Presidential Hubris

One More Time – or You’re Fired

David Owen – one of the original Gang of Four - writes on 28 October that “Trump floats above us all on a double bubble of narcissism and hubris.”

Nothing like a bit of understatement!

David examines the President’s fitness for office. Speculation was that Trump suffers from NPD (narcissistic personality disorder). He quotes Allen Francis, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke University who commented that the President “May be a world class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill.”

It is for the voters, of course, to make the distinction – which to me seems like saying “this guy ain’t wrapped too tight, but he’s not exactly nuts!” A great comfort. One wonders what you have to do to become unable to discharge the office?

What should be a strength for the President, Owen sees as a difficulty. He maintains that Trump the President has set out to fulfil the promises that Trump the candidate made. He goes on, “most Presidents deliberately change in office. Trump has not (I suspect the voters may see this as a strength). Could this be akin to Mein Kampf? Hitler told the world what he was going to do, but no-one was taking him seriously or even listening!

David muses: “he has no intention of losing touch with the frustration, anger and feelings of those people in the Rust Belt who voted him into office.” Sound familiar? It should, it’s straight out of Mein Kampf. Don’t forget, a large proportion of the German people voted for Hitler because he: blamed all their problems on foreigners (Jews) – sound familiar?: appealed to their sense of national pride and unity (build the wall) – it’s them against us!: and whipped up the crowds with simplistic, reckless and nationalistic rhetoric (never was a term more descriptive or inappropriate!). Does this mean that Trump is a fascist and undemocratic? No – he’s just close to it.

David analyses: Trump want s controversy – thrives on it – and is not a team player. ( I did read a fascinating article about how he cheats at golf – regularly and obviously. Apparently the Secret Service are complicit in kicking his ball back on to the fairway!)

The President is a deal-maker. That’s what he does. His stance on Korea is a good example. He’s looking for a deal and using all the tools he learned on The Apprentice to get one.

David is genuinely perplexed that Trump generally escaped scrutiny and comment on his business dealings. He attributes this to his reputation as a businessman being artificially boosted by The Apprentice and a troubling tendency for the voters to assume a successful businessman (by what ever measure you care to put forward – don’t forget as President he foregoes his salary!) might do a better job than the Obama/Clinton professional politicians. The voters may well be right.

A word on the voters. It has always struck me as the most difficult job in politics is to say to the voters: sorry, you idiots, you got it wrong. You are just too stupid to vote! (a far cry is our modern democracy which is very different from the ancient Athenians' democracy. All citizens in Athens could participate directly in the government. ... In Athens, citizens gathered together to discuss issues and vote on them. Each person's vote counted, and the majority ruled. Therefore, try telling millions of voters that they are too stupid to know what they were doing! Not a vote winner! (Same goes for Brexit on this side of the pond. Everyone knows that the Brexit vote was won by the ill-mannered, unwashed, ill-tempered, gormless, smelly masses in the same ill-judged, nationalistic, ill-favoured constituencies that Trump appealed to in the Rust Belt – but you cannot go on TV and tell the voters they are stupid – makes no difference if the facts bear you out.)

David’s peroration: “the history of besieged presidencies is, in the end, the history of hubris, of blindness to one’s faults, of deafness to warnings.”

Perhaps Trump is not Hitler in disguise but another comic book character:

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. The Shadow is a fictional character created by Walter B. Gibson, one of the most famous of the pulp heroes of the 1930s and 1940s. Born Kent Allard he assumed various identities for his crime fighting work, most notably that of Lamont Cranston.

Trump’s shadow looms over all and may not end with the next election for his hubris knows no bounds.