Enough clowning around. This US comedy has a long way to run
It’s been a bad autumn for the coulrophobics – people afflicted with an irrational fear of clowns. For a few wild weeks around Halloween, the Western world was awash with scary-looking characters causing trouble for the unsuspecting, uttering dire threats, leaving people in tears and then racing off to strike again.
Still, America is a mature democracy and the people are entitled to elect whomever they wish. Who is to say, after all, whether the email queen would have been better than the clown prince.
The news took a while to reach the corridors of Maison Nye. As I switched on, the radio was playing a medley of famous Trump moments from the campaign – an indication, surely, that he had pulled it off. But swelling up in the background was Mick Jagger singing: ‘You can’t always get what you want.’ Perhaps the Donald had been thwarted after all?
But no: the hourly news ended uncertainty. There was the President-Elect, dressed in magnanimous garb, thanking Hillary for her service to an evidently ungrateful nation and promising – predictably – to bring healing and to govern for all Americans.
Then he reiterated his desire to “make America great again”. Of course, Ronald Reagan promised the same thing in 1980. “It’s time to change America,” said Bill Clinton in 1992. And by 2004, John Kerry was begging voters to “Let America be America again.” The quest for lost greatness goes on.
In truth, however, choosing an electoral slogan has always been a risky affair. “War in Europe – peace in America” was Woodrow Wilson’s boast in 1916, five months before leading the country into World War I. And in 1964 Barry Goldwater – faced with the hopeless task of defeating not just President Johnson but the sainted ghost of JFK – came up with: “In your heart, you know he’s right.” “In your guts, you know he’s nuts,” replied Johnson. Goldwater duly bombed.
Then there was Al Smith, the Democratic Governor of New York who fought the 1928 election partly on anti-Prohibition. “Make your wet dreams come true,” he exhorted polite American society. A landslide defeat was his reward.
Not that playing it safe is a guarantee of success. In 1884, Grover Cleveland had won office despite claims that he had fathered an illegitimate child. “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” taunted his opponents. “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!” came the riposte. But by 1888, his imagination clearly waning, Cleveland was reduced to: “Unnecessary taxation oppresses industry.” To the sound of cheerleaders bouncing off the walls, he went down to his only defeat.
So perhaps one should wait before dismissing Trump’s apparently bombastic dreams. As builders vie for contracts on the Great Wall of Mexico, and White House interns wait nervously to be summoned for an unsolicited spot of Trumpy-pumpy, we should heed the words of author Isaac Asimov: “That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all.”
Let’s hope he’s right. Or else we might as well just send in the clowns.
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