Quote of the Day (Michael Kinsley, on Washington-Style ‘Branding’ and ‘Rebranding’)

“ ‘Branding’ as a general term for the way you present yourself to the world has become a popular usage. It implies that, if people see you for what you really are, that’s a failure on your part. Success is when people see you as what you wish you were. Or as what you need to be, or seem to be, or need to seem to be, to suit the exigencies of the moment. Of course Washington and the media didn't invent branding or rebranding. The term is imported from the commercial world. [In Washington], rebranding itself is widely tolerated, but the word ‘rebranding’ is still something a politician would not choose to have attached to his name. Bad for the brand.”— American political commentator and editor Michael Kinsley, “How Top Politicians Rebrand Themselves,” Vanity Fair, June 2014

Kinsley was correct: The notion of branding did indeed derive from the commercial world, and there were portions even there where it took a while to take root. (It was considered quite novel three decades ago when I worked for a not-for-profit organization that served the real estate industry when several developers who had just gone public began to brand their properties in an effort to increase their value.)

In mid-2014, Kinsley's peg to consider this idea was Eric Cantor, a House Majority Whip running into turbulence in his campaign to retain his Congressional seat. The Republican congressman’s attempts to brand his primary challenger a liberal—and to soften the views of constituents who felt he himself had become arrogant and was taking them for granted—both failed, in what was called one of the most stunning electoral upsets in memory.

Wouldn’t you know that it took someone from the “commercial world" to show Capitol Hill grandees the right way to “brand.” A journalist friend of mine recounted how, during an interview with Donald Trump, the then-New York developer, asked for how he had become so successful, responded, “It’s the Trump brand.” That phrase ended up repeated so often in the interview, my friend said, that he was sick of it by the time the talk was over.

Much to the astonishment of local journalists who had been following Trump’s career from its early days, he followed the path to the White House through the creation of a spurious “brand” on his “reality” show The Apprentice: a businessman so phenomenally rich that he would never be tempted to steal or grift.

Little could these non-New York voters have imagined that, once re-elected to the White House, Trump would try to rebrand several capital institutions after himself. This renaming and construction phase is so manic that he is beginning to resemble some of the more debauched, egocentric Roman emperors.

Simultaneously, Trump began to target GOP candidates, large and small, as part of his brand. What voters face now, like it or not, is an organization committed not to conservative principles as such, but to Trump.

The question that scares the GOP now, a couple of weeks before the midterm elections, is whether the President has pushed his branding campaign too aggressively: too fast, and on too many fronts.

They wonder if too many of these races have become unnecessary toss-ups, with voters resembling a work colleague of mine who said he was delighted that a property of one developer had added that company’s moniker to its own: “Great! Now I’ll know to avoid it from now on.”

Now eighty years old, Trump should not by rights be able to “rebrand” himself to skeptical voters. But like some combination of Rasputin and Count Dracula, he’s come back from the dead (or undead) too many times before to be counted out now. Democrats would be making a colossal mistake if they become overconfident of their chances.