President Donald Trump is an expert at branding and marketing, but right now, he gives himself low marks for sales.
That was Trump’s explanation for why he is hitting the campaign trail despite increasingly grim poll numbers for Republicans seeking to defend their fragile congressional majorities.
“I’m going out because nobody’s selling it… We’re doing an extremely poor job of promotion,” Trump said at the White House. He didn’t exclude himself. “I’ve done a very bad job of explaining how good the country is doing,” he added.
“Behind the scenes, the president has told aides he doesn’t have enough political allies defending him on television and making the case for his second-term achievements,” the Wall Street Journal reported last month.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) claims to be fine with a Trump midterm campaign blitz, doing his best impression of Inspector Harry Callahan: “Go ahead, make my day.”
“When he comes to town, that itself helps us,” Schumer said at the end of September. “But then he always talks about the wrong things. He talks about things people don’t give a damn about.”
There is something to be said for this. It would be better for Trump to focus on his reversal of the border crisis, rollback of pernicious racial preferences and other woke edicts, shrinking of the federal workforce, falling crime, and persistent economic growth, even if it is short of the first-term boom rather than ballrooms and emblazoning his name on the Kennedy Center.
Trump did nothing to sell the country on the necessity of striking Iran when he did. He did not prepare voters for the duration or economic consequences of the war, repeatedly insisting that it was ending imminently or already won. For this, he and the GOP are paying a steep political price.
It was a mistake to name Trump’s biggest second-term legislative achievement after the vehicle used to enact it — One Big Beautiful Bill, as opposed to two reconciliation bills — rather than the most popular policies contained therein.
But this also illustrates the limits of salesmanship. Voters know their personal financial situation and cannot be talked into believing that it is better than it is. They are assessing the economy primarily on the basis of inflation and the cost of living, not other metrics.
Inflation was trending downward before Trump upended his own progress through war and tariffs. Voters don’t believe he is focused enough on domestic affairs.
Before Trump painted pictures of a Golden Age, former President Joe Biden insisted inflation was transitory and Bidenomics was working. Voters were never convinced.
The time for persuasion and promotion was long before the midterm election campaign. Now, many public attitudes are baked in and extremely unlikely to change before Nov. 3.
TRUMP WAVES OFF REPUBLICAN BREAKS AS MIDTERM GROWS CLOSER
It’s also the case that voters are interested in the future, not Trump talking about the past or his presidential legacy. That legacy will be better if Trump is more forward-thinking, and national conditions will be much worse if Democrats succeed in pushing the country once again to the far Left.
The electorate gave Trump an almost unprecedented second chance in 2024. Too many of those voters now believe he has squandered it. It will take the sales job of a lifetime for Trump to turn it around by Election Day.
Hugo Gurdon will return next week.