01-05-2017, 03:32 PM
With the benefit of hindsight, how will presidential historians characterize Donald Trump's time in office? I know that's looking far into the future. What I can say, without equivocation, is that Trump poses more imponderables than any of his successors. And that means unprecedented uncertainty. We have only his business record by which to judge the potential nature and quality of his leadership. He is the only American president to assume the mantle of leadership without benefit of either military or political experience. Oh sure, he can assemble a "crack team" of retired generals and savvy politicians to advise him, but there is something valuable in and of itself to having been in the field of combat or having served in high political office beforehand. That kind of experience provides a perspective that a total outsider like Trump cannot possibly bring to the table: real lessons on the horrors of war and the limits of power.
According to Strauss and Howe, the Fourth Turning crisis that now confronts us cries out for a Gray Champion. We already have threads aplenty that addresses that topic, which I consider one of the weaker tenets of their theory. Our previous Gray Champions were not all that "gray" to begin with--before their inauguration: Washington (57), Lincoln (52), and FDR (51), who was younger than his disastrous predecessor--Hoover (54). Younger candidates than were on offer this past election might well be able to lead us out of the "swamp" in which our country is mired. A Gen-Xer...maybe even a Millennial four to eight years from now. (He or she could hardly do worse than the Boomer presidents who have preceded them.)
Anyway, I digress...
Trump, who has been underestimated politically all along the way, could well turn out to be the Gray Champion. That, of course, is the best case, according to S&H theory. But I just don't see it. Trump has neither the intellect, nor experience, much less the character of Washington, Lincoln and FDR. Not even close.
He is no doubt a demagogue, the first of that political ilk to reach the pinnacle of power in America, succeeding where Father Coughlin, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace failed. But I am not prepared to call Trump a fascist, as some pundits have called him, political commentators who--quite frankly--should know better. I would hesitate even to call him a strongman in the manner of Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez, although I would not rule that out altogether, especially if a meta-crisis strikes on his watch, one that brings out his worst tendencies. Either possibility is a worst case.
The most likely case is that Trump goes down in history as a (faux) populist, like Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. The two men bear an uncanny resemblance. This article appeared in The Guardian prior to our election: "We’ve Seen Donald Trump Before – His Name Was Silvio Berlusconi:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...e_btn_link
We keep being told that the Donald Trump phenomenon means we have entered the era of post-fact politics. Yet, I would argue, post-fact politics has been tarnishing democracy for some time. Twenty-two years ago a successful businessman sent a VHS tape to Italy’s news channels. It showed him sitting in a (fake) office. He read a pre-prepared statement via an autocue.
The man’s name was Silvio Berlusconi, and he was announcing that he was, in his words, “taking the field”. The first reaction was derision. Opposition politicians saw his political project (the formation of a “movement” called Forza Italia – Go for it, Italy – just months ahead of a crucial general election) as a joke. Some claimed a stocking had been put over the camera to soften the impact of Berlusconi’s face.
But Forza Italia soon became the biggest “party”. In the working-class Communist citadel of Mirafiori Sud in Turin, an unknown psychiatrist standing for Berlusconi’s movement beat a long-standing trade unionist. Berlusconi had not just won, he had also stolen the left’s clothes and some of its supporters. That first government was short lived, but Berlusconi would dominate Italian politics for the next 20 years – winning elections in 2001 and 2008 and losing by a handful of seats in 2006. In terms of days in office, Berlusconi ranks as Italy’s third longest-serving prime minister, behind Mussolini and the great liberal of 19th-century Italy, Giovanni Giolitti.
The parallels between Berlusconi and Trump are striking. Both are successful businessman who struggle with “murky” aspects linked to their companies – tax, accounting, offshore companies. Berlusconi was convicted of tax fraud in 2013, which effectively put an end to his political career. But business success and huge wealth was part of his political appeal, as they are for Trump. Beyond wealth, Berlusconi, like Trump, always painted himself as an outsider, as anti-establishment, even when he was prime minister. And, like Trump, Berlusconi’s appeal was populist and linked to his individual “personality”.
Berlusconi’s personal-business political model has since been followed by others in Italy. It could be argued that both Beppe Grillo’s populist anti-political Five Star Movement and Matteo Renzi’s insider-outsider appeal (until recently) have been created very much in Berlusconi’s image. One could go so far as to say Berlusconi transformed politics. The mass parties of the postwar period had become increasingly irrelevant, but he didn’t need a party just as Trump doesn’t really need the Republican party...
If Donald Trump merely turns out to be a political leader in the mold of Silvio Berlusconi, that simply guarantees the kind of feckless or mediocre leadership that we have seen before in previous presidents. That is hardly the worst case. Still, the policies that Trump has proposed, and the team that he is assembling, promises more of the same neoliberalism that has brought class resentment--and worse impulses, in some of his supporters--to a fever pitch. That would be bad enough...
According to Strauss and Howe, the Fourth Turning crisis that now confronts us cries out for a Gray Champion. We already have threads aplenty that addresses that topic, which I consider one of the weaker tenets of their theory. Our previous Gray Champions were not all that "gray" to begin with--before their inauguration: Washington (57), Lincoln (52), and FDR (51), who was younger than his disastrous predecessor--Hoover (54). Younger candidates than were on offer this past election might well be able to lead us out of the "swamp" in which our country is mired. A Gen-Xer...maybe even a Millennial four to eight years from now. (He or she could hardly do worse than the Boomer presidents who have preceded them.)
Anyway, I digress...
Trump, who has been underestimated politically all along the way, could well turn out to be the Gray Champion. That, of course, is the best case, according to S&H theory. But I just don't see it. Trump has neither the intellect, nor experience, much less the character of Washington, Lincoln and FDR. Not even close.
He is no doubt a demagogue, the first of that political ilk to reach the pinnacle of power in America, succeeding where Father Coughlin, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace failed. But I am not prepared to call Trump a fascist, as some pundits have called him, political commentators who--quite frankly--should know better. I would hesitate even to call him a strongman in the manner of Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez, although I would not rule that out altogether, especially if a meta-crisis strikes on his watch, one that brings out his worst tendencies. Either possibility is a worst case.
The most likely case is that Trump goes down in history as a (faux) populist, like Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. The two men bear an uncanny resemblance. This article appeared in The Guardian prior to our election: "We’ve Seen Donald Trump Before – His Name Was Silvio Berlusconi:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...e_btn_link
We keep being told that the Donald Trump phenomenon means we have entered the era of post-fact politics. Yet, I would argue, post-fact politics has been tarnishing democracy for some time. Twenty-two years ago a successful businessman sent a VHS tape to Italy’s news channels. It showed him sitting in a (fake) office. He read a pre-prepared statement via an autocue.
The man’s name was Silvio Berlusconi, and he was announcing that he was, in his words, “taking the field”. The first reaction was derision. Opposition politicians saw his political project (the formation of a “movement” called Forza Italia – Go for it, Italy – just months ahead of a crucial general election) as a joke. Some claimed a stocking had been put over the camera to soften the impact of Berlusconi’s face.
But Forza Italia soon became the biggest “party”. In the working-class Communist citadel of Mirafiori Sud in Turin, an unknown psychiatrist standing for Berlusconi’s movement beat a long-standing trade unionist. Berlusconi had not just won, he had also stolen the left’s clothes and some of its supporters. That first government was short lived, but Berlusconi would dominate Italian politics for the next 20 years – winning elections in 2001 and 2008 and losing by a handful of seats in 2006. In terms of days in office, Berlusconi ranks as Italy’s third longest-serving prime minister, behind Mussolini and the great liberal of 19th-century Italy, Giovanni Giolitti.
The parallels between Berlusconi and Trump are striking. Both are successful businessman who struggle with “murky” aspects linked to their companies – tax, accounting, offshore companies. Berlusconi was convicted of tax fraud in 2013, which effectively put an end to his political career. But business success and huge wealth was part of his political appeal, as they are for Trump. Beyond wealth, Berlusconi, like Trump, always painted himself as an outsider, as anti-establishment, even when he was prime minister. And, like Trump, Berlusconi’s appeal was populist and linked to his individual “personality”.
Berlusconi’s personal-business political model has since been followed by others in Italy. It could be argued that both Beppe Grillo’s populist anti-political Five Star Movement and Matteo Renzi’s insider-outsider appeal (until recently) have been created very much in Berlusconi’s image. One could go so far as to say Berlusconi transformed politics. The mass parties of the postwar period had become increasingly irrelevant, but he didn’t need a party just as Trump doesn’t really need the Republican party...
If Donald Trump merely turns out to be a political leader in the mold of Silvio Berlusconi, that simply guarantees the kind of feckless or mediocre leadership that we have seen before in previous presidents. That is hardly the worst case. Still, the policies that Trump has proposed, and the team that he is assembling, promises more of the same neoliberalism that has brought class resentment--and worse impulses, in some of his supporters--to a fever pitch. That would be bad enough...