Political pundits continue to connect the bizarre rise of Donald Trump with the quaint campaign of Bernie Sanders. But the real Trump doppelgänger in this election is not the staid Bernie Sanders but his front-running stablemate, Hillary Clinton. Sanders and all the other candidates still standing in this year’s circus-like presidential mudfest are essentially politicians; while Trump and Hillary are bona fide celebrities.
It’s not anger that so much defines this year’s starry-eyed electorate as it is a myopic fascination with celebrity. This is the same myopia that increasingly defines every other aspect of our media-saturated society. Why did we ever think that politics would be exempt from this pervasive onslaught?
Unlike Trump, Hillary does, in fact have a political resume herself. But that is not what defines her in the eyes of the public. In fact, it is her opponents who usually talk about what she actually did (or failed to do) while in office. The simple truth is that Hillary would have been better off had she never held political office. She would not have to answer for her reckless senate vote giving George W. Bush the license to go to war in Iraq or her incompetence as Secretary of State. (Unfortunately, we’ll have to leave her possibly criminal handling of State Department e-mails to the Obama Justice Department.)
She would not have had to deal with any of these “inconveniences” and still easily be on the top of the Democratic ticket because the American public has always seen Hillary mostly as part of Team Clinton (perhaps the best part but a part just the same). Some of her supporters have even been seen sprouting buttons proudly proclaiming “Bill for First Gentleman”-an updated version of the “I’m voting for Hillary’s Husband” buttons that we saw back in 1992. She also represents the possibility of our first female president, a mantle that the Clintons have monopolized for over twenty years. One can only wonder in an alternative, Clinton-less universe, how many more qualified women would have already seriously vied for the U.S. presidency.
The Trump and the Clinton campaigns are also alike in what it could portend for the future of our political process. Many writers have pointed out the fascist aspects of Trump’s campaign. Trump has been true to form by threatening the possibility of riots if he is not chosen as the Republican nominee. Perhaps Trump himself wouldn’t be a fascist. Maybe he would merely be an aberration of one, as goofy and harmless as his pumped up hair. But a Trump presidency would leave a template for the next fascist to come in and take control by capitalizing on people’s fears.
Similarly, a Clinton presidency is equally dangerous to our future political process simply by virtue of the fact that she is the spouse of a former two-term president. Americans used to have a healthy, provident distrust of ever putting the power of the presidency into the hands of an immediate family member of a former president. This would have been reason enough for concerned voters to have rejected the candidacy of George W. Bush. After all, the presidency is not a doorstop prize we’re awarding. We are essentially handing over control over our foreign relations, our financial and justice systems, and our military.
How many times have we seen the same sad, predictable story play out on the world stage? A democratic republic dissolves into dictatorship as the chief executive or his family uses the government apparatus to brutally quash dissent. The Clintons themselves would probably not be involved in a dismantling of our democratic processes (even though they have already brazenly pushed the envelope on quite a few legal and ethical boundaries). But another Clinton presidency still sets a horrible precedent — one that should concern all Americans. Does anyone want to see the day that a president could be directly succeeded by his or her spouse?
It’s a shame that such is our current national mood that a significant number of Americans are desperately pining for the paternalistic certitude of Donald Trump or pathetically buying into the personal meta-narrative sold by the Clintons. The social theorist Alvin Toffler wrote back in 1970 that our rapidly changing technology would so disrupt society that people would go into a kind of ‘future shock.’ Toffler argued that this would leave people suffering from anxiety-producing disorientation. Unfortunately, many Americans on both sides of the aisle seem to be experiencing Toffler’s future shock by sacrificing their principles for the contrived certainty offered by Trump or the false sense of stability offered by the ‘back to the future’ Clintons.
But the most striking trait that Trump and Clinton share is their respective, self-centered virtual realities that they would have us all inhabit. The billionaire Trump has been the star of his own reality show for years. There are few things around him that he has not slapped his name on. His private, luxurious, jumbo jet has been described as “Trump Force One.” Meanwhile, the Clintons have been living in their own detached reality bubble for decades. The presidency can do that to you. It is the ultimate reality show. It shows in their language.
The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard has defined “hyperreality” as the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality. The Clintons and Trump have been living for decades in exactly such a hyperreality of their own creation. Do they even know what’s real anymore? If we allow ourselves to be turned into mere characters in either of their narcissistic dreams, will we?