America’s primary elections Outsiders’ chance The primary contest is about to get serious. It has rarely been so ugly, uncertain or strange

WHEN Jeb Bush announced he was running for
president seven months ago the tutting
newspaper commentaries almost wrote
themselves. With his famous name and war
chest of over $100m, whistled up from Bush
family benefactors in a matter of months, the
former Florida governor was almost as strong a
favourite for the Republican ticket as Hillary
Clinton, who had made her inaugural campaign
speech two days earlier, was for the Democratic
one. Bush against Clinton? The prospect made
American democracy seem stale and dynastic,
rigged on behalf of a tiny political elite, whose
members alone had the name recognition and
deep pockets required to win its overpriced
elections.
But now the primary process is about to get
serious. In Iowa on February 1st perhaps
250,000 voters will brave icy roads to pick their
champion in small groups, or caucuses. And the
tutting has given way to real fear. On the
Republican side, Mr Bush—or “Jeb!” as his
campaign has cruelly styled him—is all but
irrelevant. The son and brother of past
presidents is clever and has a solid record of
cutting taxes and privatising services. But
Republican voters have dismissed him as dull
and out-of-touch, an emblem of the political
class they despise. The Republican front-runner,
Donald Trump, is a celebrity builder with no
previous political experience. He has raised little
money, was once a registered Democrat and still
refers derisively to his party as “the
Republicans”, as if it is some unpromising
acquisition he has been arm-twisted into
buying.
Advertisement
Mr Trump is quick-witted, charismatic and,
during years as a reality television star, has built
an outrageous public persona around his
gargantuan ego. “I’m intelligent,” he likes to
say. “Some people would say I’m very, very,
very intelligent.” Uncertainty over whether this is
self-parody or undiluted egomania is part of the
act. Mr Trump is to public service what
professional wrestling, which he loves, is to
sport: entertaining and ludicrously implausible, a
suspension of disbelief for escapists, a crude
deception for the gullible.
The digs he makes at his rivals, often in the
form of tweets offering “advice”, can be
amusing. A former propagator of conspiracy
theories about Barack Obama’s place of birth,
Mr Trump is now dishing out the same
treatment to his closest challenger, Ted Cruz. A
first-term senator from Texas, Mr Cruz was born
in Canada, but to an American mother, which
puts his eligibility to be president beyond
serious doubt. “Ted—free legal advice on how to
pre-empt the Dems on citizen issue. Go to court
now & seek declaratory judgment—you will win!”
Mr Trump tweeted to his nearly 6m followers.
Yet his front-runner status is based less on Mr
Trump’s wit than on his gift for understanding
and pandering to people’s fears.
The billionaire says that America has been
beggared and wrecked by immigrant rapists,
venal bankers and idiot politicians, is imperilled
by Muslim maniacs, and mocked by the rest of
the world. He rages against the Chinese, whom
he accuses of inventing global warming to
destroy American industry. Announcing his run
at Trump Tower, his Manhattan skyscraper, he
lamented: “We got $18 trillion in debt… we need
money. We’re dying. We’re dying. We need
money…