Wooley: Gibberish from leaders not so funny anymore
Trump’s off-topic ranting was reminiscent of old Joh Bjelke-Petersen, but these days I’m not laughing, Wooley writes
Opinion
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We live in such uncertain times with world events so unpredictable that Channel 7’s mainland national news bulletin now contains a horoscope. Which serious journalists predict won’t last.
But rather than scoping out the horror of this week, let me divert your thoughts from something as unthinkable as nuclear war to something only a little less thinkable.
A Trump presidency with the total destruction of coherent political discourse, rationality and the end of language.
Scouring the news feeds I have found something you should read. It won’t be easy.
At a rally in Flint, Michigan, Barbara, a retired nurse, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother had asked Donald Trump a simple question: “How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?”
The answer, which was nothing like an answer, rambled on for eight minutes. I don’t have eight minutes but Sam Clench, who covers politics for news.com.au, convinced his editor to run the lot, which I will try to condense.
There will be no danger of losing the meaning. There was none, which was the point of running long.
“Good. Very good. Thank you. So, we have to start always with energy, always.
“I don’t want to be boring about it, but there’s no bigger subject. It covers everything. If you make doughnuts, if you make cars, whatever you make energy is a big deal, and we are going to get that.”
So far so good. Any journo needing a concise story would cut it there, but as always the Don was up for running away.
“So, we’re going to, just a great, interest rates, energy and common sense. A lot of it’s common sense, everything. You know, I like to say we’re the party of common sense.”
In the first minute he wanders way south, miles from poor old Barbara’s question.
“We want to have a strong border. How about that? We want a strong, you know all of a sudden, they’ve changed. They didn’t want any border. They said walls don’t work. Two things work. What are the two things? Wheels and walls.
“You know, if I do, there’s a gorgeous computer down here. In about two weeks, it’s going to be obsolete. A friend of mine is in that business. He hates it. He said, ‘We come up with a new model and it’s the greatest’.
“About three-and-a-half weeks later the damn thing is totally obsolete. The only thing that never gets obsolete is a wall and a wheel.”
Now remember Barbara the retired nurse had asked a question about bringing down the price of groceries.
I can’t tell you if she’s fallen asleep, died of boredom or just left the building.
“And the wall is what we’re talking about now. And you know we built hundreds of miles of wall. We then added hundreds of miles more than I ever said I was going to do. Then we had that bad election result, that disgusting election result. And they never put it up.”
I managed to get hold of some vision of this speech and suddenly I remembered where I had heard this kind of nonsensical stream of consciousness ranting before.
Way back in the 1980s.
Donald Trump does a perfect Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Joh, then the premier of Queensland and an outstanding mangler of words, was confounding conservative politics with his mad ‘Joh for Canberra’ campaign.
I asked him, “Premier Joh, won’t your bid for national power damage the federal Liberals at the next election?”
And he Trumpeted at me: “Oh my goodness me no!
“No Charles, you see that you, you, you have been down there in Canberra too long. Down there they have their feet on both sides of the barbed wire fence. They are standing on sticky paper, and you know some of them won’t even swear on the bible anymore. That’s the kind of people we have running the country. Is that what you want, really?
“And so people say to me, ‘Premier Joh, we need you down in Canberra to fix the mess’.
“And you know thousands of people are coming into Queensland every week and they don’t need a passport, and they are staying here. Not because we lock them up but because they like the way we, we, do things in Queensland.”
Joh’s interviews rarely got to air intact because the television bosses never understood them. Even for a reporter there in the field and in the moment they made more fun than sense. Back in the edit suite they were complete gibberish and only ever run in their entirety when a smart-arse southern program editor wanted to take the piss out of ‘banana-benders’.
Personally, I liked old Joh, who always gave me the time of day. Queensland time it was, completely out of kilter with the rest of eastern Australia.
But they loved him up there and he ruled his state for a record 19 years.
Trump is the greatest of digressers. That might be an infectious condition so let me get back to Flint, Michigan, where the answer to Barbara’s question about the price of eggs has wandered down a long and winding road, now on to the subject of electric cars.
“I mean, you know it’s fine. But right now, the battery technology isn’t there for long term. I always say, ‘I love the electric car, but they don’t go far enough, and they don’t do well.’.”
How will we ever find our way back to the price of groceries?
Maybe never.
“But Elon’s going to figure it out, because he’s great. He gave me the greatest endorsement. He figures everything out, and right now, he’s got, he’s got other things. He’s got to get a rocket up to get those two people out of there.”
So, tell me this stuff isn’t the vintage Joh Bjelke-Petersen I loved.
But why isn’t it so funny anymore?
Perhaps because when he lost the last election Trump tried to bring down the republic.
Or is it because in these dangerous times he might get his finger on the nuclear button?
Or just because he can’t even answer a nice old lady’s simple question about food prices?
“He (Elon Musk) is a great, great, guy. And he loves this state, and he loves your whole, everything you’re doing here. And he’s done a fantastic job. He really has. And if he didn’t endorse me I wouldn’t be saying that. OK? I have a problem. I wouldn’t be saying.”
And that was it. That was the answer to (have you forgotten) “How are you going to bring down the price of food and groceries?”
Yet, only last week, campaigning in Wisconsin, Donald Trump described Kamala Harris as “mentally impaired” and “mentally disabled”.
Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist
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