Dwain Northey

The President Who Wants to Be at the Rally

With only a few weeks left before the midterm elections, I find myself thinking about something that feels increasingly strange about the current occupant of the White House.

Presidents campaign for their party. That’s nothing new. They raise money, make endorsements, record advertisements, occasionally show up at a rally and tell everybody how important it is to vote for the candidates who will help them accomplish their agenda.

But Donald Trump doesn’t seem to understand the word occasionally.

He has launched a full-blown midterm campaign blitz, planning rallies across the country to pump up Republican candidates and, apparently, remind everyone that the election is really about him. Reuters recently reported that his approval rating had fallen to 32 percent, while two-thirds of Republican candidates in competitive House and Senate races were trying to distance themselves from him. (Reuters⁠)

And yet here comes Donald.

Again.

And again.

And again.

It’s almost as if somebody told him there was an election and he interpreted that as, “Great! Another presidential campaign!”

There is an important distinction here. Barack Obama certainly did campaign for Democrats during the 2014 midterms, including holding rallies for candidates such as Maryland gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown. But Obama initially stayed largely off the public campaign trail because Democrats knew his approval numbers could actually hurt some of the candidates he was trying to help. (CBS News⁠)

That seems like an important concept: sometimes the most helpful thing a president can do for his party is get out of the way.

Donald Trump appears to have missed that memo.

Instead, he’s behaving like the headliner of a traveling rock band that refuses to acknowledge that the audience isn’t quite as enthusiastic as it used to be.

And this is where I start wondering whether Donald actually enjoys being president—or whether he enjoys being Donald Trump, the guy who gets to stand on a stage while thousands of people cheer for him.

Because those are two very different jobs.

Being president means sitting through briefings nobody watches on television. Reading reports nobody chants about. Making decisions that don’t produce applause. Dealing with Congress, foreign governments, courts, agencies, disasters, budgets, wars, economic problems and all the other incredibly glamorous parts of being Commander in Chief.

Being at a Trump rally means walking onto a stage, looking at a crowd full of people who already like you, hearing them cheer, talking about yourself for an hour or two, insulting your political enemies and leaving convinced that everybody loves you.

I can see why one of those would be considerably more enjoyable.

The problem is that the country didn’t elect a professional rally performer.

It elected a president.

And now, with the midterms approaching, Trump seems determined to turn the entire Republican campaign into one enormous traveling Trump rally. He has even told voters to essentially pretend he’s on the ballot. (Reuters⁠)

Which, frankly, may be the most honest description of his political philosophy I’ve heard.

Pretend I’m running.

That’s apparently the plan.

Republican candidates are trying to win their individual races while some are quietly discovering that having Donald Trump’s name attached to them isn’t necessarily the electoral gift from heaven they were hoping for. Reuters found that many candidates in competitive races are deliberately creating some distance between themselves and the president. (Reuters⁠)

That’s understandable.

Imagine you’re running for Senate and your campaign team is sitting around the conference table asking, “What can we do to win over independent voters?”

And somebody says:

“How about we bring in the president with a 32 percent approval rating?”

At which point the campaign manager quietly walks into the parking lot and starts screaming into the nearest trash can.

Trump seems to believe that because the people who attend his rallies love him, everybody loves him.

But a rally isn’t a random sample of America.

If I throw a party and invite only people who already like me, I shouldn’t walk outside afterward and announce that the entire neighborhood has endorsed me.

That’s not polling.

That’s called having a guest list.

And perhaps that’s the fundamental problem with Donald Trump. He appears to have spent so much time surrounded by people whose job is to tell him how wonderful he is that reality has become something he encounters only when it refuses to cooperate.

The economy isn’t behaving the way he says it is.

His approval numbers aren’t behaving the way he says they are.

Republican candidates aren’t universally begging him to appear with them.

And voters aren’t necessarily treating every problem in America as though it can be solved by another Trump speech.

Yet the solution appears to be:

More rallies.

Because surely the thing missing from the current situation is another giant crowd chanting his name.

At some point, you have to wonder whether the presidency has become secondary to the performance.

The Oval Office is the job.

The rally is the dopamine hit.

And Donald Trump seems increasingly interested in the dopamine.

There are only a few weeks left until Americans vote. Republican candidates are going to have to answer for the policies of this administration whether they want to or not. And Trump is going to continue traveling around the country telling everyone how fantastic everything is, how badly everybody needs to vote Republican and, presumably, how fantastic he is.

Because in Donald Trump’s America, the scoreboard apparently doesn’t matter if the crowd is still cheering.

And maybe that’s the strangest part of all.

A president should be looking at the country and asking, “How are we doing?”

Donald Trump seems to be looking at the crowd and asking, “How am I doing?”

Those are two very different questions.

And with the midterms approaching, America is about to provide an answer to both.