Don’t hold your breath for a ‘pivot to the economy’ moment. It’s not coming.
The State of the Union address last night was long on spectacle, and long, period. Political history will little note nor long remember what Donald Trump said, but he did get some good visuals that may help fire up his demoralized troops a bit ahead of the midterms. For the wider public, however, even a speech of record long-windedness was never likely to be remembered for more than one thing. A speechwriter or a politician delivering the speech knows this (even Churchill’s legendary speeches of May and June 1940, chock-a-block as they were with information, are each remembered only for their closing paragraph).
One big takeaway from last night is that there will be no pivot to the economy. This was the last chance for Trump to have a stage big enough to seize control of the message and make people think, “Hey, he’s laser-focused on specific things to bring down the cost of living.” He didn’t. Doing so would have required a deliberate, disciplined effort to keep other topics from stealing the headlines, or perhaps even from being discussed — thus, forcing Trump’s economic message to be the story.
It’s not that Trump somehow failed to talk about the economy, jobs, inflation, and an affordable cost of living. He did. But already, while most of us who sat through the whole speech have at least half a dozen moments in our heads, how many of those had to do with Trump’s economic message? In fact, discussion of economic issues came largely in the first half of the speech, during which even Trump sounded bored waiting for the guest stars and the material that would provoke fights. The economy was the undercard, the opening act, the coming attractions — not the main event.
That tells us something. It may be that the Trump team has just given up on an economic message, and assumes it will rise or fall with economic reality, not perception. It may be that the boss just doesn’t enjoy that stuff as much. And it may be that they’ve already decided that the time for persuasion is over, and what Republicans really need for the rest of the year is base turnout, which requires red-meat cultural conflict. Or maybe all three. But don’t hold your breath for a “pivot to the economy” moment. It’s not coming.