Republican Reality TV

What’s a Presidential primary but an elaborate, high-stakes contest for survival? Not that the attraction to glory-seekers and their screw-ups has been good for the national conversation

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By Joshua Green

December 23, 2011 at 12:56 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

BusinessWeek Cover Image (11_53, portrait)

This article is part of the December 26, 2011 issue of businessweek.

Looking back, it’s easy to pinpoint the moment when American politics went bananas. The date was Feb. 10, and the venue was the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., an early showcase for GOP Presidential aspirants. At the last moment, a new speaker was added to the roster: Donald Trump.

Trump was not known to be a) a Republican or b) a Presidential candidate, so his presence mystified the political press corps. Why would the libertine host of The Celebrity Apprentice want to address a gathering of right-wing social conservatives? His motivation, it turned out, was the same as all the other candidates’: He wanted to steal the show. And Trump did just that, combining his trademark squinty eyed braggadocio with over-the-top denunciations of everyone from Barack Obama to Somali pirates. A political-reality star was born, and soon after, a Republican front-runner.