tells his congregation always: It is not over until it is over. After all, Trump seemed unelectable. His party leaders did not like him and would rather pull him down. He seemed ripe to be tossed to devourers on election day. That was where everyone made the costly mistake that made the man cruise to victory, leaving the bookmakers to chewing their fingers.

And that brings us to my third point: Trump himself. He put out a split personality. He presented himself to the public as someone who did not quite belong. He was rough and rough-hewn. Yet for all his rudeness, he was a well-school fox. He held on to his fox persona to the end. He worked hard, very hard, to the very end of the campaign too.

Perhaps, his victory points to something creeping up on that country: the end of civilised political conduct. In the words the Obama era of finesse and suavity may yield place to the new era of bulldog politics. That serves the Americans well. I hear many of them are biting their fingers but I am not willing to bet you can find anyone willing prove that Indians rather than Americans cast the votes that gave Trump victory.

Weep not, Yankees. You have elected a president you can do business with. Good luck with president/businessman.