 [NYPOST] In retrospect, I can see that the sources of error lay within me. Trump is one of a kind and escaped my ready-made categories. He's also a mixture of popular culture and personal weirdness — the hair, the hand gestures, the dancing — which everything in my background told me was not to be taken seriously.
Let me offer a significant example: political oratory. My models of eloquence in political speech are Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan. When, on YouTube or television, their voices speak to me from beyond the grave, my heart beats faster and I'm overcome with sadness that nobody today delivers such an effect.
Trump's rhetoric leaves me cold. When he spoke of ''American carnage'' in his first inaugural address, I had no idea what he was talking about. When he proclaimed a ''golden age'' to coincide with his second presidency, it sounded like empty bragging.
How he deals with important issues is perplexing to me. He berates adversaries, high and low, in a manner that seems petty and often childish. His style of talking, which he calls ''the weave,'' spins around and around and seldom arrives at its destination.
All this could be interpreted as a criticism of Trump, but I intend it rather as a partial explanation of why I failed to obtain an accurate picture of the man. Trump, after all, is a performer who carried a trivial reality TV show to popularity for more than a decade — he well knows how to communicate with the American public. And I get the humor.
Watching Trump be Trump can be vastly entertaining; there's no predicting what he will say next.
The key to the Trump rhetoric may be found in that unique ritual — part county fair, part revival meeting — known as the ''Trump rally.''
What becomes evident from viewing these events on TV is that Trump loves the adoration of the crowd. But more than this, he loves the crowd itself, the proximity to ordinary people.
He may be the only American politician who currently displays, and knows how to convey, a visceral affection for voters. He's clearly energized in their presence, to the extent that he never wants the show to end. Just like some operatic arias offer an excuse for the diva to flaunt her vocal skills, the meanderings of the weave are Trump's pretext for keeping himself in front of his audience.
That's his moment of transcendence.
The style, with its comical insults, first-person informality, and wandering attention span, fits perfectly into the modalities of digital communication. This isn't by design. It's just the way he talks, the first of many coincidences favoring him with which we must come to terms. Trump is a boomer, who, online, sounds like a zoomer.
He's a face-to-face personality transmuted, almost physically, into the virtual realm. He was the Beethoven of Twitter during his first presidency, the loudest voice amid the uproar of what Jonathan Haidt has called the digital Tower of Babel.
Martin Gurri is a former CIA analyst and the author of “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.” From City Journal.
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