DONALD J. TRUMP: A PRESIDENT LIKE NO OTHER
By Conrad Black
Donald Trump must have been an irresistible subject for Conrad Black, an author who has always leaned toward the “great man” theory of history, with a special sympathy for right-wing politicians who have been, in his eyes, treated unfairly by journalists and historians. Trump fits the bill, at least for Black, because despite all of the less than flattering attention given to him in the media Trump has been a force for good, the necessary man of the hour.
And, to be fair, there is a case for Trump to be made. His election was a remarkable achievement, as he managed to overcome both the Republican and Democratic parties. Furthermore, as president he really is getting things done. Whether you think they are good or bad things is another question.
Black’s analysis gains something from his personal knowledge of Trump. They have had business dealings in the past, and being men of the same age and similar class backgrounds share much the same worldview.
A key part of this worldview is that America before Trump was in decline: disrespected and taken advantage of abroad, falling apart at home.
Who’s to blame? Again, Black and Trump are singing from the same hymnal: the enemies within are identity politics, political correctness, liberal elites, and the media.
Black dials up the rhetoric when dealing with each of these groups. Where Trump merely simplifies every instance of unflattering coverage as “fake news” Black goes after “the carping insolence of penurious journalists,” who pursue the president “with accusatory questions bellowed from salivating mouths, through bared teeth, and with nostrils flared.”
The media are “somnambulant” and “flaccid,” but also “rabid,” “febrile,” “hysterical,” and “demented.” In all things they toe the line of “the politically correct group-think of the liberal elite,” which includes Republicans as much as Democrats, not to mention all of Hollywood (“a moral and intellectual pigsty, an asylum for the stupid, the corrupt, and the vocally shallow, who possess Thespian aptitudes or a saleable appearance and manner”).
One can’t imagine Trump ever using language like this – Black uses words with too many characters for Twitter – but it’s standard TrumpWorld boilerplate.
Black says at one point that he loves Trump for having enemies like these, but in fact he finds more than this to admire in a man he describes as “naturally very humorous, wittily perceptive, refreshingly uninhibited, and a great showman.”
Most of all, Black sees Trump as representing the real United States. As the book’s first sentence puts it: “The traits that elevated Donald Trump to the White House are the traits of America.” Trump is loud, aggressive, and larger than life, but gifted with the common touch:
He was a rich celebrity whose tastes were not to hobnob with the swells and socially eminent benefactors, but, crucially for a presidential candidate, to harvest the affection of the lower middle and working classes of America who were not appalled, but rather, to some degree, inspired, by his bravura, buffoonery, and raw egotism, for behind it they saw an outrageously successful version of themselves, and one who, they intuited, understood them and their desires, fears, and hopes.
In all this, were his followers only being played as suckers? That Trump could “harvest the affection” of an angry electorate is one thing; whether he could actually help them, if such was even his intention, quite another.
Black tells Trump’s story but tells it slant. Trump’s successes are all his own while his failures are mainly the result of accidents or the machinations of his enemies. He does not lie so much as he engages in “truthful hyperbole.” The charge that he is racist or misogynist is refuted by pointing to the fact that he has employed women in various positions, while a catalogue of outrages are blithely dismissed as media-driven scandals or the indiscretions of a charming rogue.
And then there is Melania.
Black is thoroughly smitten with Melania Trump, bringing his narrative to an awestruck stop every time this “breathtakingly tall and beautiful and magnificently proportioned” goddess enters the frame. Melania rises above the world of politics and celebrity like Aphrodite, leaving Black to wax Shakespearean in gaping paeans. A “devoted mother,”
she is well-liked and respected by the public, and always makes an excellent and tastefully glamorous impression when she goes abroad. She is neither an employee of her husband nor a rival nor a scene-stealer; she is neither cloying nor bossy. She is confident and relaxed, cool and poised, looks whimsically on some of her husband’s eccentricities, but is always very supportive. . . . She exudes an exotic and mysterious composure that is often more becoming than the opinionated and busy nature of some of her recent predecessors as first lady. She never appears to the public to be either short-tempered or over-eager to please or impress. Her only historic rival as a glamorous chatelaine in the White House is Jackie Kennedy.
This is laying it on a little thick. Is it being unchivalrous to wonder how whimsically Melania looks at the hush money her husband has paid out to adult performers? Perhaps, but still one wonders.
At the end of A President Like No Other Black leaves us with a Trump triumphant, rising above the partisan witch hunt of the Mueller investigation and setting an agenda to make America, yes, great again.
There is an ambiguity, however, in the final judgement that Trump “is a man of his times, and his time has come.” Might that mean his time is up? The names of Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen are nowhere mentioned in the book, perhaps because they are part of more recent developments. It’s hard to believe there aren’t more shoes to drop. Can the Trump Show continue to enjoy ratings high enough to avoid being cancelled? Stay tuned.
Notes:
Review first published in the Toronto Star May 26, 2018.
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