It certainly isn’t their policy positions. But I think they do have something very compelling in common. One way to explain it is to characterize what their opponents are doing.
Painting by number
Hillary and Jeb are engaged in “paint by number.” Remember this activity? You were given a drawing with spaces containing little numbers, and you would fill in the numbered areas with the paints that had the corresponding number. Your only challenge was to stay within the lines. The result is a simulacrum of a painting. Here’s an example:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22paint+by+number%22&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CGIQ7AlqFQoTCPi5kMqsrscCFQhJkgodkBMBNA&biw=1280&bih=689#imgrc=NIDdOR_tpkxRGM%3A
It’s not a horrible thing to look at, but it is a bit sad. Actually, more than a bit.
And that is what Jeb and Hillary are doing, painting by number. They find out, from polling and focus groups and campaign strategists, what people want to hear or how best to phrase their own views, and then offer us a sad portrait of themselves.
Actual leaders
But Trump and Bernie are actual leaders. They actually say what they think. And that is why they are so popular at the moment, because the American public wants leaders, and wants them desperately.
The last time we saw this phenomenon was in 1992, when George H.W. Bush, a “paint by number” politician and Bill Clinton, probably the best paint by number guy EVER, were opposed by Ross Perot. Perot was a feisty rich guy who said what he thought, which was often a bit odd and always caustic, yet he got lots of support, because we want actual leaders who tell us what they really think, not what they think we want to hear. At the time, I said that the American people were so thirty for leadership that they would drink battery acid!
Interestingly, sometime during the campaign, Perot’s “serious people” suggested to him that he might actually win! And so he started hemming and hawing, giving the kind of “no answer answer” that sounds so familiar to us all. And his popularity plummeted. Yet, he still got almost 19% of the popular vote.
Far from paint by number mediocrity, Trump is like a Jackson Pollack manqué, throwing splotches of paint all over the place, leaving a mess. But it is an original mess, a mess he appears to be authentic about, “his mess.”
And Bernie is saying what he really thinks, with force and commitment. He may not be painting a masterpiece, but the result is something that comes from his head AND his heart, and people can hear that.
Trying to lead
So much of the beltway media, horribly removed from the average American, have been trying to make sense of Trump and Sanders by attempting to identify that portion of the Republican and Democratic coalitions to which they are appealing. Whose numbers, they wonder, are they painting?
But I believe their appeal is much more basic. They are painting their own pictures, not bothering to consult with “serious people” or pollsters. They are trying to lead.
By the way, isn’t this also why such oddities as Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina are getting their 15 minutes now? They, too, sound like they are offering an honest picture.
Could Hillary and Jeb learn this and actually become the leaders they say that they are? I think not. Both have spent too much time learning to exquisitely paint by numbers, and would have no idea of what to do with a blank canvas.
If history repeats itself, Jeb and Hillary will become the candidates, and one of them will become President. Of course, I hope that is Hillary. But I would really prefer to support someone with a flair for painting, someone with an authentic picture to offer us, someone, like Bernie, who will lead by telling us what they really believe, and then let us decide to follow them.
That is the lesson that the political class could learn from Trump’s and Sanders’ successes. But, instead, they are too busy trying to figure out if we want a number 5 on the tree trunk or a number 6.
Sigh.
