As things appear at this moment, 2019 is looking a little like 2015.
That year, a large field of people spent two years or more planning campaigns, raising money, hiring staff, figuring out where they were in in the great scheme of battle. They carefully considered whom to appeal to, and why. Then a stranger blew in, on a great burst of gusto, and blew all the players apart.
Donald Trump and Beto O’Rourke have some things in common, one being the suddenness of their immersion in this high level of politics. Another is that they themselves are their platform, and the most important thing about that is the tone of their voice.
Trump’s voice — loud, crude, mocking, derisive, and often quite funny — leads toward division. The arc of O’Rourke’s bends towards synthesis, the defusing of conflict, and looking for places where people agree. It was Trump’s vocalized anger at the loss of working-class jobs that got him elected president. It is the exhaustion engendered by his endless explosions, provocations, and unending insults that could bring his career to an end.
If the fields they faced were too large, too unwieldy, too repetitious, and a little too angry about one another, Trump and O’Rourke have their resemblances, too. They were too rich and too spoiled, their flaws picturesque. Trump splashed his scandals, affairs, and divorces on Page Six. O’Rourke, meanwhile, was using his position and vote to help his millionaire father-in-law make a fortune in real estate by destroying a neighborhood. It’s a little too Trump-like for comfort.
O’Rourke’s drunk driving crash, and his effort to flee its scene, are no laughing matter either. His wasted teens and 20s evoke F. Scott Fitzgerald’s warnings about “careless people,” who hurt those around them and drive off unscathed to newer adventures, leaving their victims to deal with the mess.
The question about O’Rourke is whether he has grown up at last and managed to synchronize his own talents or whether he will instead be a Prince Hal forever and never king.
As politicians, O’Rourke and Trump share an appeal that is almost entirely emotional and focused on speech. Trump’s is effective only to his backers, and most often negative, though he extended his reach in the last half of his most recent State of the Union — a rare tribute to American exceptionalism in describing the role of American forces in the liberation of Europe in World War II. O’Rourke, in contrast, is aspirational, even as he addresses a party that has surrendered completely to identity politics and sees the country only as a set of tribes.
Two things distinguish O’Rourke’s speech from the rest of his party. He sees the union as one and expresses pride in it, and he addresses the country as the “indispensable nation” it is, not as the oppressor that the left wing imagines it to be.
O’Rourke appears to be reaching for the answer that unifies people and not for the one that divides them. These are valuable traits, and they should be encouraged. One day, they might be what this country needs.
[Also read: Beto O’Rourke ate dirt after losing to Ted Cruz]
