America's just sworn in their first parish-pump President but he better deliver

It was Irish style parish-pump politics that brought Donald Trump to Presidential office but Irish writer Paddy Duffy reflects on whether, unlike the Healy Rae's, The Donald's rhetoric on the campaign trail was based on a real sense of civic duty to the people who voted for him. 

Here we are then so. We are into The Trump Administration: World Politics Beyond Thunderdome. So far no roaming gangs of post-apocalyptic bikers, but the weekend is young.

Now his tiny hands can sign and veto legislation, abstract anxiety around how The Donald will govern has become very real. What will Trump’s America actually be like?

I got a glimpse last year while covering a Trump canvassing day in Virginia. The group was well-balanced demographically, hospitable and upbeat. They felt Hillary Clinton was indifferent to them. Deplorably so.

Donald meanwhile was talking their issues in their language, and they were willing to overlook his sharper, septic edges because of it.

They weren’t fire-breathers, loons or Deliverance cliches, if anything they were very familiar. Between the young lads in souped-up cars and the omnipresence of country music, it was like a particularly humid day back in rural Ireland.

In fact, everything I’ve seen of Trumpworld suggests to me that Irish politicos will have unusual insight into this era of US politics, for Donald Trump is nothing more than the radioactive tangerine monster of a parish pump politician. A gold plated pump with the most beautiful water you’ve ever seen. It’s gonna be a terrific pump, folks, believe me.

It’s clear to me that, like those German kids at the Berlin Wall incongruously inspired by David Hasselhoff, Donald Trump has found inspiration in local Irish politics.

The clincher was a message he sent before Christmas on the Joycean rant machine he calls Twitter. After being rebuffed by everyone but Michael Flatley and Delaware’s fourth best Boney M tribute act for his inauguration, he claimed he didn’t want A-listers there anyway, tweeting “I want THE PEOPLE!”.

It was a different vernacular spin on the common Irish appeal to the good honest country folk against those D4 begrudgers.

Essentially, all the ingredients that sent Trump to the White House are a spiced-up, scaled-up version of the “He Fixed The Road!” capers captured perfectly by the comedian David McSavage.

Instead of giving interviews to the mid-morning radio show after the obituaries, Trump rings in to Fox News or goes unilateral with Twitter.

Swap being a publican and undertaker for selling Trump vodka from a Fifth Avenue tower, or being Chairman of the county GAA committee with running Miss Universe. Instead of securing funding for the VEC, secure the southern border with a wall. He’s even got hair like that councillor you will find in every council chamber up and down the country.

In terms of a specific parish pump role model, there are plenty to choose from.

Your Voice In North Tipp, Michael Lowry’s style would be a good fit for The Donald: both are successful businessmen; Lowry recommended a woman get reappointed to her job because, among other things, “she’s not bad looking!”; he even proposed building a massive casino and replica White House in rural Tipperary.

Or perhaps the Charles Haughey method is more his style. Both certainly loved the high life, the ladies, the pomp of power, had a phonebook worth of enemies yet carte blanche among his supporters - sometimes literally. But Trump barely shakes hands let alone climbs ladders to shake them like Charlie did, so maybe not.

But if he’s really serious about taking Trump Pump-ism to the next level, he really can’t look beyond the Healy-Rae playbook.

Not so much colourful as kaleidoscopic, they’re businessmen-turned politicians / advocates of being allowed to drive home from The Sesh who’ve been wildly popular (to much urban bemusement) since Trump was making sitcom cameos.

They are the gold standard of this carry-on. Take Danny Healy-Rae’s notorious assertion last year in the Dail that God controlled the weather (well of course He does).

Danny and The Donald are clearly kindred rhetorical spirits. His speech was at points scattershot and bewildering - he started chatting about “combustible engines”, and asserted very matter-of-factly that in the 11th and 12th centuries Ireland was “roashted out of it”.

With that, “the smart-alec set in Dublin” were at the races. But in the same speech, he mentioned concern about flooding and the need to clean out rivers. He worried about people being overcharged and overregulated, and wanted clarification on how the carbon tax was being spent.

In other words, the sort of things anybody who lives rurally will hear brought up at every turnabout. The opinion formers might have thought he was halfway to the moon (which they may think he reckons is made of cheese), but to the people he was representing, he was a chapter and verse scholar of The Big Book Of Rural Concerns.

It’s unlikely all 30,000 Healy-Rae voters are climate deniers, but as long as the job meant to be done is done, they’ll not just be forgiven the flat-earth japery, it’ll make them more endearing.

Trump’s messaging in this regard has been bang on so far - just replace “Kerry” with “traditionalist Americans” and “Dublin” with “the vast majority of the human race”.

Therein is the big divergence between them: whatever you think of their antics, it’s obvious Michael and Danny’s hearts and fidelity to service are firmly in the right place. It’s not at all clear whether the appeal of civic duty for Donald extends beyond him hearing the phrase “President Trump”.

We’re only one day into the Parish Pump Presidency, and if he governs the way he got elected then he’ll be, if not widely popular then successful enough to keep going. But now the man who made stiffing contractors into an artform has to deliver for his constituency.

Plenty of would-be local chieftains in Ireland have been shown the door by the electorate when lip service isn’t backed up. It’s the work that underpins every forgiven transgression, and allows every outrageous statement to be laughed off. If Trump doesn’t put in that work, or he plays fast and loose with “the people down below”, as Danny Healy-Rae might say, he’ll be roashted out of it.

Paddy Duffy is a London-based writer, broadcaster and television producer, originally from Donegal. He was part of the team that made the documentary series Inside Obama's White House, and he's a regular radio and TV commentator on RTE, TV3 and the BBC. His second book, Do You Know Who's Dead?, was released in 2015."

Paddy Duffy