There’s a great scene from the TV sit-com “Modern Family” where Phil Dunphy, the father, tries to subtly intimidate Dylan, the boyfriend of Phil’s daughter Haley, through a display of sheer animal domination that is conveyed only through eye contact.
But it doesn’t end well for Phil. Here’s that scene:
This scene was brought to mind by all of the grief that Jeb Bush is taking today for failing to summon the brute animal intimidation required to defeat Trump in yesterday’s debate confrontation over Jeb’s wife. The rap on Jeb is that he demanded Trump apologize to his wife — right there on the stage — and when Trump refused, Jeb basically slumped in defeat and didn’t pursue the apology any further:
BUSH: And why don’t you apologize to her right now.TRUMP: No, I won’t do that, because I’ve said nothing wrong.BUSH: Yeah.TRUMP: But I do hear she’s a lovely woman.
On “Morning Joe” earlier today, Trump took the opportunity to needle Jeb further about this.
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“I thought he was going to push me harder to apologize to his wife,” Trump said, with a hint of puckishness.
This line has gotten no attention today, but it’s strikingly devious stuff, if you think about it. Trump is basically saying: “I owned the wimp; he wasn’t even man enough to stand up for his woman.”
And that’s the bet Trump is making; he can openly torment his rivals, especially Jeb, and voters will respond on a primordial level to his manly, overbearing, testosterone-scented dominance. As David Frum puts it: “We remain primates, who seek from our pack-leaders qualities of both prudence and strength. We don’t make those assessments with the conscious parts of our brains.”
Trump regularly castigates Bush’s “low energy,” and at last night’s debate, he said: “More energy tonight. I like that.” Trump might as well have cracked: Took your Viagra this time, eh, wuss?
What’s really unfortunate about all this is that it’s overshadowing the ways in which Jeb is taking on Trump. Jeb, more than any other GOP contender, has directly challenged Trump’s restrictionism and his affection for insulting millions of immigrants, arguing that Trump is urinating all over cherished American values of diversity and tolerance for those who are taking enormous risks to come to America to better their lives, in the process making our country a better place.
Yesterday, right after Jeb failed to wrest an apology from Trump, he did this again, launching into a spirited discussion about how his wife Columba “wants to embrace the traditional American values that make us special and make us unique”:
BUSH: We’re at a crossroads right now. Are we going to take the Reagan approach, the hopeful optimistic approach, the approach that says that, you come to our country legally, you pursue your dreams with a vengeance, you create opportunities for all of us? Or the Donald Trump approach? The approach that says that everything is bad, that everything is coming to an end…
But all anyone wants to talk about is how Bush failed to best Trump in a showdown of alpha male dominance.
This can only get Trump so far, though. While Jeb probably could have been armed with a better zinger to conclude yesterday’s showdown, it’s hard to imagine that voters heard this confrontation and concluded: “Trump wouldn’t apologize to Jeb’s wife. That shows Trump is strong and Jeb is weak.”
What’s more, it’s apparent that Trump’s sense of his own primal magnetism is beginning to lead him astray. It seems possible that Trump’s effort to telegraph animal dominance is also what drives him to feign reconciliation by complimenting women as “beautiful,” as he did to Jeb’s wife and to Carly Fiorina, who seethed as he did so. But Trump’s boorishness may well be the defining impression left behind by all of last night’s exchanges, even, perhaps, in the minds of those GOP primary voters tempted to support him.
Right?