White Voter Support for Trump
Two frameworks are useful in trying to explain the surprising 2016 election, and even the surprising nomination, of Donald Trump. One framework focuses on the macro level, covering the larger circumstances and conditions that permitted if not facilitated Trump’s election. The other framework focuses on the micro level, on the specific variables that resulted in Trump’s election. One can justly see Trump’s election as a perfect storm, a combination of many things that permitted his razor edge victory, about 70,000 votes total in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
American voters have gone to the polls five times in this young century to elect a president.… Read the rest
Trump’s Rhetorical Power
I found a recent paper by Timothy Haverda and Jeffery Halley (H&H) helpful in trying to understand Trump’s nomination and election. More implicitly, it may also help understand Trump’s base of support.
H&H base their paper on Theodor Adorno’s (1903 – 1969) analysis of a 1930s preacher in California, Martin Luther Thomas.* Based on Thomas’ radio addresses, Adorno identified 33 rhetorical devices that characterized Thomas’s speeches. The paper uses three of these devices (1) lone wolf, (2) movement, and (3) exactitude of error to analyze 16 Trump speeches. The speeches cover June 16, 2015 (Trump’s presidential announcement speech) to January 2017 (Trump’s Inaugural Address).… Read the rest
The 2016 Election through a Leadership Theory Lens
Donna Ladkin, an American citizen, currently teaches at the Graduate School of Management at Plymouth University in Plymouth, United Kingdom. I find her leadership theory, perhaps best described as a framework for analyzing leadership, very useful. She is one of my favorite leadership scholars because of the way her “leadership moment” sees leadership. This post focuses on a recently published article entitled “How did that happen? Making sense of the 2016 US presidential election through the lens of the ‘leadership moment.'”
The leadership moment framework
Ladkin sees leadership as a dynamic and lived experience, not a set of traits or behavior.… Read the rest
A Follower-Centric Approach to Trump’s Election
To the extent that leadership scholars examine Trump as a leader, followers play a significant role in studying Trump and leadership. This post continues that theme. Carsten, Bligh, Kohles, and Wing-Yan Lau analyze how Trump’s rhetoric may have attracted followers with certain characteristics.
Trump’s rhetoric and behavior leading up to his election bewildered many people. Dictionary.com added the phrase “fake news” into its lexicon for the first time largely based on Trump’s usage of that term. Some see in Trump’s election the full-blown advent of the “post-truth era.” Truth blurs into falsity and vice-versa in this era. Emotions and one’s personal beliefs become more important than hard facts.… Read the rest
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