Donald Trump paints a vision of a chaotic and dismal America

By LEXINGTON | CLEVELAND

ACCEPTING the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in Cleveland on July 21st, Donald Trump hailed himself as an American Caesar, sacrificing a life of private ease to enter the public arena and save a republic sunk in decadence, and betrayed by its corrupt and mendacious elites.

Mr Trump offered promises of near-instant renewal once he took office and put Americans first, abandoning the rotten policies of “globalism”. He built these visions of imminent greatness on a description of the present as a dystopian horror.

He cited recent rises in the murder rates of such big cities as Washington, DC and Chicago (President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown), as well as specific crimes carried out by illegal immigrants. Though criminologists and police chiefs talk of complex causes for recent spikes in violence, and note that overall violent crime has fallen by almost half since 1990, Mr Trump is keenly aware that the public, in each opinion poll, says that crime is getting worse.

Mr Trump, as a strongman populist, does not traffic in complexity. He described simple reasons for the country’s woes, based on the wickedness or stupidity of officials and liberal politicians, amounting to a government-wide “rollback of criminal enforcement.” As for illegal immigrants, he growled, they are being “released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources.” He named an “innocent young girl” killed by an illegal immigrant who had been released from custody, calling her “one more child to sacrifice on the altar of open borders.”

Repeating a signature policy that opponents call a fantastical lie, and adding new quasi-magical benefits that it would bring, Mr Trump proudly vowed to build: “a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities.”

His Caesarism is not modest. He presents himself as a strongman saviour, with the unique combination of wealth, insider knowledge, adamantine toughness and compassion for the common man to sweep aside the rotten status quo, and stop the mighty from oppressing those who cannot defend themselves. “Nobody knows the system better than me,” he said, smirking and mugging at the thought of the corruption he has seen, before delivering the punchline: “Which is why I alone can fix it.”

In unscripted speeches at the rallies that carried him to the presidential nomination, Mr Trump became notorious for playing fast and loose with facts and for offering policies, such as an entry ban on Muslims, that threatened to shred the constitution. This speech in Cleveland was carefully, even at times brilliantly constructed, bearing the hallmark of skilled writers and well-honed legal minds who captured the essence of Trumpism, then buttressed it with cherry-picked statistics, polished anedotes and deft nods to the constraints of law.

Mr Trump declared that attacks on the police and terrorism in American cities “threaten our very way of life.” Any politician who does not grasp this danger is “not fit” to lead our country, he said.

This dark scene painted, Mr Trump turned to a scowling attack on the entire post-war consensus that America, as a military and commercial superpower of boundless ingenuity, has more to gain than lose from openness to global trade and skilled migration.

“Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” he promised. As a man who had made billions of dollars from making deals he would now make the country rich again. He vowed to renegotiate such trade pacts as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in future seek individual deals with single countries, while punishing unfair competition from such countries as China with taxes and tariff barriers.

Members of the Trump campaign had boasted that their candidate’s acceptance speech would ring with echoes of the address given by Richard Nixon when he secured the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, in another time of urban unrest and public angst about crime and a dangerous world. It is true that Mr Trump nodded to Mr Nixon’s promises to restore law and order. There were also clear parallels when both speeches catalogued incidents in which American envoys and servicemen had been attacked overseas or taken prisoner by foreign foes, suggesting that the country was no longer feared or respected.

But Mr Nixon in 1968 explicitly spoke out against isolationism, promising that in foreign policy: a “great light shining out from America will again become a beacon of hope for all those in the world who seek freedom and opportunity.”

There were no great lights, beacons or much hope at all in Mr Trump’s foreign policy analysis. His rhetorical tour of the world listed events and trends that alarm Americans—the rise of the Islamic State terror network, Iran’s ambitions to build a nuclear bomb, or civil war in Syria that has sparked a refugee crisis that “threatens the West”—and blamed all of them on Mrs Clinton, thanks to her service as Secretary of State in Mr Obama’s first term. Suggesting, with few details, that she had unwisely toppled or helped to topple despots who had kept the Middle East stable, Mr Trump declared: “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.”

He did not offer a foreign policy alternative. Other Republican rivals for the presidency promised to tear up Mr Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran on their first day in office. Some called for deployments of American troops to the Middle East. Mr Trump said almost nothing about how he would conduct foreign policy, which in his long speech was reduced to a short, chest-puffing discussion of how he would get tough on Islamic terrorism by abandoning “the failed policy of nation building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, in Libya, in Egypt and in Syria” and instead working with those allies who share the goal of “stamping out Islamic terror.”

His blanket (and illegal) Muslim entry ban has now become a policy to use his powers as president to “immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place.”

Once the red, white and blue balloons have dropped, and memories of an often chaotic and fractious convention fade, opponents starting with Mrs Clinton will pick over this policy and all the others in Mr Trump’s imperious, sweeping address. They will correctly note that his talk of restoring hope was mere gilding. Underneath this was a speech, and is a presidential campaign, built around thick beams and struts of fear, distrust and grievance. But it was skillful. Mrs Clinton should fear a Donald Trump whose demagoguery is so well-crafted.

This was a speech that contained its own pre-emptive strikes against critics, sceptics and fact-checkers. Mr Trump warned his supporters that—though he and they saw chaos, despair and stupidity in high places with clear eyes—vested interests in big business, big government and the establishment media would rush to tell them that they were wrong and foolish. Put another way, Mr Trump told his supporters that doubting him makes them dupes of the elites, while believing him uncritically is a mark of sophistication.

The Cleveland speech ended with a nifty, if not wholly truthful flourish. Mr Trump claimed that Mrs Clinton asks her supporters to recite a three-word loyalty pledge: “I’m With Her”. That is nonsense: the phrase is a Clinton campaign slogan found on bumper stickers, not in a blood oath. But Mr Trump offered a clever alternative. His pledge, he told the crowd and millions watching at home, is “I’m with you.” Still more simply, he went on: “I am your voice.”

Republican primary voters have already spoken by choosing Mr Trump as their presidential nominee. If in November a majority of general election voters hear their voice in Mr Trump’s words, it is not just the American republic will be changed forever. The world should fear this man who sells himself as a new Caesar.