Fever Swamp: A Journey Through the Strange Neverland of the 2016 Presidential Race

by Richard North Patterson

  Lest we forget the undertone of denigration that was birtherism’s companion, the remarks of Gingrich and Huckabee were particularly gamy and insinuating—and, when deployed against our own president, strikingly xenophobic. Gingrich stated that Obama’s sensibility could only be grasped by those who “understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.” Falsely claiming that the president had been raised in Kenya, Huckabee asserted that Obama “probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.” Their barely concealed implication was that America’s president was, in fact, “the other”—a stranger to America and its values.

  To be sure, other Republicans behaved with decency. Some were punished for it by birther-inflamed GOP voters. Confronted by birthers at a town hall in Delaware, Representative Mike Castle firmly rejected their claims—he was roundly booed and lost a Senate primary to a Tea Party candidate who dabbled in witchcraft. Fearful of such consequences, other GOP officeholders simply avoided public meetings.

  Others ducked the issue by disclaiming knowledge of Obama’s birthplace. Still others couched their evasions as respect for the electorate, as did John Boehner in asserting his disinclination to tell voters what to think—a curious objection from a man who attained high office by doing just that. All in all, much of the official GOP allowed the issue to keep boiling among the base, profiting from the unreasoning antipathy to Obama it engendered.

  The impact on the electorate was measurable, and distributed in telling ways. An opinion poll carried out for the Daily Kos in 2009 found that 28 percent of Republicans believed that Obama was not born in the United States, and that an additional 30 percent were not sure. Notably, support for birtherism was concentrated among whites and was particularly strong in the South.

  But the virus persisted nationwide. In 2011, a Gallup poll reported that 23 percent of self-identified Republicans thought that Obama was “probably born in another country,” as opposed to 14 percent of Independents and 5 percent of Democrats. The 2011 release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate did little to extinguish this pervasive falsehood. In September 2015 a CNN/ORC poll showed that 20 percent of Americans continue to believe that Obama is foreign-born.78

  Again, it is well to recall the singular vituperation directed at the president that has accompanied birtherism—including a shout of “liar” from a Republican congressman during his State of the Union Address. It is hard to perceive such invective as wholly coincidental, a mere by-product of partisan disagreement. For the inescapable essence of birtherism is that Obama is not simply wrong on the issues but an illegitimate president, a stranger who, by virtue of his origins, is uniquely undeserving of the decent respect otherwise due his office.

  Now let us contemplate the current treatment of that would-be president and child of Canada, Ted Cruz.

  For once, one of Donald Trump’s witch’s shafts seems to be missing its mark. In the week since Trump first hurled it—a lifetime in this viral age—there is little sign that the question of birthplace, which so bedeviled Barack Obama, is seriously tarnishing the foreign-born Cruz with Republican primary voters. In 2016, it seems, the contagion of birtherism is confined to the media, spurred on not by the GOP base, but by Cruz’s competitors and their allies—whose obvious self-interest is augmented by a uniform loathing of the Texas senator.

  Seemingly frustrated at the initial paucity of grassroots response, Trump has escalated his attacks, aware that taking down Cruz in Iowa could gravely damage his chances. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Trump direly predicted: “If Ted is the nominee, he will be sued by the Democrats.” “Ted is very glib,” he complained in Iowa, “and he goes out and says ‘well, I’m a natural born citizen,’ but the point is you’re not.” Professing bewilderment that he is trailing Cruz in most Iowa polls, Trump said of his rival, “You can’t have that problem and go be the nominee.”

  But, apparently, Cruz can. Brushing off Trump’s claims, he ascribed them to the political “silly season.” His campaign for the presidency rolls on; his stock as Trump’s leading Republican challenger is holding steady. Untroubled by birthers, Cruz finished a six-day run of Iowa town halls, buoyed by the very Republican base that so despises Obama. What Trump’s political inner ear fails to pick up is the sound of silence, the absence of the dog whistle that once animated birthers. Instead, what he may be hearing is the sound of Cruz’s footsteps.79

  For among the birthers, indifference reigns. This time the issue is not visceral, as it was with Obama, bestirring the deep emotions that gave us years of birtherism. Conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt dismisses the question of Cruz’s eligibility as a nonissue for the Republican base. Cruz’s principal Iowa backer, fiercely anti-immigrant representative Steve King, neatly exemplifies their curious selectivity. With respect to the president, King embraced the birther movement and questioned Obama’s birth certificate. As for Cruz, King insists that his scholarly research proves that there is “no doubt” Cruz is a “natural born citizen” eligible to be president. Foreign birth, it seems, is less foreign in Canada than Kenya.

  One reason for such disparity is surely garden-variety hypocrisy. Barack Obama is a progressive Democrat. Ted Cruz is a hard-right conservative with an enthusiastic following, no doubt including many erstwhile birthers who now find constitutional consistency ideologically inconvenient. But there is another distinction, peculiar to Obama, that Republicans need to own: the distinction that helped spread the infection of birtherism among the GOP base, the reason that almost half of Republican primary voters persist in believing that Barack Obama is another version of their “other”—a Muslim.

  President Obama is black. Senator Cruz is not.80

  PART II

  Primaries, Guns, the Court, Bernie vs. Hillary, the Rise of Trump, and the Collapse of the GOP Establishment

  On February 1, 2016, the Iowa caucus began a frenzied gauntlet of primary after primary, boosting Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. By early May, Cruz was out and Sanders was effectively dead in the water, though his corpse kept dog-paddling furiously. In three volatile months, much happened, and not just the brutal winnowing of candidates.

  Antonin Scalia suddenly died, pouring gasoline on one of our most incendiary issues: which party would win the chance to transform the Court for a generation in areas such as voting rights, reproductive choice, and gun control. To preserve its chances, the GOP stalled the nomination of Merrick Garland. Among the candidates, hopes were dashed, reputations tarnished, and careers destroyed. The Republican establishment collapsed. Terrorists and madmen slaughtered innocents with weapons of war. A fretful populace feared for America’s future—in part because they feared one another.

  In this heated moment, I set out to analyze what was happening in the fever swamp—and why.

  It quickly became apparent that the normal tools of analysis simply would not do, for none of them explained Donald Trump.

  No matter how disturbing, nothing he said or did diminished his support within the GOP primary electorate—instead it grew in numbers and intensity. But why?

  A partial reason was the party’s indifference to the economic anxieties of its voting base—struggling whites. Another was that Trump ripped the scab off the base’s racial anxieties, evoking a primal roar of anger against Mexicans, Muslims, and minorities. Still another was his hallucinatory vision of American renewal—restoring traditional manufacturing; repealing the realities of the global economy; walling off Mexico; and crushing ISIS with one blow of his iron fist.

  But beneath this lurked a craving for authority, embodied by a man who delighted in the role of modern-day strongman. A man who promised his frightened and credulous followers that only his greatness could make America great again. Millions of our fellow citizens saw Donald Trump as their last chance, a human Powerball ticket.

  The Rise of the Unfit

  Trump, Cruz, and Rubio

  FEBRUARY 9, 2016

  This year it’s different.

  B
reathlessly, Republicans await the outcome of today’s New Hampshire primary.81 In times past, New Hampshire was, variously, a check on Iowa, a force for moderation, a safe haven for front-runners, a boon to long shots, and badlands for the presumably anointed. In this unconventional year, it will likely alter the trajectory of the presumptive leaders—not least because of Marco Rubio’s Saturday night train wreck—as well as of those in the second tier, muddling the contest for “mainstream” candidate while winnowing the brace of also-rans.82

  But that death knell we are hearing is not just the mercy killing of walking footnotes like Carly Fiorina. It is for the GOP establishment and, more profoundly, for the very idea of what a president should be.

  The ruin of the established order—big donors, lobbyists, and professionals—has been a long time coming. For decades the establishment has resembled the once proud family who keeps selling off pieces of their estate so they can keep the house. In exchange for lower taxes and laissez-faire, the establishment subcontracted its electoral fortunes to an overlapping—and increasingly hostile—compendium of evangelicals, gun-rights advocates, Tea Party fanatics, and less-educated whites who feel that their security, and their country, are being snatched from their grasp. Now it is no longer enough to surround the mansion—they want to burn it down.

  The incongruous agent of their resentment has been the self-proclaimed billionaire Donald Trump, followed by self-styled bomb-thrower Ted Cruz. But in great measure what empowers them is the establishment’s surrender to nihilistic rhetoric directed at Washington, DC. A throng of voters willing to shut down the government is unlikely to nurture tender feelings for the grandees of the GOP. Trump has simply focused their free-floating hostility on a larger group of scapegoats—Mexicans, Muslims, rich Republican donors and financiers, and, Lord help us, Megyn Kelly.

  In doing so, he has become an unlikely symbol for socially vulnerable whites who feel threatened by forces they can’t control. Too late, the GOP establishment has found out what “class warfare” really means, and they are on the wrong end.

  Financiers and party professionals feel free to perceive the economic and political upside of resolving the immigration mess. Not so with blue-collar workers fearful that immigrants—legal or not—will take away their jobs or swell the ranks of welfare recipients who sponge off their hard-earned tax money. For them, the GOP establishment has become another instrument of the Great Sell-Out, the smug proponents of free trade agreements that savage American workers.

  Like so many elites who discover that they are widely loathed, the establishment has responded with dithering and wishful thinking. The result is a vacuum that has consumed the very idea of leadership.

  A widely respected GOP professional attempted to raise money for a Stop Trump campaign and found no takers.83 Even before Iowa, elements of the established order began gingerly propitiating their antagonists—choosing between Trump and the widely hated Cruz. Bob Dole mused aloud that at least Trump has “the right personality and he’s kind of a deal maker”; Mary Matalin hosted a fund-raiser for Cruz. And then Iowa reshuffled the deck a bit, with Cruz banishing the panicky myth that Trump was invincible, while Marco Rubio surfaced in third place.

  Abruptly, some in the party’s elite began clutching Rubio like a human lifeline, praying that he emerges from the scrum of New Hampshire as the alternative to Trump and Cruz. Beyond ratifying the impotence of the establishment, their desperation confirms the demise within the GOP of something far more important—the very idea of what qualifies a person to assume the most complex and demanding office in a dangerous world.84

  In saner times, there was a general understanding of those elements that might commend a candidate. Sound judgment. A reasonable command of the issues. At least some relevant experience. A grasp of what the job demands that transcends canned speeches and talking points. A balanced temperament. A certain capacity for dignity and grace. At least a few real achievements, not least in the realm of politics.

  Add to this the ability to inspire, but also to appreciate the political environment. And something less tangible but no less critical—some combination of intellectual integrity and emotional health that keeps self-regard from spinning into sociopathy turbocharged by power: lying without shame, governing without some genuine regard for the governed, a narcissism so deep that it obliterates all else.

  In the recent history of the GOP, there were harbingers that these standards were eroding—that, among a portion of the electorate, all that mattered was anger and disdain for government. One can cite Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and, even more ludicrous, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann. But the party’s eventual nominees reached the threshold of presidential plausibility—George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney.

  This year is very different indeed. Of the three most likely Republican nominees, none is remotely qualified to be president. Indeed, their unfitness is so patent as to inspire fear.

  The challenge with Donald Trump is where to start. Even Ted Cruz pretends that his campaign is about other people. Trump doesn’t even get that he’s supposed to fake it. His candidacy is, indeed, all about him, his default expression one of aggrieved displeasure at not being “treated fairly,” his mouth the pursed “O” of a beached flounder sucking oxygen.

  Imagine year upon year of crudity, petulance, self-preening, and puerile bluster. Imagine Americans’ sickening realization that they are trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with a boorish narcissist who has no idea how to protect their interests and whose only interest is himself. Imagine the face of America in the world as the face of Donald Trump.85

  That’s for openers. Trump understands nothing that a president needs to understand. His nationalistic promise to “make America great again” is hucksterism devoid of substance. He has no idea of governance. He has no coherent policy for anything—the economy, foreign policy, ISIS, or trade. His “solution” to immigration is fantastical and racist.

  He measures his candidacy by Nielsen ratings. He exudes sexism.86 He demeans anyone who displeases him—opponents, reporters, women, a wide assortment of ethnic groups, even the disabled—the hallmark of a thin-skinned bully wholly focused on himself. Forget Megyn Kelly. Imagine Trump’s conduct at a press conference—let alone a summit conference.

  But then imagine a president who is flat-out ignorant of the world. You can’t make “great deals” if you don’t know what the deal is about, let alone negotiate with counterparts you’ve made no effort to understand. Even an intellectual pygmy like Scott Walker tried to memorize a world globe. Trump can’t be bothered. The ego that empowers such obliviousness is a dangerous thing—even more dangerous when dealing with adversaries in treacherous times. One cringes to imagine the fallout when ISIS or Putin decline to treat Donald fairly.

  Thus it says a lot about Ted Cruz that his colleagues would prefer to jump into the abyss with Trump. Indeed, one of the striking features of the GOP debates is his fellow senators’ visceral loathing for their peer.

  If Trump is Huey Long without a program, Cruz is Elmer Gantry without the charm—oleaginous, transcendently phony, relentlessly manipulative, and intellectually dishonest to the point of demagoguery. His triumph in Iowa was buoyed by dirty tricks—including lies on caucus night about Ben Carson’s fictitious “withdrawal,” which Cruz then tried to cover up by repeating more blatant and deliberate lies blaming CNN for his campaign’s “mistake.” He is the dank prince of darkness, playing on the resentments of evangelicals and others who feel marginalized—without offering them, or anyone else, an uplifting vision of the future.

  Even on the campaign trail, he seems to exist in emotional isolation, viewing voters less as people than as interchangeable pawns. One-on-one, he responds to voters’ heartfelt expressions of concern about their lives not by answering in kind, but by reciting right-wing boilerplate from his stump speeches. There is something deeply disturbing in his disassociation, a lack of empathy that suggests an inner void.8
7

  In his self-scripted political psychodrama, Cruz casts himself as a lonely ideological purist surrounded by spineless sellouts. Routinely, he castigates the “Washington, DC, cartel,” portraying the GOP establishment and its leaders as self-serving liars, the better to galvanize the embittered voters of the right. But this is a matter of convenience, not principle—far from being a true believer, Cruz sought establishment support for years, and his villainization of them now is a cold-eyed tactic. His only permanent loyalty is to his own ambition.

  Perhaps the most frightening thing about Cruz’s act is that it is so transparently that—an act. His stump speeches are performances, scripted down to the last breathy pause, and delivered with the histrionic stage whisper of a grade B evangelist entranced with his own performance. All this cloaked in a cloying religiosity, often capped with an invocation to “awaken the body of Christ to pull this country back from the abyss.”

  But as is often true of genuine hypocrites, this patina of piety covers the meanness beneath. He savors insults and revels in his own slurs, no matter how gratuitous. Hence his mockery of the last GOP nominee: “I’m pretty certain Mitt Romney actually French-kissed Barack Obama.” Truly Christian; sublimely presidential. Quintessentially Ted Cruz.

  And so it comes to this—the last, best hope of the establishment is Marco Rubio.

  Here one struggles to capture the depths of his shallowness, a task akin to grasping at vapor. For it is grim testament to Trump and Cruz that they can frighten grown-ups into proposing Rubio as presidential hardwood.

  In debate and on the stump, Rubio increasingly tries to compete with Trump and Cruz through hyperbolic excess directed at Obama. With a slightly unhinged zeal, he claims that Obama is so “completely overwhelmed” that he has “deliberately weakened America.”88 Like his indictment of the president as an enemy of the Constitution and the free enterprise system, this over-the-top rhetoric is shamelessly stolen from the hysterical alternate reality of talk radio. “When America needed a bold plan of action from our commander in chief,” Rubio proclaims, “we instead got a lecture on love, tolerance, and gun control designed to please the talking heads at MSNBC.”