When This Blows Over

…Trump’s speech in Dallas, a 70-minute
stemwinder, came out like a zigzagging rocket
attack against the many sectors of the political
establishment. If, as Mario Cuomo said, a
politician campaigns in poetry and governs in
prose, we can shove that notion aside in the
case of Donald Trump. He campaigns in
poetry in much the same way a wild hog sips
chardonnay.
But what was more compelling to me about both the
speech and the spirit of the room was how nonideological
it all was. Other than undocumented
immigrants, who represent a go-to boogeyman for
the right, Trump’s targets consisted of a bipartisan
assembly of the ‘‘permanent political class’’ that
Joan Didion described in her book ‘‘Political
Fictions’’: that incestuous band of TV talkers,
campaign strategists and candidates that had
perpetuated the scripted awfulness of our politics…