It's wrong to write off the Donald asa cartoonish narcissist. There's more to him than that.
Many commentators are convinced they know the real Donald Trump. He is, they think, so obviously shallow, insecure and garish that single descriptive words or phrases are all that is needed.
He is, take your pick: “the Last of the Great Vaudevillians,” the “king of bad taste in a country that loves bad taste,” a “comic-opera demagogue.” Or, more seriously, a “con artist,” “a fascist,” “the latest in a long line of demagogues,” or a “bullying thug.”
Most of these characterizations are little more than name-calling masquerading as analysis.
Consider Trump’s “narcissism.” There is the brash and indisputably ostentatious display of his wealth. That’s coupled with a self-proclaimed vocabulary of his accomplishments that seems limited to superlatives. This has given rise to a cottage industry of pundits who think they have plumbed Trump’s supposedly shallow emotional depths with a single, misapplied clinical term.
The hallmark of someone with a “narcissistic personality disorder” is “an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others.” This seems like a definition tailor made to fit Trump, and many, without further reflection, have used it that way.
Don’t Trump’s repetitive superlatives — “huge,” “great,” “biggest,” “wonderful” — all reflect his inflated self-importance? Doesn’t his branding of everything from steaks to towers reflect his need for admiration? Don’t his repeated and often personal attacks on his rivals and opponents show a lack of empathy?
No. No. And yes, although it’s more complicated than that.
Business conducted at his level of play requires ambition, risk-taking, resilience, and the capacity to fight back — just like national politics. Trump’s broadsides are a signal that if attacked, he will not go quietly into the night. And his outlandish policy prescriptions like the mass deportation of illegal aliens and a possible trade war with China are best seen as reflecting the direction of his thinking — opening bids as it were, not deeply held and entrenched policy positions.
Empathy for the left out, ignored little guy? Trump has built his campaign on it. Ordinary Americans are looking for a fighter, someone who considers “cares about people like me” to mean that a candidate will fight for them. His reflects a much keener diagnosis of the public he hopes to lead than Jeb Bush’s idea of campaigning as a “joyful tortoise.”
Critics have conflated the by-products of Trump’s branding strategy with his character. He engineered a successful repositioning of his highly leveraged building empire to one increasingly built on his brand name. Big, bold, brash and successful are its sales themes.
Is there an element of hype in the pitch? Of course there is, and it carries over to his “Make America Great Again” theme. Yet note that the object of his ambitions is not himself, the mark of a true narcissist, but his country. And note too the word “again” that speaks to restoration and reform."
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Trump has said repeatedly that “the country is in trouble,” and he is not alone in thinking so. Seventy-one percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the county. Trust in government has declined from 73% in 1958 to 19% today. Trust in public institutions, including the presidency, Congress, the Supreme Court and the federal government, is also at historical lows.
Mr. Trump offers himself as someone who wants to and can fix what’s ailing us. He may well be entirely experientially unprepared and temperamentally unsuited to accomplish his purpose should he gain office, but I credit his motive with sincerity. It compares favorably in purpose to our current president who publicly aspired to “greatness” for himself and transformation for the country.
Mr. Trump has said, “I didn't need to do this. I have a wonderful life. I have a great, great company... I wanted to do it, because somebody has to do it.” This may well be true, but his motive is not devoid of self-interest.
That self-interest is summed up in the title of Aretha’s Franklin’s iconic song R-E-S-P-E-C-T. From his childhood roots in the out-borough of Queens, into the wilds of Manhattan that his father warned him were not hospitable to “our kind of people,” to his relentless pursuit of the Plaza Hotel because it added tradition and class to his holdings, to his efforts to be a major political player (an effort that the president mocked and others like Romney never took too seriously), Trump, like the rest of us, has been seeking recognition for his accomplishments.
He has been called “a clown candidate.” And, as he noted before the New Hampshire primary, “A lot of people have laughed at me over the years. Now, they’re not laughing so much.”
The issues Trump raises are serious. He seems serious about addressing them. His capacity for leadership is real, if flawed. The most important question about a President Trump, however, is whether, should he gain office, he could learn how to successfully govern.
Stanley Renshon, a political science professor at the City University of New York, is a certified psychoanalyst and the author of 15 books, most recently Barack Obama and the Politics of Redemption.
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