One of my great peeves of the Trump era is the Greenland effect.
I belong to a small group of people who think America should peacefully acquire Greenland. It’s an old idea. The State Department pitched buying the vast arctic island in 1946, but the Danes didn’t want to sell their colony, alas. Given its strategic and economic value, it’s worth revisiting.
When it was reported in 2019 that then-President Donald Trump was interested in the scheme, it immediately became a punchline.
Of course, buying Greenland was always going to be a heavy lift politically, but Trump’s embrace made it infinitely heavier.
The Greenland effect doesn’t just apply to obscure and quirky good ideas, but also to good — or simply popular — ones. As president, when Trump embraced a policy, that policy became less popular. Despite his anti-immigration rhetoric, support for increased immigration reached an all-time high. He made free trade more popular than ever as well, while he started a trade war with China.
Some of this was the result of the thermostatic dysfunction of American politics. When one side is in power, significant numbers of voters tack the other way.
But Trump poses a specific problem for conservatives precisely because he and his enablers cannot countenance the idea that he’s unpopular. The stolen election lie is a symptom of this delusion: “Trump couldn’t have lost; the election must have been rigged.”
This makes the Greenland effect particularly insidious because conservative ideas, once associated with Trump, often become hard to sell for even gifted politicians.
Which brings us to J.D. Vance, R-Ohio … or Greenland?
The consensus is that Vance was a “confidence pick,” a running mate choice that “doubled down” on MAGA messaging. As Washington Post columnist Jim Geraghty wrote recently, “Picking Vance is as close as Trump can get to doubling down on himself.”
I generally agree with this analysis, but it misses one key difference between Trump and Vance. Trump is an entertainer-celebrity more than a conventional politician. As a result, he gets away with things no conventional politician could get away with. He may invite passionate opposition from his foes, but his fans simply shrug at his misstatements, malapropisms and mendacity. Those of us who predicted in 2016 that the “laws of political gravity” would catch up with Trump were proven wrong because Trump is subject to the laws of celebrity gravity — a very different jurisdiction.
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Publish date : 2024-08-04 04:07:00
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