By virtually any measure, Episode Two of the hot new series, “The G.O.P. Debates,” was won last night by CNN, which amassed 22.9 million viewers—a mere shade below the 24 million who tuned in to watch the first installment on Fox News. Even the so-called undercard debate, featuring warm-up acts Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham, notched 6 million. For some perspective, that’s about 12 times the audience that host Jake Tapper earned during a ratings swell earlier this year.
The second biggest winner was Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. A veteran of infamous Silicon Valley Game of Thrones–style machinations, Fiorina’s success Wednesday evening laid in her ability to thwart her enemy without appearing to even try. Fiorina speaks with a rare mixture of authority and humility, along with an ample dose of grace. Her wry rejoinder to Trumps’s infamous “that face” comment in Rolling Stone amplified The Donald’s otherwise underwhelming and fumbly performance, and artfully introduced a news cycle focused on his potential (and, frankly, overdue) self-immolation. Fiorina is, at least for now, the G.O.P.’s “outsider” of choice.
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It is, of course, a calculated strategic position. For nearly an entire generation, the Republican Party has nominated establishment candidates who have portrayed the deepest shades of their conservatism in the primaries before drifting towards the center during the general election. This cycle, however, that playbook seems vulnerable. The G.O.P. is undergoing its own form of disruption as it grapples with a new normal that includes gay marriage, legalized weed, and, of course, Obamacare. Its difficulty in coming to terms with this reality, on some level, is manifested in its difficulty in coming to terms with a candidate. It’s a good time, in other words, for an outsider.
These subjects may dominate the primary, but the general election is likely to coalesce around, among other existential issues, economic inequality. We are, after all, living in essentially uncharted fiscal times. Our optimistic vision of American life was formed during an extraordinary period from the turn of the 20th century to the late 70s, when each generation could reasonably expect to have a better life than their parents. Even the generation that came of age during the Depression eventually recouped their setbacks.
But, as Adam Davidson has elegantly noted, the last 40 years have ushered in the exact opposite. The bottom 80 percent of U.S. families have seen their share of the country’s income fall while the top 20 percent have pulled away. The top 1 percent, of course, have simply killed it. Chris Christie foreshadowed this issue, last evening, when he chastised Trump and Fiorina for a squabble about their own successes. “For the 55-year-old construction worker who doesn’t have a job, who doesn’t have money to fund his child’s education, I gotta tell you the truth,” the New Jersey governor said. “They could care less about your careers. They care about theirs.”
Fiorina had an extraordinary business career in which she rose from a secretary to a C.E.O. Yet she may face some difficulty baking this Horatio Alger narrative into her outsider persona. Fiorina got a pass last night when Trump attacked her for her performance at HP, where she was eventually fired. A better question would have focused on what happened after Fiorina’s departure. At a time of unprecedented inequality, when C.E.O.s can make roughly 300 times as much as their employees, will Americans buy a maverick candidate who received a $21 million golden parachute? Presumably opposition researchers will wonder the same thing. (Needless to say, it’s a bit difficult for a blowhard billionaire to make that argument.)
These days, it’s essentially a given that most people running for president are either already rich or trying to become so. But at least candidates like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush never tried to position themselves as outsiders. As the debate road show continues, and as Trump appears to downshift gears, that will remain the challenge for Fiorina.
