Gringo view: presidential wannabes claim Trump takes all the oxygen

(Opinion) Once upon a time, before the internet, television, and jet travel, presidential hopefuls rode the trains to reach out to voters with their messages and ambitions.

There was no lack of oxygen into which to pitch their messages; no media space and broadcast coverage to fight over.

And there was no Donald Trump.

Aspiring office holders touched the flesh of their prospective voters and traveled around the country to connect with them and gain support.

Since there were no modern means of communication or mass media back then, politicians had to rely on face-to-face interactions, poster and leaflet distribution, local newspapers, and public speaking to convey their ideas and political platforms and show themselves off.

Their speeches were often made from tree stumps – the 19th century origin of the ‘stump speech’ expression – or small platforms keeping the same key themes but tailoring details to their local audiences.

Given that women, people of color, and those without property didn’t yet have the vote, campaigns often focused on appealing to a relatively small, privileged voting base, personal interactions, and reliance on traditional media channels.

Much of their messages were carried by local newspapers whose editors were much less interested in world events and Washington politics than the price of a bushel of grain, the expanding number of local factory jobs, or a lost dog.

Fast-forward to today when all that has changed, most local and regional media have been shuttered and the great majority of the American public gets its news from a couple of broadcast networks and by an increasing number of social network influencers.

There is not nearly as much oxygen out there anymore.

Campaigns are awash in millions of dollars in donations. Politicians fly by private jet to many states in a single day.

They favor big, professionally produced events with national media attention and themselves as ‘stars’.

Their local audiences have come to bathe in the glamour of political celebrities, not to listen to their policies.

The only thing fine-tuned to the local audience is the choice of music for before and after the key speaker.

Carefully chosen as well are the audiences, made up of only those with a known preference for the candidate, assuring robust applause and no hecklers.

And the candidate aims the message not at the live audience at his/her feet but over their heads to the cameras.

The effort is to reach the largest number of eyeballs.

The message may be a modern version of the stump speech, but it comes carefully adorned with copious bells and whistles.

Ex-President, twice indicted Donald Trump handily leads the republican presidential wannabes for the nomination which makes it even money that the ultimate contest will be Trump against Biden, a rerun of 2020.

Other republicans seeking the nomination complain that Trump’s legal troubles and his uncanny ability to turn these troubles into oxygen-sucking assets rob them of the ‘oxygen’ they need to get public attention.

With Trump up front and center, there is little time left over for them on the evening news.

“If American election campaigns are a war, TV is the battlefield” announced the BBC after the last Trump indictment.

“This week team Trump blew all his opponents off the map. The media is still hungry for all things Donald Trump”.

That was certainly true at the Iowa Lincoln Dinner this past Friday night, a major gathering of GOP presidential candidates in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

The entire room of party faithful rose to their feet and roared when Trump strode on stage.

How much oxygen was left for anyone else?

The 24/7 media cycle dominates how we get our information.

Fox news, who paid a whopping US$787.5 million to settle a defamation suit for pushing conspiracies theories they knew to be false continues to be a bullhorn for the right with a loyal audience of Trump supporters.

CNN, arguably far less powerful and with a significantly smaller audience base, tends to lean left.

Both have to feed their talking heads and endless ‘experts’ with interesting content and whether we like it or not, a disproportionate amount of that content is about Trump.

Mindful of the 19th century British ‘Penny Awful’ weekly publications which perfected the art of keeping the reader hooked from one issue to the next, the ‘round the clock’ news cycle seeks to hold the viewer with ‘news’ even when there is nothing that meets that definition, nothing new.

Often, broadcasters are forced to fall back on amplifying trivia such as when, and if, Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor is finally going to bring charges against Trump, an ‘almost’ continuous ‘go-to’ question for more than the last six months.

And since Trump is most likely to be the defendant, he sucks up the lion’s share of the oxygen, even when there is no new story.

We are lucky in Brazil to be spared all, or at least most of this.

While there is a fair amount of noise close to every four-year election, by comparison to the endless 24/7 American cacophony, it really is comfortably quiet.

And there is plenty of oxygen to go around.