The Trump Revolt (Pocket Politics) by Edward Ashbee

Author:Edward Ashbee [Ashbee, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: National, Campaigns & Elections, Political Science, Political Process, American Government, General
ISBN: 9781526122995
Google: fXK5DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B075MFSFCN
Goodreads: 36855057
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2017-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Ideas and processes of interpretation

Nonetheless, although the Trump campaign can be seen in terms of strategic skill, ideational entrepreneurship and bricolage as it reconfigured policy ideas, a note of caution should be sounded. Ideas (including those that drove the Trump campaign) do not exist, and cannot be ‘sold’, in a vacuum. They are not free-floating. There are certainly processes of interpretation as actors make sense of events, processes and structures but interpretive processes take place within certain bounds. Although there will always be outliers, and flailing election candidates will, for example, vehemently deny the likelihood of an impending defeat, there are limits beyond which interpretation generally does not go.

In his discussion of frames, and the ways in which the Republicans captured issues by capturing the ideas and language within which issues such as taxation are debated, George Lakoff emphasises that frames and the slogans to which they are often tied can only be effectively marketed if the ideas on which they draw have taken root over decades (Lakoff, 2014: 33). Arguably, however, more is required than this. Even the most proficient ideational entrepreneur can only develop, distil and promote policy ideas within certain sets of material circumstances that will viably lend credence to those ideas. There are power relationships and logics that are certainly subject to processes of interpretation but nonetheless operate so as to privilege some ideas rather than others. Economic restructuring, the financial crisis, and the prolonged malaise that followed brought populist frames and fears of downward intergenerational mobility to the fore. And, as Matt Bai has argued, economic issues blurred together with a profound distrust of, and alienation from, governing institutions. This was, Bai suggests, a legacy of the Iraq war, the untruths that accompanied it, and the failure of the US to bring about the form of ‘regime change’ that had been promised:

A decade passed, and American voters seemed to have settled into their cynicism … But politics is like that. The larger the shock to the system, the longer it takes for the effects to surface … And so, right from the start, he was willing to trash the powerful institutions of our civic life … Generals were stupid. Judges were biased by their ethnicity. Bankers were venal. His own party was weak and pathetic. (Bai, 2016)

The seeping effects of the Iraq war that Bai describes should be added together with the longer-term ideas that have been fostered and facilitated by the structural characteristics of the American state that were considered in Chapter 2. In sum, ideas should be understood within the context of the ‘material’ factors considered in the chapters that follow. They only take shape and come to the fore in certain circumstances.

Notes

 1  It may also be that Trump's wilder claims and promises were disregarded because many voters were looking for strong leadership and direction rather than specific policy pledges. See p. 44.

 2  In September 2016 Trump announced that Barack Obama was in fact, and despite his earlier claims, born in the United States.

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