Americans may have never witnessed a presidential election campaign as bizarre as the one they have just lived through.
In the coming days Donald Trump will be feted as either a genius or a fool by running the most unscripted and maverick campaign in living memory – one that made his 2016 and 2020 campaigns seem almost disciplined by comparison.
Even Trump’s most virulent critics must concede that the former president has run a stunningly brave campaign. But was it crazy brave?
From the start, Trump has run this race in his own high-risk style and in a manner that – if it wasn’t Trump – would have doomed any other candidate to defeat.
It may still do so, and if Trump loses to Kamala Harris this week, he will be seen as the architect of his own demise.
Yet if Trump beats Harris, having run this campaign in the manner of one of his favourite campaign songs, My Way, then he will be seen as confirming his own description of himself as a “very stable genius”.
From the start, Trump ignored the repeated pleas from his own advisers to show more discipline and focus his attack on Joe Biden, and subsequently Harris, on their key weaknesses of inflation and border security.
He did this, but often in spasmodic fashion, diverting into the weeds repeatedly with conspiratorial complaints about the “stolen” election of 2020 or querying whether Harris was black or discussing the “late, great Hannibal Lecter”.
He cut short a town hall meeting to dance for 40 minutes to his favourite tunes and yet he refused to cut short his long rambling rallies where he would often speak for two hours, drifting off topic so much that the teleprompter stops and waits for him to get back on topic before it moves again.
He chose fellow MAGA warrior JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick, ignoring the so-called accepted wisdom of choosing a running mate who has different attributes, meaning that they round out the ticket rather than simply clone the candidate.
Trump has taken rhetorical risks that no other candidate would, claiming that he will get revenge on his opponents if he wins, warning of the “enemy within” America’s political milieu. Or joking that he would be dictator for a day.
Of course, much of this plays well to his supporters even if it shocks Democrats, but will it win back the middle ground of American voters Trump lost in 2020?
It looked for a moment early on that Trump was set for a crushing victory, after he reacted bravely, with a defiant and bloodied fist pump, to being struck in the ear by the bullet of a would-be-assassin.
But his task was made infinitely harder soon after by Biden’s sudden withdrawal as a candidate following the President’s gibbering performance in their debate in June revealed his inability to serve another term.
Harris’s sudden elevation and her prolonged honeymoon that saw her quickly draw level with him in the polls knocked Trump off his game for several weeks. He struggled to pick an effective nickname for her and spent too long grousing about the fact that he was no longer facing Biden.
Trump eventually found his talking points about Harris and has performed better, although no less bizarrely, since then. But Harris has made it harder for Trump by campaigning surprisingly well in stark contrast to her early flame-out in 2019 ahead of the 2020 primary contest.
Harris has made some mistakes, most notably when she said she could not think of anything she would have done differently to Biden. But Harris has morphed during this campaign from the initial “joyous” candidate who barely discussed policy, to a more effective campaigner who embarrassed Trump during their debate in September such that he refused to have another one.
Harris has also taken risks, but far less than those taken by Trump. Yet her decision several weeks ago to focus so heavily on attacking Trump’s character ahead of promoting her own agenda was a risky ploy. Hillary Clinton in 2016 spent much of her campaign attacking Trump’s character and lost the election.
The thing about election campaigns is that they all look inspired or obviously flawed after the result as people apply perfect hindsight to them.
But nothing will change the fact that Trump’s campaign has been marked by a singular determination to win or lose this contest in his own manner.
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