For Trump, It’s Not Morning In America Anymore

CLEV­E­LAND—Don­ald Trump’s clos­ing speech at the Re­pub­lic­an con­ven­tion was one of the most pess­im­ist­ic pieces of polit­ic­al rhet­or­ic in re­cent his­tory. Most can­did­ates, even in times of tur­moil, try to make the case that hope is on the way. Trump’s speech, by con­trast, offered a lit­any of bad news so dis­mal that voters must con­clude that any change is ne­ces­sary—no mat­ter what the con­sequences.

Trump con­stantly com­plained about the na­tion’s ills but failed to prove why Amer­ic­ans should en­trust him to be com­mand­er in chief. He closely stuck to his pre­pared re­marks in de­liv­er­ing his ad­dress—the longest in mod­ern tele­vi­sion his­tory—but it lacked the Trumpi­an charm that of­ten wins ap­plause for his pop­u­list out­bursts.

The speech sug­gests that Trump and his ad­visers are mis­read­ing the na­tion­al polls show­ing the pub­lic’s deep dis­sat­is­fac­tion over the dir­ec­tion of the coun­try. They seem to think that he can win simply by po­s­i­tion­ing him­self as the can­did­ate against the status quo.

Trump’s goal should have been to out­line what he’ll ac­tu­ally do in the White House—es­pe­cially since a long parade of Re­pub­lic­an speak­ers had already laid out the case against Hil­lary Clin­ton. In­stead, he chose to wal­low in voters’ misery, list­ing all the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fail­ures on for­eign policy, crime, trade, and im­mig­ra­tion (just to name a few), while of­fer­ing few spe­cif­ics about his own policies. Even his self-de­scribed “plan of ac­tion” con­tained mostly re­hashed at­tacks against his Demo­crat­ic op­pon­ent.

“Nobody knows the sys­tem bet­ter than me, and that’s why only I can fix it,” Trump said. “Things have to change—and they have to change now!” he in­toned later. “We are go­ing to de­feat the bar­bar­i­ans of IS­IS,” he pro­claimed. But out­side of his can-do bluster, there wasn’t even a hint of how he would do these things—nev­er mind that can-do op­tim­ism defines most suc­cess­ful pres­id­en­tial cam­paigns.

Take Trump’s lines on for­eign policy. He hit many fa­mil­i­ar notes about the coun­try’s grow­ing weak­ness un­der Pres­id­ent Obama. But in an in­ter­view with The New York Times on Wed­nes­day, he struck a de­cidedly out-of-the-GOP-main­stream view by re­ject­ing Amer­ica’s role as a pro­tect­or of glob­al se­cur­ity. He ex­pressed dis­con­tent with Amer­ica’s un­equi­voc­al com­mit­ment to the NATO al­li­ance and sug­ges­ted that the U.S was mor­ally un­able to tell oth­er coun­tries how to con­duct their own af­fairs.

He only briefly al­luded to these points in his speech Thursday, leav­ing a lot of ques­tions about how rad­ic­ally he would re­ori­ent Amer­ica’s for­eign policy. He re­jec­ted the “failed policy … of re­gime change” to at­tack Clin­ton, not men­tion­ing that such in­ter­ven­tion­ism was a staple of George W. Bush’s for­eign policy as well.

This was also a speech bet­ting that voters are wor­ried about a rise in crime, re­flec­ted by his re­peated ref­er­ences to be­ing the law-and-or­der can­did­ate. “The first task of our new ad­min­is­tra­tion will be to lib­er­ate our cit­izens from the crime and ter­ror­ism and law­less­ness that threatens their com­munit­ies,” Trump said.

He over­looked the fact that Amer­ica is a much safer and stable coun­try than it was when he was in his early 20s, when the coun­try was wracked by the as­sas­sin­a­tions of Mar­tin Luth­er King and Robert F. Kennedy, ri­ots in scores of cit­ies, and protests against the Vi­et­nam War on col­lege cam­puses.

Trump is bet­ting that the level of fear and anxi­ety now is com­par­able to those tur­bu­lent times, even as the coun­try’s crime rate re­mains his­tor­ic­ally low and race re­la­tions are much bet­ter than they were in the 1960s.

He also railed against il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion to an ex­tent rarely heard at Re­pub­lic­an con­ven­tions, im­ply­ing that lax bor­der se­cur­ity was re­spons­ible for a crime wave. Trump men­tioned his fam­ous wall only in passing, but his rhet­or­ic was as charged as ever.

He de­nounced the “bar­bar­i­ans” of IS­IS but offered no ideas on how to stamp them out. He also be­moaned the re­cent spate of po­lice shoot­ings, but again offered no pre­scrip­tions, oth­er than show­cas­ing his re­spect for law en­force­ment and bash­ing Pres­id­ent Obama’s hand­ling of race re­la­tions.

Trump needed to win over GOP-friendly con­stitu­en­cies that have stub­bornly op­posed his can­did­acy—in par­tic­u­lar, col­lege-edu­cated whites and Re­pub­lic­an-lean­ing wo­men. It was hard to see how his speech ac­com­plished that.

It’s not morn­ing in Amer­ica any­more, at least if this Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ate re­flec­ted the views of the broad­er pub­lic. Clin­ton will face her own chal­lenge next week at the Demo­crat­ic con­ven­tion, need­ing to de­fend the status quo at a time when the pub­lic thinks the coun­try is on the wrong track.

But Trump failed to make the case that he can provide the kind of lead­er­ship to “make Amer­ica great again.”