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What explains Donald Trump's appeal?

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[h=4]What explains Donald Trump's appeal?[/h]Trump has tapped into what the writer Richard Rovere once called "dark places of the American mind'' — fear of, or frustration over, threats abroad and unfairness at home.

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USA TODAY's Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page explains the four reasons why Donald Trump is worth watching for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. (USA NEWS, USA TODAY)


Donald Trump arrives to a fundraising event at a golf course in the Bronx on July 6, 2015.(Photo: Seth Wenig, AP)


If economic inequality is a problem, erosion of traditional values is a fear, and the Hispanic vote is pivotal, what explains the political rise of a twice-divorced, thrice-married, gold-plated New York real estate buccaneer whose previous best-known utterance — "You're fired!" — is rivaled now by inflammatory comments about Mexicans and immigrants?
Donald Trump was second behind Jeb Bush in a CNN/ORC national poll of Republican presidential candidates released last week, and No. 2 in polls in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. "Not unimpressive,'' says Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, "for someone new to electoral politics.''
USA TODAY
The Road to 2016




Brown and other pollsters are quick with caveats: Trump got a bounce, probably ephemeral, from his highly publicized presidential announcement; his share in a crowded GOP field has not topped 12%; and the things that got Trump this far probably ensure he won't get much further.
"Will Trump fizzle?'' asks pollster John Zogby. "I'd bet the Iowa farm on it.''
But Trump has tapped into what the writer Richard Rovere once called "dark places of the American mind'' — fear of, or frustration over, threats abroad and unfairness at home.
USA TODAY
This time, Donald Trump says he's running




With his wealth (he claims to be worth precisely $8,737,540,000), fame (14 seasons on NBC's reality show The Apprentice), and chutzpah ("The American dream is dead … but I will bring it back'') there's no one like Trump in U.S. politics, says historian John Baick — "not now, or ever.''
Analysts and fans say these perceived traits help explain Trump's political appeal.
• Candor. "He says what everyone else thinks but is afraid to say because they want to be politically correct,'' says Barbara Cope of Elmwood Park, N.J., a typical Trump supporter: an older (66), more conservative Republican who feels the country's on the wrong track. "For every candidate who is pushed and prodded by political consultants and polls,'' says Baick, who teaches at Western New England University in Springfield, Mass., "there is a Trump sound bite not in keeping with our increasingly homogenized politics.''
• Leadership. "We're not standing up in the world, we're backing down. Other nations are laughing at us,'' says Cope. "Obama bows to them. He apologizes. And now (immigrants) are coming here to tell us what to do. Trump is saying: Stop!'' It's an old story, says Natalie Davis, who teaches politics at Birmingham-Southern College: "When people feel things are not going well, that politics is not delivering, that 'I have no power,' they look for an authoritarian personality.''
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Donald Trump makes his way to the stage at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 16, 2015.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Charlie Neibergall, AP)

• Independence and incorruptibility. "Trump's not in it for the money,'' says Eugene Dunn, 52, a limo driver and Long Island Republican Party member who took his son out of school to attend Trump's candidacy announcement last month. "He doesn't have to pander to donors, because he's paying for his campaign himself. He just wants to fix the country.''
USA TODAY
Why it matters: Donald Trump is running




Trump also has several distinct (and sometimes contradictory) identities that appeal to voters.
• The outsider. At a time when politicians are distrusted and Washington resented, a vote for Trump "is a vote of no confidence in the Beltway ruling class,'' writes former insurgent GOP candidate Pat Buchanan. "All these politicians do is talk,'' says Ron Becker, a retired small-business owner who lives in Hollywood, Fla. "Trump will rip Washington apart. He'll get politics out of the Oval Office.''
• The negotiator. Trump has used bankruptcy (four times!) to reorganize his companies and renegotiated deals with everyone from his ghost writer to his construction contractor. As president, says Dunn, he'll deal effectively with foreign rivals like the Chinese: "He knows how they operate. We owe them a lot of money, and Trump knows how to take advantage of that. He'll play hardball.''
• The populist. Trump appeals to voters threatened not only by competition from immigrant labor or foreign manufacturers, but by what Zogby calls "the death rattle of an older, whiter America.'' To Baick, "Trump represents the ID of Republican politics at a time when society is undergoing a transformation that may rival the '60s.''
• The celebrity. Thanks to The Apprentice and years of tabloid exposure, Trump is like a character fans can root for as he battles villains like the entitled Jeb Bush or the holier-than-thou Mike Huckabee. With his scowl and bombast, he reminds Baick of a pro wrestler or a cartoon character – ''Trump as The Incredible Hulk.''
But many of Trump's pluses could turn into minuses.
• Candor makes enemies. Chronically off script — or with none to begin with — Trump "will eventually say something destructive to his candidacy,'' predicts Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall College Poll. But how candid is he? In his 1987 best seller, Trump: The Art of the Deal, he wrote: "I play to people's fantasies. … A little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular." And the website FactCheck.org cited a half-dozen statements in Trump's announcement speech that were mistaken, false or misleading.
USA TODAY
Fact check: Trump tramples facts




• Bullying isn't smart politics. Trump mocks and insults his opponents, from Mitt Romney (who he says is worth less than Trump's Gucci store) to Rosie O'Donnell, whom Trump called "Fat little Rosie" during a feud.
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Donald Trump poses with Erin Brady after Brady won the 2013 Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Jeff Bottari, AP)

• Why replace a Washington politician with a New York developer? Trump is a landlord from what some regard as America's Sodom and Gomorrah — hardly a typical recipe for national electoral success. And while he says he's running against Washington, notes Quinnipiac's Peter Brown, "he's also running against Macy's and NBC and Univision and Serta'' — all of whom canceled business links with Trump over his immigration comments. (And on Tuesday, PGA of America announced it's moving its Grand Slam of Golf from Trump's course in Los Angeles.)
USA TODAY
Macy's cuts ties with Donald Trump




ONPOLITICS
NBC/Universal severs ties with Donald Trump




• Feelings don't win elections. "Primary season is when people get to vent their feelings,'' says Madonna, but usually they sober up and vote for someone with policies more specific than any articulated by Trump, who once wrote that he built his empire on "intuition'' and now says he has a plan to defeat the Islamic State he can't reveal.
For these and other reasons, most political analysts see Trump as this year's version of Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann four years ago — flavors of the month. (Trump was a flavor then, too; in 2011, before he decided not to run, he tied Huckabee in a CNN poll of likely Republican voters with 19%.)
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Herman Cain briefly shot to the top of GOP polls during the 2012 campaign, but his campaign soon faltered.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images)

Even if he survives the winnowing of the 16-odd-candidate GOP field, Trump seems doomed. Brown: "If you ask Republican voters, 'Is there someone you can't or won't support?' Trump wins that one going away.'' In Quinnipiac's Iowa poll, more than a quarter asked about Trump's candidacy said "no way.''
And that's with Trump's post-announcement bounce. In the past, he's expressed controversial views that, in the furor over his charge that many Latin Americans who enter the U.S. illegally are rapists and murders, have been overlooked: that autism is linked to vaccinations; that global warming is a hoax; that officials conspired to conceal Barack Obama's true place of birth.
Trump probably can't overcome such obstacles unless he can renegotiate the laws of political science. As Paul Kirk used to say when he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression.'' Davis, the Birmingham-Southern political scientist, says it's inevitable: "He's going to be taken down.''
But Trump seemingly has to stick with what's working. If he stops being Trump, his campaign strategist recently told The Washington Post, "people are going to think he's a politician."
Follow @rickhampson on Twitter.
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