Who is to Trump what Obama was to Romney?

“In the run-up to the 2008 election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney advanced an assault on Barack Obama’s healthcare coverage program, which the former derisively labeled ‘Obamacare’. Eighteen days before the election, Obama advanced a rhetorical counter-offensive that effectively reframed the whole parameters of the discussion. Invoking the presumable medical condition of ‘Romnesia’, Obama cited, in the most simplistic and nonchalant way, all of Romney’s policy flip-flops: ‘Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said the last year […] We’ve gotta name this condition that he’s going through. I think it’s called Romnesia […] I’m not a medical doctor, but I do wanna go over some of the symptoms with ya, because I wanna make sure nobody else catches it’. He proceeds:

If you say you’re for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you’d sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia […] If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose but you standup in a primary debate and said that you’d be delighted to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases, man, you’ve definitely got Romnesia. . . .

“Extending the rhetorical logic to a series of other examples, Obama reached his rhetorical apex by reclaiming the term ‘Obamacare’ in the most effective way possible, while shattering Romney’s offensive without making any factual references to his healthcare coverage program: ‘And if you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you’ve made over the six years you’ve been running for president, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions!’ (Obama, 2008). Irrespective of whether one is in agreement or not with Obama’s policies, one cannot deny his mastery of political rhetoric, which to a considerable extent facilitated his (out of nowhere) rise to power.”

Michaelangelo Anastasiou, slightly edited and accessed online on September 9 2025 at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01914537251374951.