If you want to understand the extraordinary success of Donald Trump, a good place to start is with a scene from the 1998 movie Primary Colors. It's a very thinly disguised account of Bill Clinton's dramatic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992. John Travolta's "Jack Stanton" is an obvious proxy for Clinton's Comeback Kid phase, when he overcame lurid revelations about his sexual promiscuity to open the path to a two-term presidency.
A key scene in the movie has the embattled Stanton/Clinton addressing a meeting of workers in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's based on an actual speech that Clinton gave in in the naval yard there in February 1992. As Travolta speaks, the camera cuts away frequently to men in hard hats and women with hard faces, most of them white – anxious representatives of the declining American working class. The candidate lays on the good ol' boy southern charm. But then he becomes deeply serious.
“I’m gonna do something really outrageous”, he announces. “I’m gonna tell the truth. . . No politician can reopen this factory or bring back the shipyard or make your union strong again. No politician can make it be the way it used to be, because we’re in a new world now, a world without economic borders. . . And in that world muscle jobs go to where muscle labour is cheap – and that is not here. So if you want to compete, you’re gonna have to exercise a different set of muscles – the one between your ears.”
They’re really listening to him now, precisely because he’s not telling them what they want to hear. He delivers both a warning and a promise: “Now this whole country is going to have to go back to school. . . And I will make you this deal. I will work hard for you. I will wake up every morning thinking about you. I will fight and sweat and bleed to get the money to make education a lifetime thing in this country to give you the support you need to move up.” Since this is Hollywood, the tough proletarians cheer Stanton/Clinton to the rafters of their vast industrial space.
It's worth revisiting this scene because yes, this was the deal and no, it wasn't honoured. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening up of China unleashed a wave of economic globalisation that was amplified by Clinton's trade deals and financial deregulation. Old industrial communities were told that they would have to sink or swim. The foundations of their lives – their jobs, their pensions, their union contracts – would be swept away. But they would not be left to drown. Bill Clinton would wake up every morning thinking about them and fighting for the investments in education and development that would help them stay afloat.
Trump rally
In February, Trump held a big rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during the Republican primaries. He told his audience the exact opposite of what Stanton/ Clinton purportedly says in the same city 24 years earlier. He claimed a politician could in fact "make it the way it used to be": "We're gonna have businesses that used to be in New Hampshire that are now in Mexico come back to New Hampshire and you can tell them to go f*** themselves because they let you down and they left."
These two speeches seem to be worlds apart. One is telling an uncomfortable truth; the other is demagogic fantasy. One is rhetorically sophisticated in the way it appeals to the intelligence of its audience; the other is crude on every level. But they’re not actually all that different. They both lie.
One promises that those who lose out in the process of globalisation will have on their side a government that invests in education for themselves and their kids. The other promises that globalisation will be magically reversed. Both propose deals that will not be honoured.
And this is why it is not at all inevitable that Hillary Clinton will trounce Trump. Clinton is offering essentially the same deal her husband did in 1992: we can't do anything about the effects of globalisation on the old economy but we will help you and your family get a foothold in the new economy.
It’s quite a complex proposition in itself but it also raises the obvious question: why should we believe you this time? Trust is the big negative for Clinton in the polls and it’s not irrational – suspicion and scepticism have very deep roots.
Magical thinking
Trump, on the other hand, presents a kind of double offering. One part of it is magical thinking – vote for me and things will be the way they used to be for a relatively privileged white working class, free of Mexicans and Muslims.
That’s a consoling fantasy. But even if you know it’s a fantasy – and I suspect that many of Trump’s supporters know it very well – there’s a fallback proposition: “Tell them to go f*** themselves.”
What makes this so attractive is that it’s something people can actually do: by voting for the obnoxious demagogue. And unless there’s a more convincing deal on offer they just might do that.