Who is the smartest person to make the argument for Donald Trump?
Usually, this sort of question is irrelevant--because in a country as enormous as the U.S., there are plenty of prominent people who can make the case for a major party nominee. But this is not a normal election, and the strange absence of a case for Trump is a case in point.
Four prominent Republican Senators (Susan Collins (R-ME), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) have already made it clear that they will not vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. Three more--Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Mike Lee (R-UT) have come as close as you can possibly get to saying “Never Trump” without actually uttering the words.
What’s interesting about these seven senators is their diversity. They include moderates from liberal states, but also staunch conservatives from ruby red states. Their ranks include those whose main issue is foreign policy, or immigration, or the economy. The seven are actually a decently representative list of the Republican Party elite. But what is more significant than these seven is the far longer list of Republican Senators who have been willing to make the case publicly that Donald Trump is the better choice for the Presidency. Many have done so in a strange way—endorsing the Republican nominee without saying his name. The problem with this is that the whole point of an endorsement is its ability to get others to follow. To do that, someone out there—some Republican—has to make the argument for Trump.
Sure, some Republicans have tried. Jeff Sessions from Alabama for sure. Bob Corker from Tennessee tried to make the case for Trump after he secured the nomination, but by the Convention’s opening night, he was nowhere to be found. Marco Rubio gave a short speech at the Convention that explicitly called for Trump's election; are we really reaching the point where Rubio is now the second-most pro-Trump member of the US Senate?
What all this boils down to is that those attacking Trump are willing to speak in full, but those backing him struggle to enunciate the reasons why. Paul Ryan, for instance, spends most of his time explaining why his endorsement of Trump does not preclude his characterizing him as a racist, and practically begs to not have to attend the Republican Convention. Meanwhile, Susan Collins writes an op-ed explaining in plain English why she won’t vote for Trump, and dozens of former Republican foreign policy experts and political veterans eagerly sign letter after letter conveying why they think he is an unacceptable choice. And though John McCain, Tim Scott and Susanna Martinez all endorse Trump, none of them seem inclined to ever say why in front of a TV camera. Who cares? Do Trump supporters really need anyone to articulate their ardor? This matters because the arguments that the Republican elite make for their party's nominee tend to trickle down to those people without the time to obsess about the campaign. By not making the case in a digestible format, they are effectively denying would-be Trump voters the rhetoric to explain their votes to two crucial consistencies—their undecided friends, and themselves.
This is a particular problem for college-educated voters, who want to hear a persuasive and nuanced argument. According to the recent CNN/ORC poll, Hillary has a 28% margin in this demographic. While college education certainly isn't equivalent to intelligence, it does seem that Trump is trailing among voters most trained to make persuasive arguments—and to evaluate arguments against each other.
It’s not just politicians who have been unable to articulate the why Trump argument. In a normal year, some newspaper editorial boards would be making the case for a Republican nominee. Many of them are traditionally Democratic; in 2012, of the twenty-six newspapers with circulations above 300,000 that endorsed a candidate, 19 chose Barack Obama. But seven endorsed Romney.
This year, three of those seven have already endorsed Hillary -- The Houston Chronicle , The Dallas Morning News, and the Daily News have all backed her. A fourth, The Wall Street Journal has already suggested the Republican Party should consider de-emphasizing their presidential candidate.
But it's not just the criticism that hurts. It is the silence--none of these major newspapers' editorial boards have yet made the argument of why one should vote for Trump over Hillary.
Then there is the bizarre response of those pundits who are basically professional Republicans. The New York Times has two op-ed writers who are there to provide a conservative perspective, and The Washington Post has five regular columnists who are supposed to offer the conservative perspective; none of them support Donald Trump, and two of them have left the Republican Party over his nomination. The National Review, Weekly Standard and Public Interest have been solidly Republican for decades; many of their writers might end up voting for Trump, but who in these publications is willing to be associated with, let alone make the argument as to why one should? What this leaves Republicans with is what might charitably be called the deep bench—players put in the game because no one else is available. The best example of this is Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart and now running the campaign, but others include Rudy Giuliani, who has struggled to remain in the national spotlight for more than a decade. Neither are the best the Republican Party can offer.
It's probably not possible to measure the impact of the brains of one party deciding to simply take the election off—because it has never happened before. But there is an impact, and it will likely affect all of us, Republican or Democrat or neither. We will all soon discover what the effect is of living in a two-party system where one side will be armed with facts and arguments, and the other claims that its rival’s long-standing positions—like child-care subsidies—simply don’t exist.
Just pretend the facts are not there. It’s what happens when the leaders of a party can’t even utter their nominee’s name, let alone make the argument for him.