Supporting a Corrupt Charlatan

A friend recently asked me, "Why is it that so many people still support Donald Trump, knowing what they know?"

My friend, a progressive, widely read white male, was looking for a logical answer, and I struggled to provide a response that might make sense in a crazy world.

I began with the anti-Obama white working-class men, especially, and some in the financial field who overlook Trump's apparent association with Stormy Daniels and his loose association with the truth.  These voters seem to value, I suggested, Trump's spontaneity and lack of political correctness. As for evangelicals who should be turned off by the White House resident (I refuse to call him the President) and his corruption, his foul mouth, etc., I suggested that anyone for these right-wing voters is better than a progressive Democrat because of the right-wing agenda.

In the final analysis, though, I suggested that the reason is more emotional than rational: Trump appeals to those who feel threatened---fearful--of change, of immigration, of minority advances (gays, women, blacks, Hispanics).  This fear leads to anger and hatred, and no number of inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and outright lies, no amount of incompetence can shake their devotion to the GOP leader.

It's hard to explain to explain to my friend and others the various factors involved, especially the deep-seated resentment that built up, first during the Clinton years, then surged during the Obama years, blinding many on the right to the dangerous character who's now in charge,  a man recently called by former CIA director John Brennan "a disgraced demagogue [whose place is] in the dustbin of history."

In several studies by experts in the American presidency, Trump was ranked last, beating even Warren Harding and James Buchanan as the worst inhabitants of the White House.  They now look like saints compared to this crooked, lazy, ill-informed, impulsive, incoherent, inarticulate scum-bag, whose tenure so far has put the U.S. on a dangerous course.

Trump, as several foreign policy experts have said, keeps creating problems in the world rather than solving those we already have.  Why? He says he like conflict and chaos; he really likes attention and will do and say anything, however reckless, to put himself upfront in the media.   He alarms knowledgeable, sensible people like David Miliband, former British Foreign Secretary, who says we are now at a "most dangerous moment" in world affairs because of the Trump administration.  Trump has made the U.S. something of a rogue state, as unpredictable and dangerous as Russia,  sowing discord with friends with policies on trade that change as fast as you can tweet. Richard Haass calls it a government in disarray.


As Peter Baker of the NYTimes points out (3-18-18), full-time fact-checkers struggle to keep up with Trump's distorted claims. Polls indicate that most Americans see him as dishonest. "While most presidents lie at times, Mr. Trump’s speeches and Twitter posts are embedded with so many false, distorted, misleading or unsubstantiated claims that he has tested even the normally low standards of American politics."

 

As the media work overtime trying to keep up with the ongoing catastrophe being daily created by Donald Trump, people like my friend, looking for a rational explanation for what support he has, come up short. The answers, as much psychological as political, are rooted in the recent history of this country and in its worship of the entertainment media as a source of power. Where, after all, would Trump be without Fox News to beat the drum for mendacity and madness at the center of our government?

Is Biography Possible?

I have read many excellent biographies and quite a few disappointing ones over the years. It seems to me that the biographer's job is made extremely challenging by the realization that, after all the facts and quotations and information, we are always left to wonder: what was he or she, the subject of the biography, really like?

Do we ever know another person, really? If we remain mysteries to ourselves, at least in part, we are generally mysteries to those who know us. I continue to discover surprising things about my wife and close friends after many years' association. The inner life has depths and layers that often remain obscure.

If I were to write the life story of someone I had never met and known at all, someone from another era, I would be flummoxed, as the Brits like to say. For to me, a biographer has to deal with the inner life of the subject, not just the public achievements. It's the upbringing, the family, the personal life that explains the behavior. Somehow, the more scholars dig into the life of Lincoln or Dickens or even Mark Twain, the more questions arise, the more complex these men seem. The same is true of Nixon and dozens of other more recent public figures: we think we know them, but do we ever, really?

While reading recently about Calvin Coolidge, for reasons known only to me--I can't explain it even to myself--I looked for a biography, and I found a book, by David Greenberg, that comes close. But his book, brief at 159 pages of text, admits that Silent Cal never opened up to anyone, never revealed himself. So we have to be content with a largely external portrait of a man who seems almost to have lacked an inner life.

My search for a biography of Coolidge in the full sense seems doomed. Yet the sources reveal many interesting anecdotes (some amusing) and facts, including the tragic loss of his teenage son in 1924. According to one scholar (Robert E. Gilbert), the rest of his life, and presidency, was marked by clinical depression.

I don't know how widely accepted this view is but it makes sense, helping to explain Coolidge's often odd, rude behavior. His icy reticence was the product of his New England upbringing, making him one of the most unlikely men to occupy the White House. He hated small talk, yet gave speeches, greeted guests (helped greatly by his wonderful First Lady, Grace), and held more press conference than any other president, before or since. He introduced the practice of talking to reporters; the fact that he said little on most occasions, and did so in his laconic style, made him the object of many jokes and much speculation.

When he died in 1933, Dorothy Parker quipped, "How can they tell?"