Full Disclosure
First, full disclosure. I’m a 66-year-old second-generation Italian-American and lifetime Liberal Democrat. I’ve voted, in every election starting in 1972, for Democrats at every level, Federal, State, and Local. The only Republican I ever voted for was Maryland Senator Charles Mathias Jr., a liberal Republican, in 1980, when he ran for re-election against a conservative Democratic State Senator.
I
gleefully listened to the gavel to gavel coverage of the Senate Watergate
Committee—known officially as the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign
Activities—hearings on NPR Radio and watched televised portions in 1973-1974 for
over a year, then the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings, the votes
for three articles to impeach Richard Nixon in late July, 1974, the drama over
the Watergate Tapes and unanimous Supreme Court order to release the tapes, the
airing of the “Smoking Gun” tape, and Nixon’s resignation on August 8, in the
face of certain Impeachment in the House and Conviction in the Senate. When
Gerald Ford was defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976, I stayed up for hours to hear
Ford’s wife Betty, drunk, slur through her husband’s concession, he being too
devastated to deliver it. As she slurred and he wept, I grabbed the TV and
mocked, “You’re out of a Job, you idiot.” (During the campaign, Ford had said
he believed the voters would say: “Gerry, you’ve done a good job”.) I thought
President Ronald Reagan, 1981-1989, the Republican Saint, was a brain-dead
moron. I cheered when Bill Clinton defeated President George Bush in a
landslide in 1992 and again when he defeated Bob Dole in a landslide in 1996. I
cheered and cried when Barack Obama handily defeated John McCain in 2008 and
Mitt Romney in 2012.
The 2016 Republican Primaries
I was entertained watching the Republican primary season. It
went on and on, unlike typical modern election cycles. Trump was clearly unfit
to serve as President and never garnered support from more than 35% of the
primary voters. It seemed inconceivable that he would be nominated, and the
prospect of a contentious brokered Convention with Trump being denied and
blowing up the Republican Party was delicious. But as the primary session
dragged on, despite continued outrageous missteps and scandalous revelations
around Trump, The Donald kept his 30 to 35% support as other candidates dropped
out of the race. Even as mainstream Republicans, alarmed at the possibility of
a disastrous Trump general election campaign, vocally denounced and came out
against him, his support held and then started to grow. Even after he locked up
the nomination, most pundits, talking heads, and prominent mainstream
Republicans, were confident that he was unelectable and would lose big against
Hillary Clinton. I thought so too.
The 2016 General Election Campaign
Throughout the campaign, National tracking polls and
individual State polls repeatedly showed Clinton defeating Trump handily. Trump
consistently polled around 35%. Only breaking 40% briefly after the Republican
Convention for a week in late July and again for a week in mid-September.
Clinton’s polling fluctuated in the low 40s percent, except briefly right after
the Republican Convention to just under 40%. The only obvious warning signs
were: (1) no matter what outrageous things Trump said or did, his numbers never
went below 36%, and (2) Clinton’s numbers only went above 45% in mid to late
October and never exceeded 46.2%. It seemed that the difference between Trump’s
floor of support (35%) and Clinton’s ceiling (45%), just 10%, was too close to
be comfortable with. Especially considering the growing attacks on Trump by
establishment Republicans, trailing poll numbers, and negative but accurate
media reports, the fact that their average daily polling difference was less
than 5% was also disturbing.
In fairness, Hillary Clinton was a flawed and weak
candidate. Her protracted and Clintonian response to her unending years long
E-mail server scandal, and her campaign, displayed the same level of hubris
that cost her the nomination against Barack Obama in 2008 and almost cost her
the nomination in 2016 against Senator Bernie Sanders. She also got some bad
breaks, like the Russian government’s active interference in the election and
FBI Director James Comey’s decisions to announce a new investigation into her
e-mails days before the election and to sit on the FBI’s investigation into
possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The Pivot That Will Never Come
During the Republican primaries, Trump apologists repeatedly
excused his outrages and excesses. Trump insiders assured nervous Republican
leaders that Trump would pivot and
act more Presidential during the general election campaign. As the campaign
went on, and Trump’s tweets, rallies, and comments became even more outrageous,
Trump enablers assured anyone who would listen that he would surely pivot once
he won the election. He did somehow manage to contain himself briefly in the
final days before the voters went to the polls.
Fueled in no small part by an emotional racist Whitewash and
rage over the election and re-election of the first African-American President,
Barack Obama, voters elected a profoundly emotionally flawed individual. Well,
by almost three million votes, they actually voted to elect Hillary Clinton. Only
103,000 votes spread across Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—the three
closest States—gave Trump an Electoral College win of 306 to 232. If these
States had gone for Clinton, she would have won, 278 to 260. Of course had that
happened, Trump would have called for insurrection and his supporters would
have burned the Country to the ground.
In the weeks since the election, there has been no pivot. If anything, Trump has been
even more arrogant, petty, and impetuous. All of his paid enablers and many of
his supporters continue to hope for the presidential
pivot that will never come. Now we face the very real and likely
possibility that the man we have elevated to the highest office in the land,
not to mention leader of the most powerful nation in the world, will continue
to be the profoundly flawed person he has always been. America will learn that
no matter how emotionally satisfying, electing a delusional, petty, thin-skinned
Narcissistic emotional cripple is a very bad and dangerous idea.
Trump is Emotionally Disturbed
Donald Trump is not a populist, entertaining, awesome,
unconventional, or a genius. He is emotionally disturbed. Many successful
people are narcissistic, self-centered and self-serving, sometimes exaggerate,
embellish, or even lie, manipulate others, deceive, self-aggrandize, bully,
exploit people in sexual and/or other ways, are amoral or even immoral,
eccentric or peculiar, and/or generally unpleasant human beings. Politicians and Billionaire Business people
don’t have a monopoly on these faults, but they do tend to exhibit them more
often than typical people. As with all human faults or vices, people can
exhibit them but still be highly functional and successful. It is mostly a
question of degree. When one or several of these characteristics begins to interfere
with one’s life, they approach and can cross over into dysfunction and mental
illness. Several famous and successful people have been known to suffer from
mental illness, most notably perhaps: Howard Hughes (OCD) and Abraham Lincoln
(severe Clinical Depression).
My list of problematic traits exhibited by many successful
people is, of course, not random.
Even Trump supporters will immediately recognize that he exhibits some of these most of the time and all of them over time. In any given 24-hour
period, he displays many of these. What makes this a clear sign of serious
mental dysfunction is that Trump doesn’t just use these things for effect—as
his enablers and apologists would have us believe, he is compelled to exhibit them. Donald Trump suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). (See
I’m not the first
person to notice this. Though no practicing Clinical Psychologist or
Psychiatrist can say this out loud, for ethical reasons, more than a few have
noted the characteristics of the disorder in the context of Trump’s actions.
What this means is that Trump has no real values or beliefs
but these:
1)
He is not just the center of the Universe, he is
all that really matters. His needs, wants, opinions, and actions are all that
matter. To say that he demonstrates severe hubris,
in both the contemporary and original Greek meaning of the word, is not too strong.
2)
His version of reality is not just the best, or
most intuitively obviously correct, it is the only reality that he can perceive or even conceive of. Anything
that challenges his reality, even incontrovertible facts, has no effect on him.
Denial sustains his world view.
3)
He has no empathy or concern for others. People,
like everything else in his environment, are simply an instrumentality, a means
to his ends.
4)
He is always right.
Anyone who does not support his view of reality is wrong, whether an aide, colleague, the entire National Intelligence
community, a two-term President leaving the office he is about to assume, a military
general, or any other expert.
5)
He will say or do anything that furthers his perceived
immediate self-interest, with no regard for conventions, rules, precedents,
cultural norms, or even reality constraints.
6)
He has no need to be consistent or even
rational. If he changes his mind about something, whatever he said or professed
to believe earlier is simply discarded.
7)
No slight or dissent, no matter how seemingly insignificant,
can go unchallenged. He is compelled to attack anyone or anything that does not
support his delusional high opinion of his own awesomeness.
What We Can Expect
Most modern Presidents, once in office, have been awed and
humbled by the history of their predecessors and the White House, and almost
immediately realized the awesome burdens and responsibilities of the
presidency. They grew wiser, aged, and their hair turned grey. The only recent
President who didn’t appear to age and opined that being President was a piece
of cake was Ronald Reagan, who may not have ever realized that he was actually
the President of the United States, not just an actor playing the greatest role
in history. Even George W. Bush, never accused or even suspected of being an
intelligent or serious guy, grew in office.
For someone suffering from NPD, being elected President of the
United States has got to be the ultimate achievement and self-validation. Trump
will not grow in office. If anything,
he will become more emboldened, capricious, erratic and dangerous.
The best-case scenario is that his administration will be
marked by constant chaos, continued rallies that will remind students of
history of an unpleasant time in Germany in the 1930s, peevish tweets in the
middle of the night, and perhaps a few interesting financial and/or personal scandals.
He and the Republican majorities in the House and Senate will slash taxes on
corporations and the Rich, roll back environmental, labor, and consumer
protection regulations and laws, retard social justice progress for a time, and
put one or two Right Wing ideologues on the Supreme Court.
The likely-case scenario is that in addition to the
best-case, we’ll have a wave of tribalism and nativism, contentious and
worsening race relations, and anti-immigrant and anti-trade policies, with a
possible trade war with China and/or our NAFTA partners.
With a President Trump, there really is no way to even
imagine the worst-case scenario. His affinity for authoritarian leaders,
cavalier comments about abandoning NATO or other allies, and reckless comments
about the proliferation or use of nuclear weapons, are enough to keep one awake
late into the night.
What We Can Hope For
It’s never a good idea to end on an apocalyptic note. So
even better than my best-case scenario, what can we hope for?
One possibility: as Trump’s unfitness to serve becomes
undeniable, Independents, and eventually enough Republicans, abandon him, and
Republicans in the House and Senate remove him from office before he can do much damage. (This gives us President Mike Pence,
not a great prospect but at least he’s just a Right-Wing ideologue and not suffering
from a serious mental illness.)
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