Trump's Diversion Game

SHIFT PUBLIC ATTENTION AWAY FROM MANAGING THE PANDEMIC AND ITS ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES ONTO SOCIAL ISSUES THAT INFLAME PUBLIC OPINION SUCH AS THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT. THIS IS THE STRATEGY OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT DURING THIS ELECTION CAMPAIGN, A STRATEGY THAT HE CARRIES OUT BY FIRING OFF TWEETS

by Catherine E. De Vries, Professor of Political Science, Bocconi University

The start of the presidential election campaign in the United States has beset by conflict. As the Republican incumbent president Donald Trump and his Democratic competitor Joe Biden accepted their candidacies at their respective party’s conventions, images of violent clashes between Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrators and members of white militias in several major American cities dominated the news. The BLM movement advocating against police brutality began in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. It gained renewed momentum this summer in the aftermath of the brutal killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Previous American presidents of both parties, for example Barack Obama and George W. Bush, strongly condemned the violence. In his first reaction to the national unrest surrounding the police killing of George Floyd, former Republican President Bush stated to be “anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd”, disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country" and called for the country to “examine our tragic failures."
 
Former president’s Bush’s message contrasted sharply with president Trump's public statements. Rather than condemning the police officer’s actions and calling for national unity, he fuelled the conflict by stoking racial tensions through a series of controversial tweets. Most notably he evoked the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” historically tied to the brutal civil rights-era police tactics. The law and order theme dominated the kick-off of the Trump campaign at the Republican National Convention. What is clear is that the incumbent president is attempting to divert attention away from his administration’s sluggish response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
 
While the actions of president Trump in playing up a law and order message are controversial, especially because of its racist undertones, attempts by incumbents to divert attention away from bad economic news to non-economic issues is not. In a recent study, my co-author, Hector Solaz, and I argue that when faced with deteriorating economic conditions incumbent governments have an incentive to redirect attention away from the economic to the non-economic dimension, usually centred around liberal versus authoritarian values. We compiled data on both the emphasis that government versus opposition parties place on various political topics in 28 European countries and connected it with public opinion data. Our analysis revealed two important patterns. First, government parties shift attention to the non-economic dimension when economic conditions deteriorate. Second, in contexts where government parties have shifted attention, voters overall attach less importance to the economy and attribute less responsibility to the government for the state of the economy. These findings are important as it implies that while the societal demand for certain policy certainly shaped by worsening economic conditions, the activities of political elites in shaping demand also matters.
 
Other political science work supports this idea. Focussing on rising inequality, political scientists Margit Tavits and Joshua Potter for example show that especially right-wing parties will shift their emphasis to non-economic issues. Left-wing parties place more emphasis on the economic vis-á-vis the non-economic dimension when inequality rises. Inequality increases the proportion of the population falling in lower socio-economic strata thus expanding the share of voters who could be receptive to the economic message of left-wing parties. As inequality rises, the constituency favouring less market intervention in the economy as espoused in right-wing party platforms is likely to shrink, and right-wing parties are likely to shift their emphasis to non-economic issues in response. President Trump’s actions are no doubt exceptional in tone and chosen medium (tweets), but his strategy of trying to divert attention away from his handling of the pandemic and the associated economic downturn by framing the elections as a matter of law and order is by not new. If it will be successful is a whole different question.