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发帖数: 2062 | 1 现在才知道，原来川普在就职日就已经登记参选 2020 年总统大选 “Trump even
filed papers to run for reelection on Inauguration Day.”。
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/trump-kicks-off-his-
2020-reelection-campaign-on-saturday/516909/
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Trump Kicks Off His 2020 Reelection Campaign on Saturday
The president is taking the permanent campaign to new levels with a
political rally in Florida—the latest sign that he’s already planning for
a second term.
Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was a work of virtuoso improvisation: Even
though it seemed to be in permanent chaos, with frequent changes of
leadership, perpetual gaffes, and a strategy devised on the fly, the
Republican managed to defeat the elaborate, best-and-brightest, data-wonk
team of Hillary Clinton.
If the early indications hold, it doesn’t look like Trump is going to fly
on a wing and a prayer again in 2020. In fact, he’s kicking the campaign
off on Saturday, with a rally in Melbourne, Florida:
For those of you not keeping score at home, that means Trump is hosting his
first rally of the 2020 campaign just 29 days into his presidency.
The idea of a “permanent campaign” has been floating around American
political circles since 1980, when Sidney Blumenthal used it as the title
for a book. It was during the presidency of Bill Clinton, whom Blumenthal
advised, that the idea really came into practice. Even by the standards of
modern-day presidents, Clinton loved politicking, and his team held on to
campaign methods once in the White House, famously calling on polling to
help determine its course. Newt Gingrich helped Republicans capture the
House in 1994, in part by adopting the same tactics. Each of Clinton’s
successors has adopted the permanent-campaign mentality to some degree.
Yet Trump’s choice to hold a campaign rally less than a month into his
presidency breaks new ground. Where his predecessors practiced electoral
politics between cycles, none was willing to do so as baldly, as quickly, as
Trump. Barack Obama realized, like Trump, that he thrived off large
audiences, and he made liberal use of the major speech, even early in his
term: In February 2009, he made several trips to promote the stimulus
package and his agenda. But Obama’s events were political by implication,
while outwardly aimed at boosting specific policies.
Trump by contrast is planning a straightforward campaign-style rally on
Saturday. It’s at an airport, in a swing state, and it’s being advertised
through his campaign website. His press secretary even called it a campaign
event. Making the event a campaign event rather than a speech might afford
Trump greater flexibility in who he allows to attend and who he excludes. It
means that the Trump campaign will likely pick up some of the travel tab,
rather than taxpayers. But it might also grant Trump more leeway to make
straightforwardly political arguments and attacks that it might be unseemly
for a president to make at an official event—though Trump has shown such
little regard for those unwritten rules that it’s hard to imagine he could
be significantly more strident.
The rally isn’t even the first step the president has taken toward a 2020
campaign. In the days between his election and his inaugural, Trump held a
victory lap series of rallies, mimicking the format and even the stump
speech (such as it was) that Trump used during the campaign. He also made
great show of supposedly selecting, and then asking his lawyer to trademark,
a slogan for the 2020 campaign while in the midst of an interview with The
Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty. (“Keep America Great,” but then you knew
that, right?) Trump even filed papers to run for reelection on Inauguration
Day.
Trump runs the risk of appearing presumptuous in beginning his campaign at
so early a date. After all, shouldn’t one master the art of governing
before one begins to campaign for a second tour? The White House is, by all
accounts, in a state of chaos. On Monday, National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn was forced to resign after misleading the vice president and the
American people about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. On
Wednesday, Trump’s nominee for labor secretary withdrew when it became
clear he could not be confirmed. Federal courts have brought Trump’s
signature immigration executive order to a halt. Isn’t there enough in
Washington for Trump to attend to?
That is, most likely, the point. It’s hard for Trump to find many friends.
As fiercely as the media objected to Steve Bannon’s accusation that they
represented the “opposition party,” the animosity between press and
president is undeniable. Republicans in Congress are increasingly frustrated
with the White House’s stumbles, and in some cases is calling for
investigations into matters, from Kellyanne Conway’s apparent flouting of
ethics rules to the Flynn affair to question of lax security at Mar-a-Lago.
More importantly, Trump can say he doesn’t believe the polls until he’s
blue in the face, but he is obsessively attentive to them, as he frequently
reveals, and his approval rating is miserable—and not just inside the
Beltway.
Going to Orlando for a big campaign-style rally is a chance to put both the
president and his supporters back into a more salubrious state of mind. It’
s a way for Trump to try to regain his swagger, but it’s also a bid to
enliven the base that brought him to the White House. It’s a test to see
whether the “Silent Majority” he boasted during the campaign can give him
the energy he needs to govern as a successful president. Time and again
during the presidential campaign, returning to his crowds helped Trump get
on track. This weekend, he’ll try to figure out whether those campaign
tactics can work when they’re made permanent. |
