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With less than a month until the US election, the Listener’s Washington DC columnist Jonathan Kronstadt’s weekly column surveys the weighty, the weird and the wonderful from the Harris vs Trump race for the presidency.
Each US presidential election is as much a cultural as political litmus test for the nation and one frequent cultural outcome is a boost to our national vocabulary.
Recycling slogans is a common practice – Donald Trump stole “Make America Great Again” from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign and both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama made “hope” the watchword of their successful runs – but often a phrase that doesn’t appear on posters and billboards becomes central to the enterprise. For the 2024 election that phrase is “permission structure”.
A permission structure is an emotional and psychological justification for changing deeply held beliefs and/or behaviours while retaining a modicum of pride and integrity – or at least the ability to sleep at night. You could also call it a well-dressed rationalisation.
As the race to November 5 grows ever-more frantic Americans of all political stripes are being offered permission structures to do all kinds of wacky things that normally reside outside their comfort zones.
Moderate Republicans and independents are the prime targets as they are part of neither party’s core, base, chewy nougat centre – however you wish to refer to those whose choice in this election is unshakeable.
Some of the enablers are moderate, if wildly inconsistent Republicans like New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, a Nikki Haley supporter and frequent Trump critic who nevertheless says the Orange Menace has his vote. Sununu called for Trump to suspend his campaign should he be convicted of a crime—check, 32 times over; said Trump “has no chance of winning in November of ‘24″, and that Trump isn’t “even a real Republican”. But hey, if he can say all that and still vote for the guy I guess I’m not technically an asshole if I do it too.
Sununu called for Trump to suspend his campaign should he be convicted of a crime—check, 32 times over.”
Trump’s self-built permission structures are, like the man, simple and crude. In 2016, 2020 and 2024 his rationalisation invitation to black voters giving them room to vote for his crystal-clear racist self has remained, and I quote, “What the hell do you have to lose?”
His speech on January 6 was a “Get Out of Jail Free” card he will make real if he gets elected for anyone who wanted to, say, storm the US Capitol and hang the vice president. He told the neo-fascist, white supremacist Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by”, making racism cool again.
He’s built permission structures for those who like making fun of disabled people, fat people, foreigners of all stripes, non-Christians and probably 8-10 other groups I’m forgetting but who don’t like that vaguely uncomfortable feeling you get when the mean-spirited fun is done.
On the Democratic side, touting a coalition that spans the political spectrum from Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney would, you’d think, be a big enough tent for all but the maxi-Maga crowd.
But people like engraved, personal invitations and so Cheney’s daughter Liz – the most eloquent and convincing now-never-Trumper of all – has been out campaigning, building a permission structure for conservatives who think Trump is icky but aren’t yet sure they’re okay with a half-black, half-South Asian, liberal woman and her Jewish husband sleeping in the President’s Bedroom.
Picking Tim Walz, America’s favourite wacky uncle, as her VP gives middle-aged, goofy white guys permission to cast blue ballots, and in a tactical shift President Obama went out and told black men in no uncertain terms to get over whatever reluctance they had to vote for a woman and, as Spike Lee might say, do the right thing.
What Obama didn’t say, but was implicit, was if they didn’t vote for Kamala he would tell their mothers – black women who were/are/will be critical to the Democratic Party’s past, present, and future – and none of them want that.
What you hear most often these days about the election is that it’s going to be crazy close and so every swing-state vote that can be dragged from either the middle or other side of the political spectrum is priceless.
And so the permission structures will grow exponentially by the day and whichever candidate can offer the biggest, warmest shelter may well get to stand out in the cold and be sworn in on January 20, 2025.
