Just recently, President Trump was both impeached by the House and then acquitted by the Senate. This impeachment and acquittal are not the focus of this blog, but it is a great illustration of it. For the last three years, Donald Trump has been the face of the Republican party. In fact, you could say that he is the Republican party. His election and fame in the presidency are not a result of him serving the party, but of the party serving him. Everywhere you look in politics, Trump is at the center of it. To a lesser extent, when Barack Obama was president, it was the party of Barack Obama, not the Democratic party. The reason Trump has become the face of the Republican party is because of the technological advances that have made the media the capable and far-reaching institution that it is today. Nowadays, especially during election season, people do not see individuals campaigning for the political parties. Rather, they see political parties campaigning for individual politicians such as Donald Trump, or Mike Bloomberg, or Bernie Sanders, etc. Parties now serve politicians.
Just recently in class, we discussed the transition that took place in politics in the twentieth century. For the first part of this country’s existence, politicians were completely dependent on their parties for election. No politician could do it on his own. All politicians were obscure unless the party decided to focus its attention on them. This all changed when technology started to become what it is today. It gave politicians a far-reaching platform to advertise themselves. They no longer had to rely on the party to become relevant to the people. They could now use technology to do it themselves. For example, they could use the newspapers to acquaint the public to them, and they could travel by train and eventually by plane to campaign all over the country. From this point on, politicians no longer needed to serve the party. In fact, in order to stay relevant themselves, the party’s started serving the politicians. For the parties, self-preservation became doing whatever they could do make sure the politician that represented them made it to office.
Never has the result of this transformation been so apparent as it is today. Donald Trump has taken this to a completely new level. He has revolutionized the way Twitter–and social media in general–is used today to advance a politician’s interests. In no way has he had to serve the Republican party in order to get to where he is now. I guess he had to win over the Republican people’s hearts and minds, but the party itself has been his willing servant ever since he won the Republican primaries. All throughout the impeachment process, it has been the Democrats versus Donald Trump and the Republican party who serves him. The party has bent over backwards to keep him in office and will continue to do so. He has no need for the party itself to advance his interests, but if the party wants to remain relevant and ahead of the Democratic party, it is imperative that they serve Trump and do everything they can to sustain him. This is the complete opposite of how it used to be when politicians would do anything they could to serve the party in an effort to gain office.
Not only does Donald Trump help to illustrate this political phenomenon, but this phenomenon also helps to explain why Trump has become such a powerful political actor. He has a very unique history. Not only is he not a career politician, unlike most other contemporary presidential candidates, but he is not even a career Republican. He used to be a Democrat. It seems unfathomable that such a person could end up as President of the United States of America. If Trump were to have lived in an earlier day, a day without modern-day technology, there is no doubt he would have never been able to win the presidency. Because of modern-day technology, though, there are not media sources that can help an individual to reach the top without the assistance of a group much larger than him alone. That is not to say that politicians do not need a political party, but it is certain that parties need politicians more than politicians need parties. Trump is living proof that politicians make parties now, not the other way around.
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