The 2016 Presidential Campaign: The Way It Is Now

The 2016 presidential election campaign has begun to settle in.  Like the morning papers, breakfast at McDonald’s, another Metro controversy, the long Labor Day weekend and the announcement of a new “Dancing with the Stars” cast,  it has become ritualized as a part of our daily lives at least until the days after Nov. 8.

As such, it should become a normal daily thing, but this is not quite the case.

As we write this, and later, as you read this, Donald Trump is having one of those come-to-Jesus moments in the campaign — and not just because some time this week or next he’ll be speaking at an African-American church.

Today, Donald Trump went to  Mexico, having accepted an invitation to meet with Mexico’s President Pena Nieto.  Nieto, who is having some poll problems in his own country, also extended that invitation to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, whose campaign seems to have gone into mute mode, at least if media attention is any gauge.

Later tonight, Trump will make a much-anticipated and ballyhooed speech on immigration, a subject which has been much speculated upon as Trump — faced with not-so-hot polls — has careened from reasonable to unreasonable, from wall to not a wall like some demented pinball wizard.

This is a meeting, mind you, between a man, who opened his bid for the presidency by spectacularly and unforgettably calling for a wall (to be paid for by Mexicans) to keep out Mexican immigrants, some of whom were rapists, and another man, who compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini.  Refreshments will be served, we assume.  Will there be time for tacos, one of Trump’s favorite fast food dishes?

Once that’s done, Trump will head north to Phoenix to give his big immigration speech.   No one, it seems, knows exactly what he’s going to say. Trump diehards seem concerned that he may temper his more volatile and divisive stances.  He may or he may not.  His running mate Mike Pence has said that the speech will have plenty of details, which means there will be teleprompting.

Aside from today, the last day of August, the campaign is heading into Labor Day after a long, loud hot summer.  The Trump who was sinking in the polls appears to have recoiled and recovered. He fired his last campaign manager and hooked up  with the Breitbart group, got the unemployed but 40-million-dollars-richer Roger Ailes on board as an advisor.

Trump has done more speeches from a teleprompter than he has in the past and has remained more or less on script, which is to say he has attacked Hillary Clinton on a daily basis, morning , noon and night, assisted by Instagram and Twitter.  In a brief flurry last week, Clinton and Trump got into a “you’re a racist, you’re a bigot “ tiff — like very serious kids on training bikes with flat tires.

It was the noisiest effort from the Clinton campaign, which seems to spend its time biding its time for some sort of breakthrough, while Trump and his various spokespeople and helpmates in Congress act like picadors, poking sharp verbal sticks at her with every new news or non-news items from a dribble of new emails which threatens to become a flood.  Her email problem — with or without her Clinton Foundation — continue to be a gift that keeps on giving, for Republicans, for Trump, for wavering independents, for Bernie-nistas and people who just plain don’t like her.  There was also a another Wiener scandal. (Yes, that New York Post front page is an instant classic.)

Clinton is busy practicing for the debates, the first one of which is on Sept. 26, hoping that she’ll land some sort of knock-out blow against Trump.  This hope has been entertained by at least 16 Republicans, hundreds of savvy experts, consultants and media types who have repeatedly eaten their words for breakfast.

Trump, it should bear repeating, does not play by rules or expectations.  It’s not hard to imagine a debate in which Trump keeps to a script that includes only the words and phrases “Benghazi,” “emails,” “server” “crooked,” “Bill, the lech” and “Are you okay, honey?” and “I will build a wall somewhere.”

The problem remains that when the Hillary Clinton campaign goes into quiet mode, Trump grabs all the headlines and sucks up all the air. He doesn’t have to make sense—he rarely does, but he always says something.  He’s trying to appeal to African Americans — Vote Trump. What have you got to lose?” — to Hispanics and to women.  He goes to the flood waters in Louisiana and signs autographs. He goes to Mexico, one pol drowning in the polls meeting with another pol drowning in the polls, which he would like to showcase as a meeting of equals, statesman to statesman. He goes hither and yon, but the point is: he goes.

Somewhere, Hillary needs to get not just ahead in the poll but in front of the news.  Talk about the foundation, or better yet, have Chelsea or Bill talk about it. Talk about emails in a way easily understood.    And what’s happened to her vice presidential pick? Timmy, we hardly hear ye.

The air is thick with this campaign, but it’s ill-defined and strange. It reminds me a little of that show on CBS, called “Brain Dead,” in which the Washington political culture gets infested with alien bugs which cause politicians to become even more partisan than they already are.  The only way you can tell a non-bugged from a bugged politicians is that they’ve stopped wanting sex, they don’t drink and their cell phones hum to the sound of “Do You Think I’m Crazy” by the 1980s group the Cars.  You see scenes like a mad far right senator, played deliciously by Tony Shalhoub, sharing bugs with his liberal counterpart, or a pregnant woman whose baby starts kicking every time Donald Trump appears on television. You may be excused for thinking that the show, which airs at ten on Sunday on CBS, looks like the nightly news.

Meantime, there are fun things to share. Remember all the dire predictions that Brian Lochte’s career was over after his miserable behavior in Rio?  Lochte is one of the members of the of the new cast of “Dancing with the Stars,” a job assignment he sees as somewhat similar to preparing for the Olympics since he can’t dance. Please ask him this: Do you know that the breast stroke is not a dance?

Oh, and did you ever wonder where all those guys who dropped out early in the Republican primaries go?

Wonder no more. Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas whose presidential bid lasted as long the lifespan of a fly in a blender, will also be appearing on “Dancing with the Stars.”