Trump blames media. Turns out politics is really difficult to do well

The Wall Street Journal editorial page – that leading bastion of conservative thought – has declared today that the Republican nominee faces “a moment of truth” and must shape up sharpish or ship out. Unless he improves his campaign by Labor Day, in the first week of September, the WSJ says he should stand aside and let Governor Mike Pence, the Vice Presidential nominee, take over.

There may be some sense in that suggestion. Trump is such a poor campaigner on the national stage because he is so erratic, narcissistic and lacking in essential skills needed to gain trust and get sufficient votes, the basic business of the democratic transaction. The only way for the Republican party to avoid defeat on a catastrophic scale in November may well be to ask Trump to fold now.

Getting Trump to agree to that may be difficult, however. The man appears to be out of control. He is melting in public, thanks to a personality disorder of some kind rooted in self-obsession, macho posturing covering up for deficiency and a total inability to take criticism. And he is getting worse, not improving, as his advocates suggested he would.

Ever since this carnival started some conservatives who should know better have been making excuses for him. When one hears him speak now in his rambling look-at-me-I’m-rich-and-I’m-great monologues it has a pathetic quality. His speeches should be soundtracked to Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns, that poignant reflection on failure, foolishness and fickle fate.

In true Trump-style, the candidate has now taken to obsessively blaming the media for his self-inflicted troubles, unleashing a torrent of tweets over the weekend about the media not covering him properly, although he has had free airtime without end in the last year.

This latest meltdown is particularly fascinating because Trump is a media creature who lives through publicity. His show-off schtick is classic “Page Six” New York, referring to the long-running gossip column in the New York Post, where the antics of property developers, television stars and Wall Street personalities are dissected. Trump is a Page Six addict, hailing as he does from the boastful, questionable world of New York property and deals with the construction industry and unions. Why, Trump is the Page Six candidate.

That being so, he better than anyone should understand how publicity works, the building up and the tearing down when the fashion changes or mistakes are made. But then Trump appears to be an ego-maniac incapable of self-examination.

After all, blaming the media is the pointless last refuge of dud political campaigners down the ages. It not only involves shooting the messenger, it suggests that the person doing the blaming has failed to realise how difficult it is – and should be – to win the highest office.

And that is one of the main lessons from this episode, this 21st century trash TV remake of Citizen Kane. The fact is politics is difficult. Doing it well at the highest level is extremely hard.

All of the US greats (and I mean this in terms of sheer skill at the game) such as Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman and Reagan have had to hone their skills, mastering what it takes to get others to follow them to the point where they were prepared to install them in the White House.

Being supremely good at it is not even a guarantee of success. Look at the troubles in office of the magnificent Truman, or the ultimate failure of LBJ, the subject of some very long books that British journalists must pretend to have read from start to finish.

Voters and those of us who observe and write about power and its acquisition must, of course, take a ruthless attitude to those who seek office. As well as wanting to do good, in most cases, they seek the right to hold sway over their fellow citizens, which means they must be watched carefully. That’s where the free press that Trump now lambasts comes in. The media is noisy, messy and imperfect, of course, but it is a safeguard.

Once again it is being demonstrated that politics and government are very different from business, where inside all but the most dysfunctional companies the senior team are broadly working towards achieving the same quite simple aims of profit, expansion and avoiding the sack. Elections at the top of the ticket are in contrast a bewildering and at times illogical popularity test requiring a bizarre blend of talents and stamina.

Then the winner enters the maze of government, with colleagues who often smile before setting about trying to do the opposite of what was signed up to. All the while well-meaning and often ambitious aides and junior elected representatives run around causing a mixture of consternation and confusion. Simultaneously, unpredictable stuff keeps happening too. And there is often (although not in the UK right now) an opposition leader preening and pitching for the job by highlighting every minor cock-up and major catastrophe. Then your predecessor goes on TV to highlight how much better a job he or she did. Throughout, you must stay as calm as possible or people – the voters – will think you are mad.

Trump could never have mastered either the electoral or the governing side of the equation. He is just a blowhard, the archetypal braggart businessman at dinner or at the bar saying that if only he could get in there and sort out those useless politicians and officials then he would win and keep winning, as though just by saying it he can make it come true. It is a daft delusion, as Trump’s fall is proving all over again.