They say Donald Trump changes all the rules. Democrats had best hope he changes a couple of big ones.
Two of the time-tested truisms of American presidential elections shout "President Trump," unnerving as that is for me to type and for many of you to read.
One long-standing rule is that presidential elections reflect prevailing national moods. Another is that the best politicians win political races.
I just defined a home game for Trump and an away game for Hillary Clinton.
The prevailing American mood is an utterly fed-up abhorrence over the abject failure of American politics, American government and American institutions in general, be they corporate or educational or legal or athletic or media.
It's an odd disaffection. Most indicators suggest that the United States is doing relatively well. But many people aren't buying it. They remember an America greater than what they think they see now.
As it happens, I recently spent time looking for Trump supporters in Arkansas for an article just out in the latest issue of Talk Business and Politics magazine.
Here was my summary of Trump supporters in Arkansas: They (and most are male) believe that the nation is at the brink of calamity; that the Republican establishment promised to pull the country back from that brink but didn't; that Trump sometimes says things they wouldn't, but at least speaks his mind without concern for the political correctness that they consider a scourge on free and honest expression; that it's high time to upturn American politics, which has become a refuge for the glib talk and inaction of otherwise unaccomplished political careerists; and that Trump's personal style along with his ability and willingness to fund his own campaign liberate him from conventional obligations and permit the bold independence necessary for these desperate times.
The combined popularity of Trump and Bernie Sanders suggests, as a man put it the other day, that America is in the early stage of its own version of an "Arab Spring," meaning an occasion for people to take to the public square in revolt because they desperately want something at least different--something they can only desperately hope would be better.
The mood infests nearly every conversation. I was telling a fellow the other day that Trump can't seem to speak a simple truth. I cited his spiel at a rally in which he asserted that, when Carly Fiorina fell from the stage the other day, Ted Cruz kept right on talking and didn't lift a finger to help her.
The video plainly shows that Cruz was busy entering the opposite side of the stage and shaking hands with supporters, and was not yet actually speaking, and that he never saw his week-long running mate's fall. He had no idea it had happened, because she got up and popped back on stage to greet him normally.
Trump simply could not resist a self-serving embellishment, which is to say a lie.
The man to whom I told the story looked at me coolly and said, "So what? They all lie," meaning, by "all," the sad array of contemporary American politicians.
So there you have it--a vivid microcosm of the American political condition. Trump gets a pass for a rather disturbing character flaw because the established order that he upturns is so thoroughly distrusted and despised.
Amid that prevailing American mood, Trump seems in some ways the ideal candidate and Clinton, a permanent political creature, the absolute worst.
And, yes, he is the better political performer. His speeches--disjointed to the point of nonsense--somehow manage to entertain and connect. A Hillary speech is to be endured. It is to be forgiven by one's confidence that she is uncommonly qualified and competent for the job.
But it turns out there is another relevant truism about contemporary American presidential politics. It's that, in the end, Americans vote negatively--against the candidate they fear most.
At present, that rule dominates in a way that should overpower other rules and deliver victory to Hillary.
She may not be likable, or natural, or warm, or genuine, and she may not be trustworthy on handling her emails or other matters of secretiveness. But at least she's competent and qualified and less inflicted than he with evident symptoms of a personality disorder invoking a reckless worldview.
So there's the contest: Disaffection and a political connection that favor Trump, and fear that favors Clinton.
Fear as a motivator is hard to beat.
Alas, the vital postscript: Whether an international or domestic terrorist incident could ignite fear to Trump's advantage, owing to his bellicosity and his border wall ... well, that's a horrible prospect too distressing on all counts to be considered in the abstract.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 05/08/2016