David Brooks had it right: the best pop culture analogy to Trump’s convention speech is Bruce Wayne/Batman. Of course, America isn’t Gotham City, and Trump’s parents weren’t killed by criminals, but to Trump, those are just details.
Assume, for the purposes of argument, that crime in America really is as bad as he says. He still isn’t Batman, for the following reasons:
1. He’s a developer, not a crime fighter. At least Rudy Guiliani has some credibility on this issue.
2. He has no ideas on how to fight crime. Beating your chest and projecting strength is not a crime-fighting strategy.
3. Crime in our country is almost exclusively a state and local issue. What exactly can the President do–call out the military to police the streets of Chicago? That’s a third world “solution,” but, in all honesty, I can imagine a President Trump trying something like it in order to prove how tough he is.