With Barack Obama provoking yawns, to vote for Donald Trump is to take a stand against boredom

Usborne in the USA: If voters like the billionaire’s burble, it's because they are sick of politicians who weigh their every word

Barack Obama's passionate and exciting rhetoric has trailed off (Getty)

Eight years ago, we were discovering just how thrilling an orator the US Senator Barack Obama could be. Pitted against Hillary Clinton in the primaries and then John McCain (and Sarah Palin) in the general election, he was JFK and MLK melded into one. From Martin Luther King Jr he borrowed the phrase the “fierce urgency of now”. His delivery of it was as compelling as the message itself.

What happened? The last time I recall being moved by the President was in early 2011 when he spoke in Tucson, Arizona, at a service for six people killed in the mass shooting that also very nearly took the life of the former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Since then his special voice has trailed off.

It’s not that I don’t understand or agree with much of what he says. But the pleasure of listening to him has gone.

If Donald Trump actually wins not just the Republican nomination but the general election too and proceeds to turn the White House into the Gold House – he has a record of doing this to trophy buildings he acquires – I will blame Obama for it, and his slide from inspirational to snooze-inducing.

Take his Oval Office address a couple of Sundays ago in the wake of another mass shooting, in San Bernardino. The country was deeply anxious. Days earlier the US Senate had rejected an effort to bar those on anti-terror watch lists from legally buying guns. Yet, Obama remained passionless. The only mercy was that his prime-time slot was of limited length. He can be long-winded as well as tedious.

There is no understating the strength of Trump enjoys less than six weeks away from the Iowa caucuses. A new CNN poll gave him 39 per cent among registered Republican and Republican-leaning voters nationally. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was next, but far behind at 18 per cent.

If Trump holds steady – as he has for six months now – then something profound and transformational will surely be afoot for United States politics. The Republican Party is threatened with coming apart or at least splitting into two. Not since Barry Goldwater, a segregationist, snatched the party’s nomination in 1964 has it faced such internal terror. Goldwater, though, was later trounced by Lyndon Johnson.

In so far as they are not entirely befuddled, the pundits will have us believe that all this is happening because voters are simply angry. That may be part of it. But it surely is also because they are bored. They want to be excited like they were in 2008. (Well, a lot of them anyway.) They look at Washington today and their eyelids drop. Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, Barack Obama. The new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, growing a beard appears to count as hot news these days.

When Trump jumped into this race in June, the smart Republican money was on Jeb Bush, the former Governor of Florida. Trump has marketing genius in his DNA and figured out then what we have all come to understand now. How was Jeb Bush ever going to energise anyone? Another Bush, really? And a Bush, moreover, bereft of the impish charm that his former President brother had.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the crowd during a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Reuters)

We hardly need to explore why Trump is not boring. He says things no other sensible politician would. You know his targets: female Fox TV anchors, illegal Mexican immigrants and Muslims knocking on America’s door. And now you’ve learnt the etymology of the word schlong. What’s interesting now is to figure out whether voters, having wound up the wrecking ball, are really going to let it go.

If they do and Trump gets nominated, let’s consider for a moment the widely held assumption that Ms Clinton, if she is the Democratic nominee, would destroy him in the general election. Is that so? Might she not fall into precisely the same yawn-hole that Bush has?

If voters like Trump for his stream-of-consciousness burble, it’s surely also because they are sick of politicians who weigh their every word. For Hillary, I smell trouble. Spontaneity is not her second name. And her third name is Clinton. Don’t you see? Basta Bush and Clinton. Give us someone new, someone a bit off the wall.

So listen up for a second. Results are just in from the campus of Western Illinois University where every four years students hold a mock presidential election 12 months ahead of the actual thing. In more than 40 years of doing this, the university has correctly predicted the winner of the White House on the real election day every time; not once have they erred. So who did they pick this time? Bernie Sanders, that’s who. He, the self-declared socialist Senator from Vermont who, with anti-Wall Street rants, has drawn the biggest crowd of any candidate of either party so far, Trump included.

If it is years of being bored rigid by sclerotic institutions in Washington and by a President who forgot somewhere down the line that he is not meant to lecture but to uplift that is animating American voters today, then this is how things might yet pan out once the primary and caucus voting actually begins.

Stepping into the general election ring sometime soon: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Bouffant vs White Haystack. That would be one hell of a boxing card, wouldn’t it? If it’s entertainment you’re after.