We’ve noted several times in the recent weeks that Donald Trump is quite unlikely to pivot the center, become more presidential, or whatever other metaphor you want to use to describe transitioning away from being a rabble-rousing freak ginning up revanchist white identity politics to becoming someone less likely to freak out establishment Republicans and more able to build a winning general election coalition. Whether such a Romney-ite Etch-a-Sketch would actually change people’s opinions of Trump is a fascinating but largely moot point since it’s quite clear that Trump is either unable or unwilling to make such a change. After Trump appeared in full ‘Trump 1.0’ persona mode yesterday on the campaign trail, we’re seeing news reports that Trump is rebelling against Paul Manafort’s ‘shifting persona’ narrative and giving power back to wartime campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who’s now out of under a battery rap and ready to roll.
I would submit that the entire premise of this conversation is wrong.
These kinds of articles are clearly driven by competing leaks from within the Trump campaign – in some fashion, the Lewandowski and the Manafort factions. This is what campaign reporters are used to: campaign turf wars, rivalries between different factions on campaigns vying for the candidate’s ear and power to drive the direction of the campaign.
So is Lewandowski and company back in the driver’s seat and releasing Trump 1.0 from his cage? Again, the premise is simply wrong.
This looks very much like you have a candidate who was, is and will continue to run purely on instinct and riff as he goes. Trump’s tepid and restrained election night remarks after his big New York primary win really did make it look like he was shifting his tone. But everything sincethen has shown precisely the opposite. Rather than power shifting back in Lewandowski’s direction it seems far more likely that you have two ‘factions’ watching as Trump does whatever he wants and seeing it as a plus for them if he’s acting in a way that they like. That doesn’t mean that power is shifting or Trump is rebelling or anything else.
Lewandowski was never a campaign manager in any recognizable sense. His role is more like a body man, a guy who travels with the candidate, helps out in every way imaginable in the ins and outs of dealing with the issues of the day and gives real time advice to the candidate. A campaign manager stays back at headquarters and actually runs the organization.
One of the things we’re supposed to hate about modern politics is that candidates are highly controlled and scripted, directed and protected by a legion of operatives and never actually doing and saying what they actually believe. Donald Trump is doing exactly the opposite. That makes Trump campaign Kremlinology not only inherently difficult but largely irrelevant. My own read is that very little has actually changed in the Trump campaign. Trump has always been Trump and always said he’ll get super presidential when he needs to. Only that never happens. You’ve got the same competitive leaking from rival staffers as any other campaign. In this case, though, I suspect they’re just watching from the outside as much as everyone else.
