Fergus Finlay: After Trump's defining moment, Biden has a week left to act

Despite the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the questions around Joe Biden’s decline haven’t gone away

What kind of Trump will emerge this week? Photo: AP/Gene J. Puskar

Johnny Iselin. That’s all I could think of. I know, it’s unworthy of me. I wasn’t watching an old conspiracy being revived in a place called Butler in Pennsylvania. Donald Trump was the innocent victim of an assassination attempt there on Saturday night, all played out in real time. 

That’s the first time I, and I suspect many others, have been obliged to put the words innocent and Donald Trump in the same sentence.

But the parallels are astonishing nevertheless. To make myself clear, I guess I have to tell you a bit of the story of Johnny Iselin.

He was an American Senator, a buffoon and a bully, far too right-wing even for his own right-wing party. He modelled himself on Joseph McCarthy, the American politician who built a career out of accusing everyone in his way of being a communist and who spawned the so-called McCarthy era, one of the darkest periods in American political history.

McCarthy, though evil and opportunist, was Johnny Iselin’s hero. He was determined to use the same techniques to force himself into the presidency. The best he could do, though, was bully his way on to the ticket as a vice-presidential candidate. But that’s where a plan, many years in the making, was supposed to kick in. 

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As the two candidates were announced — president and vice-president — and took the stage together on the last night of the convention, a highly skilled marksman would shoot the presidential candidate through the head and slightly wound Johnny with a second shot.

Though bloodied and hurt, the plan was for Johnny to scoop the slain presidential candidate into his arms and galvanise the delegates with a passionate call to arms. He would sweep to the presidency and as it became clear later that the assassination was a communist plot, he would be enabled to adopt sweeping and draconian powers.

It didn’t work out like that. Johnny Iselin was a fictional character in one of my favourite books, The Manchurian Candidate. (It was written by a man called Richard Condon who lived a good deal of his life in County Kilkenny.) You’ll have to read it to find out what happened in the end. 

And there are two movies, based on the book — the first (brilliant) with Frank Sinatra and the second (less interesting) with Denzel Washington.

I’m no conspiracy theorist, and the attempt to murder Donald Trump clearly wasn’t part of a conspiracy in which he had any involvement. All the evidence so far points to one highly disturbed young man and perhaps less than fully competent security.

Do you remember the moment John F Kennedy was shot in 1963? File photo: AP/Jim Altgens

But there is something slightly astonishing that this happened just before the Republican convention started (in the book it was at the end of the convention), and it is absolutely certain now that as far as his own party is concerned, Trump has gone from hero to Messiah.

The hero to Messiah thing is partly because of his own reaction. Yes, when he clutches his ear and realises that he’s been hit, he dives behind the podium. But within seconds it’s possible for photographers to take a picture that will be in the history books. And it will be an utterly unique picture.

Do you remember the moment John F Kennedy was shot, or Ronald Reagan, or Robert Kennedy in San Francisco? Those moments are captured in photos that convey horror, confusion, fear. The photograph of Trump giving a clenched-fist salute while mouthing the word “fight!” several times, has the look instead of something from a novel or a movie, carefully directed for maximum impact and effect.

And the really weird thing is that when Trump and Biden, in that awful debate a week or so ago, were discussing trade deficits, Trump said about Biden, with his usual snarl, “We have the largest deficit with China. He gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian candidate. He gets money from China.” 

For sure, Biden is not a Manchurian candidate – but Trump knows what a Manchurian candidate is. So go figure. 

I think it’s fair to say that if the attempt to kill Trump had been successful America would be in a much worse situation this morning than it is now. But it has hugely clouded any attempt to figure out what state the country will be in in November.

The photograph of Trump giving a clenched-fist salute while mouthing the word “fight!” several times, has the look instead of something from a novel or a movie, carefully directed for maximum impact and effect. Photo: AP/Evan Vucci

Two out of every three eligible Americans voted the last time, when Biden won. He got 81 million votes to Trump’s 75. On paper that was a massive victory but that’s not how the system works. In fact Biden’s victory came because he won by small (though real) margins in six states regarded as “battleground” — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

Each of those states is different, and together they account for about 50m people. That’s less than a sixth of the population of the US. Of those 50m, about two-thirds will vote — that’s 33m. 

Forgive the abstruse maths, but they reckon that 80% of those who will vote in the battleground states have their minds made up already. They love Trump or hate him. They’re cast-iron Democrats or Republicans.

'In play' voters

What that means in the end is that at most, seven million of the 330 million American citizens are, as the political strategists say, still “in play”. 

It will be their votes in the end that will determine the outcome of this election. 

So the only question that matters now is: what has been the impact of the last two weeks on those seven million voters?

There is clear evidence that they were troubled by Biden’s apparent decline before the debate, and it’s hard to imagine that they are reassured now. 

We will have to wait and see what effect the attempt on Trump’s life will have on his polling, though it’s reasonable to assume that it will at the very least soften hostility towards him.

Trump and Biden: What now?

But what happens next? What kind of Trump will emerge this week? A kinder, gentler, more vulnerable version of himself? Or will the belief that his survival was ordained by God, now being promulgated all across America, become a triumphalist call for more totalitarianism? Will hate be tamped down, or will it be ramped up?

How he behaves will have an influence. And we’ll see it unfold this week at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. The whole world will be watching.

But Joe Biden’s actions and behaviour will matter too. And sadly, the questions around the sitting President’s decline haven’t gone away. 

The defining images of this campaign are emerging now — a bloodied but defiant Trump, his fist raised against an American flag, or a slack-jawed Joe Biden, struggling to find words at the end of a sentence. If they remain the defining images, this election is over already.

That’s why it remains the case that President Joe Biden, who has done his country some considerable service, still has one final decision to make. If Trump’s coronation in Milwaukee goes as expected this week, Joe Biden has one week left to act. 

If he doesn’t, Trump has the best chance he has ever had to win the presidency. And take his country, and the world, into entirely uncharted territory.