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Seeking America’s ‘lost’ greatness and finding Trump most appealing
The Washington Post
Marc Fisher
10/31/2015
Excerpt:
The way Joe McCoy sees it, the last time America was great was when Ronald Reagan was president, when people played by the rules. No, it was in the ’70s, Holly Martin says, when you could depend on Americans to work hard. No, to find true American greatness, Steve Trivett contends, you need to go back to before the Vietnam War, “when you could still own a home and have a good job even if you didn’t have a college education.”
Even if they don’t have “Make America Great Again” campaign caps, Donald Trump’s supporters easily recite the signature slogan of the real estate developer’s insurgent presidential bid. And even if they don’t agree on exactly why the country lost its way, they do accept — give or take a few degrees of hyperbole — Trump’s contention that the United States has become, as he has put it, “an economic wasteland” that is “committing cultural suicide.”
The premise behind “Make America Great Again” is that the country is no longer great. It can be great again, and the campaign has a certain can-do billionaire in mind as the guy to make that happen, but at the moment, the leading contender for the nomination of the party that regularly touts the notion of American exceptionalism is arguing that the country ain’t what it used to be.
Interviews with Trump supporters across the country find a profusion of perspectives on how and when America lost its mojo; what bonds them is a sense of frustration so abiding that they’re willing to take a chance on a man they readily admit is anything but presidential, at least the way the term has historically been defined.
“The way he talks is just silly sometimes — he sounds like a fourth-grader,” said Holly Martin, a freelance technology writer who recently moved, in search of a lower cost of living, from the suburbs of Washington to the exurban town of Winchester, Va. But Martin, 59, attended a training session for Trump campaign volunteers recently because “he talks like a regular guy, and he actually loves this country. He’s not afraid to say that we’ve lost our good character.”
Many Trump supporters interpret their candidate’s rough rhetoric not as anger, but as determination. Without ever having seen Trump’s reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” Martin has come to think that he has a rare ability to get things done. She was a Republican all her life — until her party regained the majority in Congress in 2014 and proceeded, she said, “to do nothing. They did nothing on Obamacare, nothing on cutting spending, nothing on restoring honesty. They hate us, so now I’m done with Republicans. Trump is not one of them. He doesn’t hate us. He really believes we can make America great again, and I’m not an optimistic person, but I think he can, because he’s got a built-in ability to use the media, just like Obama.”
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View the complete article, including image, at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...ea1_story.html
The Washington Post
Marc Fisher
10/31/2015
Excerpt:
The way Joe McCoy sees it, the last time America was great was when Ronald Reagan was president, when people played by the rules. No, it was in the ’70s, Holly Martin says, when you could depend on Americans to work hard. No, to find true American greatness, Steve Trivett contends, you need to go back to before the Vietnam War, “when you could still own a home and have a good job even if you didn’t have a college education.”
Even if they don’t have “Make America Great Again” campaign caps, Donald Trump’s supporters easily recite the signature slogan of the real estate developer’s insurgent presidential bid. And even if they don’t agree on exactly why the country lost its way, they do accept — give or take a few degrees of hyperbole — Trump’s contention that the United States has become, as he has put it, “an economic wasteland” that is “committing cultural suicide.”
The premise behind “Make America Great Again” is that the country is no longer great. It can be great again, and the campaign has a certain can-do billionaire in mind as the guy to make that happen, but at the moment, the leading contender for the nomination of the party that regularly touts the notion of American exceptionalism is arguing that the country ain’t what it used to be.
Interviews with Trump supporters across the country find a profusion of perspectives on how and when America lost its mojo; what bonds them is a sense of frustration so abiding that they’re willing to take a chance on a man they readily admit is anything but presidential, at least the way the term has historically been defined.
“The way he talks is just silly sometimes — he sounds like a fourth-grader,” said Holly Martin, a freelance technology writer who recently moved, in search of a lower cost of living, from the suburbs of Washington to the exurban town of Winchester, Va. But Martin, 59, attended a training session for Trump campaign volunteers recently because “he talks like a regular guy, and he actually loves this country. He’s not afraid to say that we’ve lost our good character.”
Many Trump supporters interpret their candidate’s rough rhetoric not as anger, but as determination. Without ever having seen Trump’s reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” Martin has come to think that he has a rare ability to get things done. She was a Republican all her life — until her party regained the majority in Congress in 2014 and proceeded, she said, “to do nothing. They did nothing on Obamacare, nothing on cutting spending, nothing on restoring honesty. They hate us, so now I’m done with Republicans. Trump is not one of them. He doesn’t hate us. He really believes we can make America great again, and I’m not an optimistic person, but I think he can, because he’s got a built-in ability to use the media, just like Obama.”
................................................
View the complete article, including image, at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...ea1_story.html