Between Christie and Cruz I always thought it was Christie who had the balls, Cruz being more of a Machiavellian calculating weasel. It’s amazing what a few days of GOP convention can do to my perceptions. I was totally wrong. Christie proved to have neither the balls nor the winning vision, selling his soul to Trump but getting nothing for it. Cruz, in addition to playing a smart, long game has also demonstrated an impressive chutzpah yesterday at the convention, in front of increasingly hostile crowd, when he refused to endorse Trump. He clearly positions himself for 2020 and I can’t say that he won’t have an advantage during the inevitable finger-pointing after Trump’s spectacular crash and burn.

Let me dwell a bit longer on the topic. Over the course of the last decades, that perhaps started with Bush II theatrical landing on an aircraft carrier in 2003, the displays of power, mostly on the right, have devolved into displays of unearned and misplaced masculinity. The less time a person has spent in or near the military or a physically dangerous situation, the more he will want to prove to a given audience his macho credentials. Thus modern day American understanding of toughness has two key elements, neither of which has anything to do with actual courage: it’s belligerence rooted in insecurity. To even further degrade the actual meaning of courage, that belligerence is not directed at someone who can respond in kind, but to a mere female political opponent, delivered to an already agreeable, and frenzy-whipped crowd. “Guilty or not guilty?” chanted Christie from RNC stage, in a mock (but in reality, real) witch trial of Hillary. “Guilty!” the crowd roared back, stroking Christie’s fantasy of being a righteous, brave warrior.

Indeed, even Trump, whose life quest seem to be about squashing people’s doubts about his fortune, victories – business or personal, his virility and his toughness, generally avoids situations, whether strategically or out of fear, where he can face an unfriendly audience. He wants to be friends with all the tough guys around the world and he veils it in the rhetoric of ‘making deals.’ The business world, and specifically the dog eat dog New York commercial real estate world, where Trump claims to have domineered, is a metaphorical war zone, littered with corpses of developers and builders. Trump has been killed there a long time ago and the only franchise that has kept his name in lights is, well, his name that he lent to new construction – a nice racket that, due to recent events, might soon come to an end. Trump is neither courageous, nor good at making deals, unless filing for a strategic bankruptcy or stiffing his contractors counts, in his world, as a ‘good deal.’ I imagine him negotiating the status of the Baltic States with Putin – itself an unimaginable scenario just a few months ago, before the American politics has been so distorted by his candidacy. The fact that, in his mind, this is even up to a negotiation, speaks of his inability to perceive of a situation that has no ground for deal-making, like, for example, when your daughter is harassed by a bully. In that scenario, that is becoming less and less hypothetical, the poor Baltic States will be a mere token for Trump’s thoughtless personal brand posturing. Trump’s tactic has never been to put himself on the spot, to risk his own money; it is Trump’s partners, the others, that traditionally have the exposure. Should he, God forbid, become President, his bag of tricks that worked so well for him in reality TV – a squint in the eye, a catch phrase, a limited roster of over-recycled adjectives (Amazing! Unbelievable! Tremendous!) – will fail to impress the more serious, less gullible counterparties. And the way out of the mess will be paid, like always, by someone else, a third party.