OPINION

All hail the trauma king

It appears that Donald Trump faces three main obstacles to a goal he has failed so far to come near, meaning a sensible and passable presidency.

The first obstacle, not in any way his fault, and probably beyond his and anyone else's ability to surmount, is the dangerous and bedeviling North Korean matter.

Probably the best that he--and, more importantly, the world--can hope is that North Korea wants nuclear ability for its own proud and isolated sense of self and that the small nation's impenetrably weird leadership would not use that ability in a suicidal first strike.

The second is Trump's obvious condition of megalomania and narcissism.

It causes him to elevate his momentary sense of self to greater importance than long-term strategic judgment and restraint. He's a marathoner who can't stand to be behind at any point, so he repeatedly sprints nonsensically and self-destructively to the front.

To put that in fewer words: It's all about him.


They called the last president no-drama Obama. We could call this one all-trauma Trump.

This one could lift his approval rating a dozen points by November if he'd stay off Twitter and shut the heck up.

Just shut up. Just play golf. Just let the country appear to be running as normally as it ever runs.

But no. Consider one mere 12-hour period, occurring Tuesday, and not atypical.

Trump began by feeding red meat to his irrational base. He had his attorney general announce an end in six months to the sensible and humane program of his predecessor granting renewable permission to remain in the country to condition-meeting immigrants brought here without documents as children.

Trump then demanded that Congress act within those six months to make a relevant law on the subject.

But, by evening, probably after watching television news his ego couldn't abide, he was saying that, if Congress didn't act, he'd personally "revisit" the issue.

Maybe Ivanka had just talked to him, and cried, because daddy was seeming so mean.

The point is that he put Congress on the hook in the morning and took Congress off the hook within 12 hours.

That's not strategy. It's not leadership. It doesn't give Congress clarity, but whiplash.

The third obstacle is the practical complication of the sheer demagoguery Trump spouted as a candidate. He engaged unpardonably in such bluster to appeal to that irrationally angry base, which, while a pitiable sub-minority of the American citizenry, was a sufficiently infecting subset of the Republican Party to lift him to primary victory.

Now that base expects him actually to do the impractical things he said he'd do.

For every polling point he might gain toward the center by shutting the heck up, Trump would lose some strength of allegiance--not necessary allegiance itself, but the ferocity of devotion thereof--in that base.

So he has constructed a fine mess for himself.

Here is a surely controversial observation: It is possible that Trump, while narcissistic and megalomaniacal and an essentially dishonest person hardened through years of high-stakes business maneuvering and celebrity-seeking, is, beneath all that, possessed of a deep and untapped human decency.

Maybe, deep down, he really thought the House health-care reform bill--the one he and his sensitive ego initially celebrated--was, as he later said, "mean."

Maybe, deep down, he really does love those "dreamers" he's thrown to his irrational base for the time being.

As national political analysts are now saying, the immigrant-children issue puts all these conflicts into play and poses a potentially defining or pivotal moment. It could well reveal him as one thing more than the other--a cynical demagogue feeding his base or a redeemable human being retrievable if on a rare occasion from way down deep inside.

Will he--in demagogic allegiance to the irrational base--insist that the Republican Congress join him in taking the "dreamers" hostage and extracting as ransom his silly wall on the Mexican border?

Or might Congress, by a coalition of all Democrats and a few moderate Republicans, simply enact the Obama program as law? If so, would Trump, from his humanity deep within, and in a rebuff to the irrational base, then sign as law the very policy he rescinded as executive action?

And if Congress performs as on health care, meaning with futility, and produces nothing within six months, what, pray tell, then?

Would Trump commence deportation of these people he says he loves? Or will he splinter that irrational base irreparably by acting from the "heart" he insists he has?

And will he decide--can he--on any of that for more than a 12-hour duration?

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 09/07/2017

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