Roger Ailes, the impresario of reactionary populism and in many ways the ideological godfather of the current Republican nominee for President, grew up in the industrial town of Warren, Ohio, and began his career first as a cue-card holder and then as a producer for “The Mike Douglas Show.” Fascinated by the persuasive properties of television, Ailes studied not only American programming but also the films of Leni Riefenstahl. In January, 1968, when Richard Nixon appeared on the show, with hopes of reviving his national political career, Ailes saw his own path to power. Even then a person of gargantuan self-regard, Ailes informed Nixon that he was in need of a “media adviser.”

“What’s a media adviser?” Nixon asked.

“I am,” Ailes replied.

According to Gabriel Sherman’s deeply reported book “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” Ailes determined that politicians could not risk losing voters in thickets of complication and prescription; they had to speak the language of “kickers”—evocative descriptive phrases—and constantly repeat them. He eventually became Nixon’s consigliere for television.

In August of 1968, Ailes made his way to Miami Beach to watch Nixon complete his return from political Elba and accept the Republican Party’s Presidential nomination. Nixon delivered a speech intended to heighten the fears of the delegates in the arena and of the “forgotten” majority of Americans at home—“the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators,” the “decent people,” who worked and saved and paid their taxes. His speech, pitched largely to white working-class voters anxious about law and order, was meant to make them even more anxious, more resentful, more tribal; his images and phrases presaged not only the rhetoric of Roger Ailes but also the unlikely rise of Donald J. Trump. “We see cities enveloped in smoke and flame,” Nixon said.

We hear sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home. And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish: Did we come all this way for this? Did American boys die in Normandy, and Korea, and in Valley Forge for this?

Ailes went on to advise Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Rudolph Giuliani. Even more important, for the past twenty years Ailes has been the chief of the most influential institution for American conservatism: Fox News. The network, with the financial backing of Rupert Murdoch, was never merely a right-inflected “alternative.” It was from the start a reflection of Ailes—his swaggering personality, his resentments and furies, his misogyny and ethnic prejudices, his quest for personal power. At each stage of his career, he has helped amplify the reactionary memes of the moment: Willie Horton, Whitewater, Travelgate, Monica Lewinsky, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Benghazi, “the war on Christmas.” Ailes also helped weaponize the language of casual racism in the Obama era. When one of his hosts, Glenn Beck, declared on the air that the President had a “deep-seated hatred for white people,” Ailes hardly reprimanded him. “I think he’s right,” Ailes said.

The Ailes-Trump relationship has been turbulent, roiled by the differences of large narcissisms—two immense egos competing for the same ideological berth. Last year, Trump moodily boycotted Ailes’s network, complaining that Megyn Kelly, as a debate moderator, had unreasonably quoted back to him some of his most memorable descriptions of half of humanity: “fat pigs,” “slobs,” “disgusting animals.” Nevertheless, Trump, who admits that he reads almost nothing and gets his information from “the shows,” adopted Fox rhetoric, Fox fury, and Fox standards of truth and falsehood, all with a dollop of Trumpian nativist flair. The Republican Convention in Cleveland last week was like a four-day-long Fox-fest, full of fearmongering, demagoguery, xenophobia, third-rate show biz, pandering, and raw anger. By comparison, Nixon in ’68 was Adlai Stevenson murmuring sonnets at a library luncheon.

For the unconverted, the Convention was a disaster that will not likely broaden Trump’s appeal. Every night seemed to bring a new serving of fresh hell: Melania Trump’s Michelle Obama imitation, Rudy Giuliani’s Father Coughlin imitation, Ted Cruz’s sententious revenge, the chants of “Lock Her Up!,” the buttons reading “Life’s a Bitch, Don’t Vote for One.” The antic quality of those sessions brought to mind less the savvy maneuverings perfected by Ailes than the stateroom scene in “A Night at the Opera,” but without the hard-boiled eggs.

Still, Ailes could take paternal pride in Trump’s acceptance speech. The nominee began with a phrase about “generosity and warmth” (barked, it’s true, as if some kind of threat), but—untethered to statistics or facts, and with his inner volume dialled past eleven—Trump went on to portray a country facing a Clinton legacy of “death, destruction, and weakness,” a nation of lawless immigrants roaming cities and towns, “chaos” in the streets, radical Islamic terrorists opposed by nothing but a pusillanimous government and its popgun military.

Because Trump was reading a script, there were no astonishments—no Mexican “rapists” or blood “coming out of her wherever.” Instead, we learned of an America blanketed in smoke and flame, a vision of fear meted out in countless kickers. And, just as Ailes may have counselled, there was no attempt at building a nuanced case or offering realistic solutions. There was only the assurance that Trump was the panacea. Give him power and everything will change magically and “fast.”

What heightened the drama was that, just hours before, Ailes’s long career had come to an ignominious end, amid multiple accusations of sexual harassment. Rupert Murdoch had long resisted the anti-Ailes protests of his sons, Lachlan and James, who have been embarrassed by Fox News. They believed that they could modify the network’s tone, but their father remained in the thrall of Ailes and of the bounteous profits he seemed to guarantee. Gretchen Carlson’s brave decision to sue Ailes and testify to his lurid, exploitative behavior—and the testimony from other women which followed—made it impossible for Murdoch to keep him around.

The reckoning was long overdue. Ailes’s most ominous political spawn, however, has so far evaded accountability. Ivanka Trump introduced her father by reminding the Convention of the tremendous “sacrifice” he had made to take a leave from his business to run for office. Now, having conquered “the party of Lincoln,” the most dangerous candidate for the White House in generations is hoping to win on a platform of paranoia. We hear sirens in the night. ♦