Interview: Trump and the Power of Glamour | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post was created by the staff for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

Columnist Virginia Postrel discusses the role of illusions in political campaigns and how Donald Trump, like Barack Obama eight years ago, has used the allure of glamour to his advantage.

    RALEIGH - Political pundits continue to debate the sources of Donald Trump's success during the 2016 Republican presidential primary process. One aspect of Trump's triumph that has received little attention to date is the role of glamour in his campaign. Columnist Virginia Postrel is author of the book The Power of Glamour. She discussed Trump, glamour, and presidential politics with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find recent CJ Radio episodes.)


    Kokai: Before we get specifically into Donald Trump and his success during this campaign season, just how much of a role does glamour play in politics in general?

    Postrel: First, we have to talk about what do I mean by glamour, and what is the bigger picture of glamour - because a lot of people, when they think about glamour, they think specifically about fashion or maybe they think about old movies. And those things can, indeed, be glamorous, but if you think about the word "glamorous," what's glamorous to you could be many different things. It could be a glamorous job, a glamorous city, a glamorous vacation resort.

    And glamour is a form of visual persuasion, primarily visual. We see something, we look at it, we feel this sense of projection and longing. "If only I could live there." "If only I could drive that car." "If only I could be with that person, or be that person." There's a sense of "if only."

    So moving into politics, when we think about glamour and politics, we tend to think about maybe John F. Kennedy. We tend to think about glamorous politicians.

    But glamorous individuals in politics are actually pretty unusual because glamour always contains this element of mystery and distance. And in a democracy, we tend to want to know a lot about our politicians. And so they may be charismatic, but they're often not glamorous. They're often too well-known to be glamorous.

    In 2008, I would say, and I've written about this, Barack Obama was glamorous. He was this newcomer. People who supported him felt this sense of he represented what they wanted in a country, what they wanted in a president, what they wanted in a world.

    And they projected onto him sort of their definition of that. And one of his friends I quote in the book, said, you know, "Barack has become a kind of Rorschach test." And, of course, once he became president, it became much more specific and less mysterious.

    More often in politics, we are talking about glamorous ideas, glamorous policies. I like to talk about I live in California, where the voters have committed, by initiative, enormous amounts - billions and billions of dollars - to this high-speed rail project. And policy wonks will write articles that explain how the ridership numbers don't add up and it's not going to work.

    And then there will be these pictures of this beautiful, sleek train whishing through the landscape. And it's like it doesn't matter what you say. What a glamorous picture. Everybody wants that. Wow. Get out of the traffic.

    So that's the kind of thing we tend to see more in politics, is portraying a policy in a very glamorous way, or possibly a big idea. And some of these are ideas that I like, like the American Dream is a glamorous idea.

    Some are very dangerous ideas, like "New Soviet Man" was a dangerous idea, and some are fill it in, whatever you want: Change the world. Well, we all want to change the world, but we all have different ideas of what it should change to.

    Kokai: This time around, though, ... we've seen glamour take on a different role in the campaign via Donald Trump. How so?

    Postrel: Right. ... Donald Trump, the glamour part comes into him in a couple of different ways. Most people, and even most Trump supporters, I think, probably don't find him glamorous. Although he is extremely charismatic, which is a different thing.

    But I have talked to Trump supporters who - particularly there was one very articulate small-business owner who said, "You know, I think Trump is glamorous. To me he represents the big time, the bright lights, everything I wish I were, but am not."

    So for some people, he's glamorous. His style of being a rich guy is sort of a poor or working-class person's idea of what it would be like to be rich. Very different from a Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or you know, Warren Buffett or Charles Koch type of billionaire. It's all that flash.

    But I think what is more important in Trump's appeal, vis-à-vis glamour, is this is a man who made his money in the real estate and travel industries. And the real estate and travel industries are really good at using glamour.

    They show you the picture of the resort. They show you the picture of the house, the picture of the apartment. And you look at it, and you say, "Wow. Life would be perfect if I lived in that house." Or, "I could get away from all my troubles at that resort."

    And glamour, whether it's in this photograph or in general, always hides things. It hides the cost. It hides the trade-offs. It hides the cleaning of the house. It hides the bills on the kitchen table. It hides how you're going to pay for it. All of those sorts of details.

    OK, so Trump has sold Trump hotels. He has sold Trump resorts. He has sold Trump condominium complexes. Now he's selling Trump America.

    "Come to my America. It'll be beautiful. It'll be everything that you possibly could want." And I'm going to leave out all the grubby details. So I'm going to tell you that we can just produce everything in America, and we're going to cut off our trade with the rest of the world.

    And I'm going to ignore the fact that ... let's forget about consumers. Let's just talk about businesses. Businesses have these complex supply chains. Millions of Americans are dependent on those. Their jobs depend on maintaining those supply chains, being part of those global networks. He's going to cut that off, but he's going to make it sound very appealing, and that's where the glamour comes in.

    Kokai: Now, does the fact that the glamour proves to be so appealing, is that one of the reasons why people have a hard time, once they're on that Trump train, jumping off?

    Postrel: Absolutely. And we saw this in 2008, where people were trying to puncture the Obama glamour. And not just Republicans, but you know, Hillary Clinton ... trying to say, "You know, you're just projecting onto this person whatever you want."

    And it's very hard to puncture that. Experience will do a very good job. But as long as it's got that distance, as long as the person is not actually in office, as long as you don't have your dream job, you can imagine it would be perfect. You don't live in your dream house. You can imagine it would be perfect.

    When you have experience, then you start to see the flaws. But it's hard for somebody who isn't sharing the dream to say, "Hey, let's get specific here. Let's think about what's being left off."

    You can try to do it with details and facts, and remind people about what's being left out. You can try to do it with the opposite of glamour, which is sort of horror and fear and, you know, think about how terrible it would be. And, certainly, there's a lot of that in the attacks on Trump.

    And maybe that'll be what will motivate people to vote against him. Or you can try to do it with humor, and make sort of the illusion seem ridiculous as opposed to scary, or just not real.

    Kokai: ... It sounds as if this would be something very successful during a campaign, [but] perhaps not quite as successful for someone in office. Is that what we've found?

    Postrel: That's right. I mean, if you look at Obama, it was very helpful to him that he was a glamorous candidate in 2008. It made him very difficult to counter. Once he got in office, a lot of people who voted for him ... were disillusioned because they imagined that he would do whatever it was that they wanted.