President Trump’s Show Has Been Canceled

So too with Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign, which often seemed like a grittier reboot of the 2016 version. In the White House as on NBC, the solution to any problem had to be more of him. The pro-wrestling heel turns — barking his way through the first debate, brazenly undermining the voting process — were louder and less subtle.

Each big twist had to outdo last season’s. The monster rallies came back, this time with the apocalyptic frisson of defying, or denying, the prospect of death in a pandemic. When he himself got Covid, as the season’s writers had been foreshadowing all along, he timed his flights to and from the hospital for the network evening news.

The president’s media omnipresence may have made some difference; he increased his turnout in the end, however many votes it also motivated against him. As Election Day neared, he openly tried to cast his constant schedule of rallies and gaggles and events as proof of his strength. But it often felt like a test of ours.

One-man show vs. ensemble drama

In the closing days of the campaign, Mr. Trump often said that he couldn’t imagine losing to the likes of Mr. Biden. That is, he couldn’t fathom people choosing the political equivalent of PBS — a Trump adviser likened Mr. Biden to Fred Rogers, apparently considering that an insult — when they got so much razzmatazz from the president.

I’ll admit, as somebody who writes about TV and politics, that I was skeptical, too. In the television era, candidates who make themselves the protagonists of their elections — Reagan, Obama, Bill Clinton — usually win. To beat President TV, I assumed, you had to counterprogram him, not just offer to turn the set off.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/arts/television/trump-biden-election.html