July 4th and Trumpism: America’s Newest Cult of Personality
In two days, we celebrate the birth of the great American experiment and, by extension, George Washington, perhaps America’s greatest President.
The American Presidency was born of a spontaneous “cult of personality” venerating this first great American hero. He became President by acclamation. And well deserved was the reverence he enjoyed at the birth of our nation. Never again has (or could) anyone advance to the Presidency of the United States of America by unanimous proclamation of the people’s representatives. He was simply loved. Ezra Stiles, then President of Yale, wrote of Washington, “O Washington, how I do love thy name! How have I often adored and blessed thy God for creating and forming thee, the great ornament of humankind!” Not to be outdone, Harvard awarded Washington an honorary doctorate.
Cult of Personality is today, an ugly term. It generally describes cultish veneration and admiration demanded by powerful political personalities, who tolerate no criticism and no dissension, but who demand unswerving loyalty and adoration. Cult of Personality came into widespread contemporary use when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used it to expose the lethal vulgarities of his predecessor Joseph Stalin.
When American presidents have been anointed with such status (Abraham Lincoln, of course, also comes to mind), it has been because of the personal sacrifices they made for the country and their lasting contributions to the success of the American project. They were revered because of what they did for the country. Washington and Lincoln could have enjoyed their presidencies for many years beyond those which they served. Washington probably would not have lived out a third term as President, having died 33 months after retiring. Perhaps, one can speculate, he would have survived had he remained in Philadelphia for another four years instead of retiring to Mount Vernon, where he caught the proverbial death of a cold. Lincoln, of course, was assassinated early into his second term following the peace at Appomattox.
Cults of Personality could also be ascribed to the popular presidencies of Jefferson, Jackson, Teddy, and Franklin Roosevelt and, to some extent, Ronald Reagan, and yes, most assuredly, to the strange presidency of Donald Trump. The Cult of Personality surrounding Donald Trump is strange, mainly because he is strange compared to virtually all other American presidents.
While Trump invariably and childishly refers to almost any Republican who criticizes him as a RINO (Republican In Name Only), it is Trump whose Republican credentials are the weakest among virtually all GOP candidates. By any definition, it is Trump who is the real RINO. He first registered as a Republican in 1987, but a decade later, he switched to the Independence Party and then to the Democratic Party in 2001. Then, seven years later, he switched back to the Republican Party, only to leave the GOP within two years, indicating he did not wish to enroll in any political party. It was only about a decade or so ago that he reregistered as a Republican. He has switched party affiliations, it seems, at least five times. Trump’s political party affiliation seems more determined by political opportunity than political philosophy.
There is little about Trump, philosophically, that is particularly Republican. The Trump presidency was characterized by relatively unrestrained deficit spending prior to the deficits Covid imposed on the country. For example, when Donald Trump assumed office in 2017, the federal deficit was 3.5% of GDP. Under Trump, it climbed to 4.6% of GDP in 2019 and was projected to reach 4.9% in 2020 before Covid. Let that marinate for a moment.
Trump’s pre-Covid deficit spending exceeded that of Presidents Clinton, Bush (43), and Obama, who brought the deficit down to 2.4% by 2015, following the financial crisis he inherited from the Bush Administration.
Think about that. None of the deficits of Bush (43) or Clinton were ever as high as the smallest pre-Covid Trump deficits. Clinton, of course, actually achieved budget surpluses. Budget deficits increased constantly during Trump’s presidency, reversing the restraint achieved by the prior Obama Administration. How Republican is that?
And then, of course, there was Candidate Trump’s fantasia about how China was taking us to the cleaners because of the trade deficit, which he, as a no-nonsense businessman, would reverse with punishing tariffs. Well, he delivered on the tariffs, thereby demonstrating what he didn’t seem to know about trade deficits. While Covid makes comparisons difficult, the pre-pandemic trade-deficit data is all one needs to know: The deficit in manufactured goods was approximately $750 billion in 2016, the last year of the Obama Administration, and soared to $864 billion in 2019, the last pre-pandemic Trump year, following nearly three years of Trump’s trade tariffs. The tariffs with which Trump saddled the country accomplished little more than the need to bail out farmers whose exports to China were killed by those very same tariffs.
So, why is the Republican Party in such a thrall over President Trump? It certainly isn’t because he is Mr. Republican as was, say, the late Senator Robert Taft. Quite the contrary, he is the antithesis of almost anything remotely Republican. The Republican Party is besotted with former President Trump simply because he appeals to a solid and substantial core of voters. He is a master of negative campaigning, name-calling, and well-calculated ridicule. He is feared by fellow Republicans far more than he is admired.
He is a poke-them-in-the-eye, shake-them-up neophyte politician, and a considerable swath of the electorate loves his grab-them-by-the-you-know-what and his I alone can solve it antics.
And yes, he can turn millions of Republicans against GOP candidates by canceling those Republicans who displease him. And what does it take to please Donald Trump? Unswerving and unconditional fealty. It’s that simple, and it is deplorable, and most Republicans know it. Figuratively speaking, he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and millions would, cultishly, still vote for him.
Hard-core Republican voters do not support him because he is fiscally conservative because he isn’t. They do not support him because he believes in free trade, because he doesn’t. They do not support him because he was a conservative spender, because he wasn’t. They do not support him because he brought down deficits, because he didn’t (he increased them). They do not support him because of his military service to the country, because he didn’t serve.
To be sure, some support Donald Trump because they feel his policies or positions align with their own sense of priority. There are others, most, one might conclude, who are in the thrall of him because they like who he is and what he represents far more than any particular policy or position. They mistakenly perceive in him a personification of their frustrations, disappointments, anger, and, as Trump suggested, their retribution for their all-too-frequent discontent. He is the promoter and the beneficiary of this newest American Cult of Personality.
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Jazz artist Ann Hampton Callaway
Outlander author Diana Gabaldon
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Ryan Clancy, Chief Strategist of No Labels
Senator Barbara Boxer
Senator Joe Lieberman
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan
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Trump personifies the Howard Beale ethos from the great film, "Network." He is literally the manifestation of the "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore" betrayal-driven rage felt by millions of Americans who feel bamboozled by all the institutions they were propagandized from early childhood to trust, obey and glorify. Big pharma. Big banks. Big ag. Big healthcare. Big government. The MIC. The lies have become too big to ignore. Trump is little more than a rage receptacle. Combine that with the characteristics that have taken over and are driving what's left of American civilization - tribalism, greed, fear, revenge - and that apply, in opposite directions of equal lethality, to adherents of both major parties. America is a sick country, perhaps close to becoming a dying country (at least in terms of its global hegemony). And we are "ruled" by charlatans, corruptocrats and outright traitors. Until America recognizes that evil is winning - and decides to do something about it - the arc of its demise will continue unabated.
It's right to flip the smear RINO onto Donald Trump. To your indictment, I would add three charges. He winks at bigotry and racism as when he claimed there were (not just good but) "very fine people on both sides" marching in Charlottesville. He trades on his misogyny. He takes combativeness --frequently a good trait-- to an unconscionable level of deceit. To the greatest extent possible, we should elect leaders who are good examples such as those you have named (Washington, Lincoln, and the others). Trump is a bad example, a misleader.