Last year, when the candidates for president were still beginning to line up, a very popular candidate emerged in the North Carolina, Iowa and Minnesota polls. He polled at about 9 percent. I am, of course, talking about Deez Nuts.
Most likely, “supporters” of Deez Nuts did not believe that he would make a good president. Instead, he merely presented a way for the people of the country to engage in satire. Joke candidates have popped up many times in the past to fill this desire of the people to voice their discontent with the political system. Popular sentiment rails against cookie-cutter candidates and the inefficiency of their policies. Even more than that, it is a lack of political efficacy that drives people to vote for joke candidates. Their vote, they feel, will hardly matter — so they might as well go with the most entertaining candidate.
Donald Trump has far surpassed the entertainment value of Deez Nuts. He has become the feature of every reputable news station and the subject of every other New York Times op-ed. Every thing he says is comparable in ridiculousness only to what he says next. A proposal to build a Mexico-funded wall to keep out alleged Mexican rapists has been followed by a proposal to ban all Muslims from entering this country. These proposals, by themselves, are not entirely ridiculous. They are entirely in line with the institutional racism and sexism that permeates right-wing Americanpolitics. Conservatives like Chris Christie and Ben Carson have even endorsed Trump and his racist, xenophobic, sexist views by extension.
What really makes Trump ridiculous is how he expresses his views in half-formed sentences, with little thought about policy implementation. One day, he supports hypothetically punishing women who have illegal abortions; the next, he recants and recruits his wife to campaign with him to disprove claims he is a misogynist. He is the epitome of a satirical candidate and the best part is that he doesn’t even know it.
“But Trump is racist!” cries the GOP, “and sexist! He doesn’t stand for the Republican Party!” Of course he does. He’s only taking the GOP’s views and unintentionally turning them into satire. He doesn’t try to oppose the conservative right. He's too busy making it ridiculous.
People are tapping into this satire and, once again, it is filling the space of political critique in American society. People don’t know what “change” they want to see in the political system, but they know they want a way to voice frustration. Voting for Donald Trump fulfills the same desire that voting for Deez Nuts does — the desire to have a voice.
This desire has evolved along with this election. Trump has ceased to be only a joke. He is the Republican frontrunner. As it stands now, he is beating contenders Ted Cruz ’92 and John Kasich by a significant margin. Deez Nuts — or rather, Donald Trump — has become a legitimate candidate. What could once be only read as satire is now the reality of our presidential primary.
Apart from the obvious danger that Trump might have access to an army next winter, there is another great danger that Trump is posing to this country. He is reshaping what is, and is not, acceptable for a presidential candidate. After all, if an endorsement from the the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan hasn’t disqualified Trump as a candidate, what possibly can? If the country is willing to overlook such a fact, what can we say about the future of presidential elections?
The risk is that Trump will become the standard against which other candidates are compared. Trump’s exaggerated flaws have become a means of excusing other candidates. In an appearance on The Daily Show, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said he supports Ted Cruz for president on the basis that “he’s not completely crazy” and “that he’s not Trump.” But just because Trump is the epitome of a bad leader doesn’t mean that candidates only marginally less terrible should be elected. When picking the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, we should have good candidates to pick from — not simply an evil and a lesser evil.
This is a lesson for the elections to come. A profound dissatisfaction toward the political system shouldn’t create a monster candidate who obscures the unsuitability of others. By Senator Graham’s logic, we might even justify Kanye West as president. After all, for all his eccentricities, West has never — even in the hypothetical — suggested that he would like to date his daughter.
With the primaries putting a silly caricature of a man closer and closer to the Republican nomination, people need to avoid politicians with half-baked policies and intolerant views. Otherwise, dissatisfaction with the government will continue and end with incarnations of Deez Nuts in the Oval Office — or a candidate only a little better.
Bhaamati Borkhetaria is a freshman fromJersey City, New Jersey. She can be reached atbhaamati@princeton.edu.
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