Caroline Baum  via marketwatch 

Trump est un choix par défaut parce que les 17 autres repoussent ou sont repoussants. On rejoint aux USA la situation qui prévaut depuis longtemps. 

There are two popular theories on what led to the rise of Donald Trump. Both are partisan in nature.

The first theory is that the Republican Party lost its way, violated its conservative principles and opened the door to an imposter. The second theory holds that President Barack Obama gave rise to Donald Trump. Neither seems particularly apt.

The Democrats would have us believe that Trump represents the natural evolution of a Republican Party that abandoned its traditional base of white, male, blue-collar workers, who are struggling to find an alternative to the well-paid manufacturing jobs they once held, even as the top 1% prospers.

Fine. But how do you connect the dots from disaffected voters to a wealthy businessman who talks out of both sides of his mouth and whose commitment to the working man consists of reviving discredited mercantilist theories? Illuminating what’s wrong doesn’t explain how Trump will make it right.

My guess is Trump’s popularity says a lot more about the lack of appealing alternatives in the field of 17 original contenders than it does about Trump.

Don’t get me wrong. Trump’s supporters are enthusiastic about their chosen candidate and outspoken in their admiration for someone who disparages political correctness and speaks his mind, or whatever happens to be wafting through it when he opens his mouth.

Trump is something new and different. He’s the equivalent of a fling, someone who can show you a good time. He is not the guy for a serious, long-term relationship: in this case, a four-year term as president of the United States.

The Republican talking points — that Obama gave us Trump — are completely off base, encapsulated by Ed Rogers in the March 29 edition of the Washington Post’s PostPartisan blog. Rogers writes that the Great Recession and slow economic growth that followed did “more to create Trump than anything the Republican leadership has done. Economic stress produces political consequences. And those consequences are only just now beginning to emerge.”

Rogers is right about one thing: Economic stress produces political consequences. But Jimmy Carter gave us Ronald Reagan, not a charlatan like Trump.
The misery index peaked in 1980, just before Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory over President Jimmy Carter.

By the time the 1980 election rolled around, the public was fed up with stagflation — high inflation and high unemployment — and long lines at gas stations, a result of price controls implemented by President Richard Nixon. Americans wanted solutions, not admonitions from the president to turn down the thermostat at home as an answer to their “malaise.” Carter’s bungling of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis left Americans yearning for a strong leader.

Enter Ronald Reagan. Reagan had prior government and executive experience as governor of California. He was upbeat. He talked about the importance of strong leadership, at home and abroad. He set out to reduce income taxes, restore prosperity to the American economy and achieve “peace through strength” by increasing defense spending. He understood the effect of work incentives and, at the same time, the need for compassion for those who found themselves wanting.

Carter had appointed Paul Volcker to lead the Federal Reserve in 1979 with the goal of whipping inflation, which rose from 5% when Carter took office to 13% at the time of the 1980 election. Sky-high interest rates inflicted a good deal of economic hardship and produced back-to back recessions in the early 1980s, after which the U.S. economy took off. Thus began two decades of strong economic growth and low, stable inflation.

Reagan referred to America as a “shining city on a hill” — in his farewell address after eight years in office. Trump promises to “Make America Great Again” but doesn’t tell us how. He displays a total lack of knowledge, and interest, in public policy. Trump is in it for himself, not us. He couldn’t even be bothered to memorize the obligatory answers to questions on abortion, a key element of the GOP canon.

Reagan won the 1980 election with 489 electoral college votes to Carter’s 49. He was re-elected in a landslide in 1984, with Democrat Walter Mondale winning one state, his own (Minnesota), and the District of Columbia.

Trump is no Reagan. Drawing a direct line from either the Republican Party or Obama to Trump’s popularity is an attempt to apply reason to something that defies logic.

When Trump loses, if not in the race to win the Republican nomination then in November’s general election, the theory du jour to explain Trump’s appeal will implode under its own weight. At that point, be prepared for an onslaught of well-thought-out and articulated theories of why #NeverTrump.