The curdling and compounding effect upon fear and anger by terror and violence is real. The terrorist attack in Nice on July 14 was happening as I was in Boston reassuring a group of worried Hispanic/Latino professionals that I cannot see any way that Donald Trump can win and Hillary Clinton lose the election. I still believe it, yet the attack in Nice is precisely the unknown factor that can recast the race for President.
Few can resist the line Trump again immediately parroted after the horror in Nice once again overwhelmed the entire media and political landscape. We must, Trump said, close the borders and ban Muslims. To be sure, there is reason to re-enforce strategies and defenses against those who would harm us. But Trump means to embark on a national policy of exclusion of any person or group that to him represents the collective fear that produces anger at a national level – and that can win an election he has no business winning.
I have thought long and hard about the probability of Trump getting elected. I have believed from the very beginning — after it was apparent that the Republicans were going to nominate him — that he could not win a general election. I have believed also that the election would not be close. But the terror in Nice, to be blunt, comes at a fortuitous time for Trump as Republican delegates gather in Cleveland.
At the GOP convention that starts Monday, he will have the nation’s attention – a nation truly worried about the future at its most basic level. There, of course, speaker after speaker will rant without exhaust about the presumed answers to the spreading threat of terror. The wrong answers. But the nation needs to hear them in order to begin processing them in real time. And so, to be blunt again, the attack comes at a fortuitous time for Hillary Clinton, too.
The first reaction will help Trump. Yet Nice gives her, the more competent of the two candidates, time to display her strengths and, as important, gives the nation time to digest the latest terror.
An example of the advantage that time gives Clinton is the compressed period she has to react to Trump’s selection of a running mate. Given the upsurge in public sentiment in favor of Trump as a result of Nice, Clinton now has time, indeed, to pursue the idea that she might select retired admiral James Stavridis as her vice presidential nominee.
His selection would underscore her strengths and signal the nation that she will wage the war against terror that Trump only knows to declare.
In pure political terms, Trump’s timing in picking Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, boxed him into a situation that should now cause Trump’s advisors to try to convince him to retract his offer to Pence. If he does pull back his offer and instead reacts instantly by choosing a running mate with military experience, he might get away with it, but the nation will see how without planning and thought he is. Clinton’s campaign had started vetting Stavridis weeks ago by comparison.
In a presidential campaign as in life, time is of the essence.
Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.