New Jersey Governor Chris Christie leaves after speaking on the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland on July 19, 2016.JIM WATSON/AFP / Getty Images
It looked like a scene in a hack movie set in a dystopian future, where mob rule passes for justice.
"Let's do somethin' fun tonight!" the man who could be the attorney-general of the United States in a half-year's time said, by way of introduction to a mock trial of the rival party's presidential candidate. Over and over, Chris Christie would briefly set out a charge against Hillary Clinton, indicting her for everything from her reckless e-mail habits to murders by Boko Haram. Then he would ask his fired-up audience to render a verdict: "Guilty or not guilty?"
And as the crowd did him one better, chants of "Lock her up!" echoing before him, Mr. Christie proved the one politician on the second night of the Republican National Convention who gave his people what they wanted: an outlet for their anger.
Donald J. Trump was trying to sell a few things on Tuesday evening, some of them reasonably standard for someone who had just been officially nominated as his party's standard-bearer. His ability to create jobs was theoretically the evening's theme; appearances by Republican leaders signalled an attempt at unity; young women, a challenging demographic for the Republicans at the best of times, testified to his support for their professional efforts; his kids were there to present him as a loving and quasi-relatable family man.
That most of this fell flat, speakers competing with audible chatter from a less-than-full Cleveland basketball arena, can partly be blamed on the whole thing being decidedly half-assed. There really was no coherent economic message, just a few people (most notably UFC boss Dana White) testifying that Mr. Trump had supported their entrepreneurialism. Most of the party luminaries, the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and a group of freshman senators, could barely bring themselves to utter Mr. Trump's name. If you arrived or tuned in hoping for the sort of celebrity wattage Mr. Trump has previously hyped, you had to settle for the program culminating in a former soap actress claiming that trade deals have made it harder for her to reinvent herself as an avocado farmer.
But much of the half-assedness can be chalked up to there being little remaining market, this year, for what would normally be sold at a Republican convention. The people who want that, who want to know their party is united around a coherent vision consistent with the principles for which they have fought in past campaigns, presumably accounted for most of the empty seats; if they were watching on TV it must have been through their fingers.
The ones who stuck around the arena waiting for something to cheer about, and the millions of others across their country who helped Mr. Trump stage a hostile takeover of a party to which he has minimal commitment, have bought into something else. What that is, how much of it is racist or chauvinistic or otherwise mean-spirited and how much is rooted in legitimate grievance about the global economy failing to provide for them, is subject to endless interpretation and debate. But nobody who has observed it can doubt that it is something raw, harnessed against elites perceived to be indifferent if not outright conspiratorial toward Americans watching the world pass them by.
Try to soft-sell it, frame it in anything but the bluntest terms, and it won't work. "I weep for the fabric of my state," West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito said in a prime Tuesday-evening slot, about what Democrats have allegedly done to the coal industry. It was right on message, in terms of substance, but it was too polite to stoke much of anything.
Mr. Trump's son, Donald Jr., seemed to get it a little more. He was quickly praised by pundits for poise that reflected well on his father, and for articulating conservative principles more coherently than the elder Mr. Trump ever does. But eschewing the usual soft-touch stuff usually offered by candidates' offspring with a few hyperbolic attack lines his dad could have said – including that Ms. Clinton would be the first U.S. president unable to pass a background check, and that she is less concerned with Americans' safety than kowtowing to countries that "would wipe America off the face of this Earth" – got Donald Jr. a rise from the crowd.
It was Mr. Christie's performance, though, that felt most of a piece with what this campaign has been.
The New Jersey Governor's act may not have played well with broader audiences that could make or break Mr. Trump's bid for the White House, but as much as he needs votes, Mr. Trump feeds off of the emotions of adoring crowds. Watching from afar on Tuesday evening, his own video greeting uncharacteristically polite, it could not have been lost on the nominee what earned the kind of reaction he craves.