I’ve paid very little attention to the Donald Trump boomlet. I confess to enjoying Kevin and Jonah’s columns on the subject, but I’d enjoy their columns if they were writing about toothpicks. When asked about it, I’ve told people, “Ignore it and it will flame out on its own.” I’ve never met Donald Trump that I can recall. He’s a big New York personality and I’m Bronx born and bred, so of course I’m familiar with him. But I’ve never seen his TV shows, his news interviews are vapid, and I haven’t taken his presidential campaign any more seriously than I took his high-profile handwringing about running for this or that in the past.
What about all this psychoanalysis of the conservative base? We’ve heard the trope: Trump’s poll numbers can’t be ignored because they are not so much about him as about the anger he is tapping into – anger at the bipartisan Beltway political establishment. Well, as anyone who cares to read my columns knows, I am not exactly a stranger to that anger. I don’t need Donald Trump to draw my attention to it, and I don’t see him as a viable vehicle for representing it since he has a history of supporting positions and politicians responsible for a lot of that anger.