06 April 2017
Throwing the Sword into the Lake
Moving on from Camelot
by J.R.Thomas
A couple of weeks ago Robert Silvers, founder and editor for life of that distinguished magazine The New York Review of Books died, aged 87. Mr Silvers was one of those erudite energetic east coast liberals that Mr Trump professes to blame for all the recent problems of the United States; but if Mr Trump was not a fan of Mr Silvers, it was nothing to the contempt that Mr Silver had for Mr Trump. Indeed, so strong was that antipathy that Silvers died with one loudly expressed ambition unfulfilled: to see the downfall of Trump.
Silvers was a product of the Kennedy era, a contemporary of many who made up that court of all the talents, who laboured to construct the shining city on a hill, which for a brief moment did indeed seem to shimmer on the summit; style and radicalism blended, grace and American power combined, the American dream rekindled. But Camelot was not to be; events in Texas saw to that. A Texan too it was that actually introduced many of the measures that Kennedy had talked of, but in a very different style. The Camelot dream though went on; now bathed in an aura of romantic promise lost, destiny unfulfilled. To a certain caste of Americans it became the true legend, something lost which might yet be found once more, like that legendary cave in which sleep King Arthur and his knights, ready to emerge at the nation’s time of greatest peril.
It is perhaps one of the most potent forces in American liberal politics, this promise lost, so powerful that it still colours a whole approach to politics and society. Last week my colleague Robert Kilconner wrote in these pages of Anthony Eden, a good man fighting battles whose time had passed. Here is another long past cause. Who speaks for Camelot now? Who has the dream of that better world in which the common man and common woman might triumph? The Kennedys are gone, or discredited. The waving standard has passed to the unlikely figures of the Clintons. Whilst Bill certainly had, and certain events notwithstanding still has, much of the personal charisma of JFK, he is no Arthur – and Hillary is no Guinevere. (We might allow Bernie Sanders as Lancelot. He at least captures a little of the idealism of a better future, the elevation of the common man, the possibility of the triumph of the free republic.) Not that many people even speak of Camelot now, but it still casts a long golden glow, giving the Democrats a certain sense of moral advantage, of high ground long seized and held. And it still gives the Republicans that slight sense of inferiority that comes from a faux pas never corrected or an admired book bought in hardback but admitted to never having been read.
And now, at last, all those adherents to the faded compromised dream have a perfect villain. Mordred is unbound, a very authentic Mordred as it turns out. We are not suggesting, we should make clear, that Mr Trump is an illegitimate Kennedy offspring, but here is a former Democrat supporter, once a big supporter of Bill and Hill, suddenly arising to seize the throne that should rightfully be Hillary’s. And not only a stealer and reinventor of many Democrat policies in a vulgar loud populist way, but a success, a winner. The Democrats cannot believe it still. The shock still rebounds around the party. Not that the Republicans are in the slightest triumphant; they don’t believe it either; their lack of a sense of victory is quite remarkable. They had been through the wringer, the spinner, the crusher, the remoulder, and had a whole busload of candidates for the job. But an ex-Democrat of no taste and dubious history walked away with their Holy Grail. The fading legend needed only a villain; and now the perfect one is not only running the script, he has won the battle and taken the kingdom.
But, all you fable adherents out there, Kennedy’s Camelot was a story. It was a story with a purpose, a story to delineate a dream that would capture the ideals of a new generation. It was a story of great idealism and high purpose (whether those were your politics or not and however misguided you might think the political orthodoxies of the early 1960s, you cannot deny that the high moral tone was impeccable). Now two generations have passed; dreams have to be renewed from time to time, the old ones discarded, put away, and replaced with ones more suited for new times and circumstances. Trump is not Mordred, he is the face of new America, a populist in a time when the old politics are in disrepute, a businessman with a short fuse who sees simple solutions to complex problems and has yet to learn (but is starting to) that getting things done on Capitol Hill is very different to making them happen from a New York real estate office – and even more different from making them happen on a business game show.
Like many in the third part of life, even a man as robust as The Donald must be becoming conscious that time really matters, that energies will fairly soon start to fade. Gladstone was the “old man in a hurry”; seventy is not such a great age now but Trump was always in a hurry and is now more so than ever. And even if the psychological driver for all that energy to grab the Presidency was a need to make a mark in history, a need to show his father that he is better than him, or an urge to fly close to the sun, Mr Trump wants to make America great again, or at least to make it a better place for its citizens, and has a constituency of supporters out there willing him on. He will interfere in business to protect American jobs; he wants to impose penalties on American firms that “export” employment; and he leans on them where he can to make companies put America first. To get poorly paid or unemployed American workers off social support he wants to make coal mining more financially attractive and lower oil production costs. He will cut the burden of Obama Care to lift the tax burden on middle and lower incomes – even if that removes the health care benefits to some of those same folk. He will stand up to far away tyrants. Some of that is not far adrift from Democrat beliefs, if a world apart in style.
It was one of the more appealing conspiracy theories during the primaries last year that Mr Trump was in fact a Clinton plant, designed to disrupt the Republican progression to a coronation of yet another Bush. If that was the cunning scheme, it worked only too well. What both parties may have overlooked – and Mr Silvers perhaps could not bring himself to – is that America has changed. Populism, reimagined and reinvented is back; what Teddy Roosevelt did a century ago, Donald Trump has done again. He may be making a bit of a hash of the delivery and communication process just at the moment – but his sudden focus on North Korea and on Egypt suggests that he is learning how to divert attention and build popular support by focussing on unifying causes pretty quickly. The Donald is a businessman, and like most business people he is good at learning fast on the job.
He is not a Knight of the Round Table though. Trump sensed the popular will – as did Bernie Sanders (one forgets how close Bernie came to forcing Hillary out of the race) and American politics will never be the same again. If the traditional parties are to survive, they will need to recognise that times have moved along and politicians need to be much better at responding to modern voters, modern thinking, and the impact of the modern media. Or they are all liable to end up in the lake with that rusty sword.
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