12 february 2018 http://www.openthemagazine.com 25
make the trains run on time.
Will trump deliver? there is reason to suspect that he will
fail like the others. his lack of experience and his inflated
rhetoric hint that he is not a great leader in the making. he is,
above all, a great disrupter; he already has enough enemies, yet
daily he collects more.
this largely explains his spectacular falling out with Steve
Bannon, who passed for the brains of the organisation while
trump saw himself as the true heart and soul of America.
their estrangement perfectly illustrates the deep differences
between ideologues and populists.
Populism is inescapably personal. When populists talk
about jobs, foreigners, law and order or taxes, these things have
a personal edge, which simplifies and sharpens political debate,
to their advantage. Mohandas K gandhi was the original
genius of this approach. trump is good at it too, while Steve
Bannon is not. ‘Sloppy Steve’, sporting a crumpled suit under
floor-mop coiffure, likes to talk of Judeo-christian values and
the global perils into which White people are currently sliding;
too clever, too distant, too uninspiring. trump is the opposite;
dapper, familiar, fulminating.
trump had no organisation to speak of, but his reckless
commitment to attack scattered his opponents, and he seemed
sufficiently in sympathy with Steve Bannon’s church of the
false Apocalypse to create a sense of final reckoning for the
country. in the end, this added up not so much to a perfect
storm, but an imperfect mess. trump may have no surefire
solutions, but he did a pretty good job of identifying the
problems that his base was confronting. this is the test that any
populist must pass, and he aced it.
trump’s flaws are the classic flaws of populism writ large
and loud. he is unlikely to find himself killed by his own army,
hanged by his successor, or gunned down by his own body-
guards, but he has managed to embody the nation, defy the
establishment and sloganeer his way to supreme power on a
wave of uncritical popular approval. his success provides clear
parallels with the meteoric South Asian leaders of the 1970s. nRoderick Matthews specialises in Indian history.
He is the author of Jinnah vs gandhi and Mountbatten and
the Partition of British india. He is an open contributorTrump may have no surefire
solutions, but he did a pretty good
job of identifying the problems
that his base was confronting.
This is the test that any populist
must pass, and he aced it
Donald Trump
addresses a
Reublican rally
in Louisville,
Kentucky, in
March 2017ap