The Trumpiest candidate in all of America not named Donald Trump lost her election on Tuesday night. The voters of Arizona turned out to reverse their verdict of 2020 and cast their votes decisively for Donald J. Trump. At the same time, they looked at one of his most loyal and devoted allies – Kari Lake – and choose a very progressive Democrat instead.
There’s a very simple truth that’s not at all hidden in that fact: Candidates matter.
In my reaction piece to the US election yesterday I mentioned the great man theory of politics – which amounts to the idea that the destiny of a nation can be shaped by one very capable person like Otto Von Bismarck, or Napoleon, or perhaps Winston Churchill. Every so often such a person comes along and changes the world and leaves it unrecognisable in their wake. The historians will judge whether that applies to Donald Trump or not, but it’s undeniable that politically this is the theory that underpins much of his appeal to his most devoted fans. Only he can fix it.
The island of Ireland has had a few great men, of course: DeValera, Collins, O’Connell and Edward Carson between them probably did more to shape modern Irish history than any of their peers. An argument might be made for Charles Haughey. It is very hard to look around the political landscape and see such a figure today.
For several years now it has been clear that Ireland is not immune to the trends that powered Trump to victory. Here, as there, inflation has eaten away at real incomes and many families struggle with the cost of living – which explains the recent giveaway budget. Here, as there, frustrations over immigration have mounted. Here, as there, there is an enormous gulf between the governing elite and the public on issues like transgenderism, sex education, and crime.
Yet our election results are likely to be radically different. Because you can only vote for what’s put in front of you.
There’s another reason too: It is not as easy as imagining that a candidate might emerge to lead a Trumpian-style revolution here and looking around for a Michael O’Leary type to pull the sword from the stone.
Trump benefitted from infrastructure.
The US right has a million Gript Medias. And a million alternative podcast platforms. And cultural and business figures who feel safe enough to speak out and vocalise their views – people like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan. It has organised and effective lobby movements like the National Rifle Association. It has think tanks and policy shops. It has thousands of well educated and committed young people ready to staff a Trump administration and take up jobs within it. Even all of that couldn’t pull Kari Lake, a bad candidate, over the line in Arizona.
The task in Ireland is not – and practically cannot be – achieving some unlikely breakthrough in a general election. The task, over the longer and medium term, is to build the infrastructure that allows candidates of quality to emerge.
It is not hard to imagine, I think, what the results of this week’s election had been if the sources of information available to Americans were limited to the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. Or if twitter was still in the hands of its founders. Or if Trump did not have access to well-funded outside support groups that registered and turned out voters for his campaign on the ground. In an environment where all these things disappear, the United States would look a lot more like Ireland.
Over the next few weeks, immense energies will be put into the Irish election. Some of it on behalf of good candidates with a real chance of a breakthrough, but a lot of it on no-hopers. When that election ends – as it will – with a result that broadly endorses the status quo, depression and sitting back is not an answer. For months, many readers have been telling me that Donald Trump’s victory is essential to the world and pouring a great deal of emotional energy into that outcome. Where’s the energy for your own country?
This is why I refer back to the great man theory of history, and find it unpersuasive. Great men – or indeed great women – do not rise on their own. Collins and Carson were preceded by their movements, they did not create those movements.
What the American right has done has been to create over 40 or 50 years the infrastructure to build towards victory. There are no shortcuts to doing the same here in this little country of ours.
If you want to emulate Trump, first you must fix that problem.