I t is often said there is a woman, sometimes two, behind every successful man. The adage is once again confirmed so loudly that the whole world can hear it by the landslide and stunning victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election. These women have played such a vital role in Trump’s success that the President-elect has named one – campaign chief Susie Wiles – as his White House chief of staff. It is such a post that will catapult the most publicity-shy person such as Wiles into one of the most visible and vocal government officials and policymakers in the world.
Wiles is Trump’s first appointment since winning the election and she is set to run day-to-day operations at the White House. It is not without reason that Trump has chosen her for the vital position. She has been his chief campaign strategist who worked so hard to minimise his weaknesses and help control his worst impulses not by chiding him or lecturing, but by earning his respect and showing him that he would gain more by following her advice than flouting it. At one point late in the campaign, when Trump gave a widely criticised speech in Pennsylvania in which he strayed from his talking points and suggested he would not mind the media being shot, Wiles came out to stare at him silently. But more importantly, she chalked out the blueprint for getting Trump the most crucial votes of Latinos, middle-class workers and to some extent Black men that helped him eventually get a clean sweep. This is something that even the most diehard Trump supporter could not imagine possible. In the process, the Republican Party itself got transformed by winning over categories of the electorate hitherto loyal to the Democratic Party. This development was particularly notable among Hispanic voters and the working class. The brain behind this winning formula is Wiles. In eight years – through his first term in the White House and three presidential election campaigns – Trump, the former businessman, has finally succeeded in enlisting the support of a significant proportion of the American middle class after the blue-collar workers of 2016 were drawn to him for his efforts to promote protectionism.
In keeping with the USA’s changing demographics, Trump’s campaign team helped him put together a multi-ethnic Republican coalition capable of attracting those at the lower end of the social scale. Of course Wiles did not always succeed in stopping Trump from going off-script, but she kept damaging media leaks, that had dogged his first presidency, to a relative minimum, launched a bold and successful strategy to get the support of a sizable number of previously pro-Blue voters and led Trump to a decisive win. At the end, it will be unfair not to mention the second woman — Vice President Kamala Harris — as being the other woman responsible for the success of Trump.
On hindsight, it seems Harris was completely clueless about ground realities. Trump’s sweep is a clear indication of how far removed the Dems had become to be unable to gauge the general feeling of the average American. Harris was unable to decide where and what she stood for. Maybe her support for immigrants and gender mauling policies showed her inner self as did her guffawing laughter that clinched the deal against her.