FAR FROM HEAVEN

Trumpworld, reimagined as one of Hieronymus Bosch’s “Hell” paintings. Artwork by Glenn Palmer-Smith.

On May 19, 1962, at an event at Madison Square Garden celebrating John F. Kennedy, about to turn 45, Marilyn Monroe stepped onstage to sing. Wearing a dress that matched exactly the color of her skin, a sort of glowing, gleaming pale, and every bit as tight—a dress, in other words, that took off her clothes—she made “Happy Birthday” sound like the lewdest of suggestions, an invitation to sin no mortal man could resist. In that moment, it became clear that, even if the cake hadn’t yet been served, our president had already let our movie star blow out his candle. Pop culture had officially unofficially seduced politics.

Which is why Donald J. Trump is not America’s first pop-culture president. There was Kennedy, of course, but also Reagan, Clinton, Obama. In fact, as far as the past 50-plus years go, Trump’s almost as much the rule as the exception, the same ol’, same ol’, more or less. It’s the pop culture that’s changed.

WATCH: Donald Trump Thinks Donald Trump Is the Man

When a movie version of his life story was proposed, Kennedy had one actor in mind to play him: Cary Grant. Grant, the man-about-town of his time and ours, the savoir fairest of them all, was the creation of Archibald Leach, from the slums of Bristol, England. It’s never been matched. Acknowledging the potency of the fantasy he’d conjured, his blessing but also his curse, he said, “Even I want to be Cary Grant.” Meaning he wasn’t. Meaning nobody could be.

Yet that’s precisely who Barack Obama is. It’s the style: an ultra-stylish style that doesn’t involve primping or fuss. It’s the manner, too: civilized, self-aware, masculine, though with a faint hint of ambiguity. Critic Pauline Kael called Grant “the most publicly seduced male the world has known.” Like Grant, Obama is a love object. Not passive—reticent, withheld. He doesn’t chase the girl, but he gets her all right. And he gets her by getting her to go after him. Why, we (yes, we’re the girls in this scenario) practically threw our votes his way.

Trump’s erotic stratagem was different but no less effective, and embodied in his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” The first time I heard it my reaction was somewhere between hostility and dismissal. What is this “again” shit?, I wondered. We’re great now, the richest, freest, most powerful country on the planet. It’s just more of his dark, divisive noise, I concluded. And it is. But it’s something else too, as I realized during a conversation with Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, a pro and very smart and no fan of Trump’s. He referred to the slogan as “brilliant.” I thought about it some more, and my thoughts about it began to change. Brilliant I won’t grant. But it does have a low cunning that might be better than brilliant.

THE 2016 ELECTION WASN’T HILLARY VS. TRUMP. IT WAS MOVIE STAR VS. REALITY.

Here’s what Make America Great Again is the equivalent of: a guy, a little long in the tooth, a little broad in the beam (Trump, let’s say), spots a sensational-looking girl, a girl who’s so far out of his league it’s a joke (America, let’s say). Instead of complimenting her on her loveliness, he informs her that she needs a nose job, a tit job, braces, and to lose 10 pounds. The girl is about to tell him off, really let him have it, except something stops her. It’s a thought, a devastating one, that maybe he’s right, that maybe it’s everybody else who’s shining her on and he’s actually leveling with her. And just like that, in a single moment, she’s his. At least until she wises up, and that could take a while.