Published: The Good Men Project (January 7, 2016)
For the record, I don’t believe Donald Trump is going to be our next president. Similarly, I would be shocked if the Democratic Party nominated Kanye West as their presidential candidate in 2020, despite his declared intention to run.
That said, I can’t help but wonder… What if? What if Trump manages to stave off Ted Cruz and win the Republican nomination this year, then avail himself of some scandal in Hillary Clinton’s campaign in order to win the presidency?
In an America that is able to elect Trump as its president, the prospect of West running against him in the next cycle suddenly becomes much more likely. Indeed, even if Trump doesn’t win the Republican nomination (much less the White House), the mere fact that such things are within the realm of possibility (albeit not plausibility) is enough to tickle the fancy of any future novelist writing within the Alternate History genre.
That’s why – as an entertaining thought experiment, if nothing else – I’ve decided to write an op-ed explaining the significance of a West-Trump election in this hypothetical timeline of American history.
1. It will usher a bona fide “era of celebrities.”
For most of American history, our presidents have been selected from either the politician class (governors, senators, cabinet members, and the like) or the military class (war heroes, generals, etc.) Even the occasional business entrepreneur or actor who became president usually had a political career beforehand; Hebert Hoover, though renowned chiefly as a brilliant engineer, served as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, while Ronald Reagan had two terms as governor of California before being elected to the presidency. Trump and West, on the other hand, will have skipped those steps and gone directly from business/artistic celebrity to the White House. This is no mean feat.
2. It will lower the bar regarding what disqualifies a potential president.
While presidents have faced career-altering scandals since the beginning of time, can you imagine any recent presidential candidate getting elected after making Trump’s series of brazenly bigoted public statements? While West hasn’t said anything half as offensive as Trump, he is notorious for embarrassing himself; just look at how he compared himself to Jesus Christ, declared himself the voice of a generation, and attempted to humiliate Taylor Swift on national TV only to have that backfire. If George W. Bush or Barack Obama had anything like this in their background, it would have destroyed them. By contrast, if Trump and West are able to get elected to the presidency despite these faux pas, it will mean that our standards for misconduct have loosened considerably.
3. It will increase voter turnout.
For better or worse, an election between Trump and West is virtually guaranteed to inspire some of the highest voter turnout in American history. Just look at how the Republican presidential debates have drawn unprecedented ratings by sheer dint of having Trump participate. Similarly, bear in mind that the presidential election of 2008 had the highest voter turnout in nearly forty years simply because of Obama’s popularity as a celebrity figure. In an election between Trump and West, we would have not one but two major celebrities competing against each other to become the most powerful man in the world. If you think presidential elections dominate our cultural consciousness now, just wait and see how the public engages with our political process in this potential 2020 election.
There isn’t much else to say here, really. I must reiterate that, despite the novelty of this article’s premise, I don’t believe that Trump is going to be elected to the presidency this November, or that West will be the Democratic candidate four years hence. Nevertheless, I can’t deny that I’d like to see some ambitious writer elaborate in detail on how such a contest would play out. Do you agree?