Men in power are often animated by the desire to retain and consolidate their power—but not always by that alone. Sometimes, personal aggrandizement goes hand in hand with a sense of personal destiny that embraces a world larger than oneself. Consider in this regard Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, India’s Narendra Modi, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. All three populist strongmen have been ruthless in their exercise of power and in their suppression of any threats to its perpetuation. At the same time, each is also propelled by the wish to make his country a more powerful and respected voice in global affairs. Whether they have, or can, is another matter. (I myself think not.) But that they have this ambition is indisputable. Erdogan, Modi, and Putin each believe that their once great countries lost their way due to external pressure and internal decay and that history has sent them to redeem their homelands and restore them to their past glories.
At first sight, Donald Trump may seem to fit this bill, in so far as his professed aim is to “make America great again.” Yet, as his actions in his first term as U.S. president and even more so in his second show, unlike Erdogan, Modi, and Putin, Trump is animated almost exclusively by personal vanity. In this, the current leader of the world’s richest and most powerful nation is strikingly akin to a past leader of a country with which it shares a so-called special relationship. Indeed, perhaps the best way to understand Trump is to view him as Britain’s Boris Johnson on steroids.
Historians are tempted to use analogies from the past to understand the present. Hence, the frequent references to the 1930s in seeking to explain the resurgence of authoritarian populism today, as well as the rather too regular use of that dreaded F-word, fascism. Others seek to go much further back, to ancient Rome even. However, to this historian, the roots of the authoritarianism of our moment lie in the events of the past few decades. One need not look further back. Modi, Putin, Trump, et al. are a response to the end of the Cold War and the failed promises issued thereafter of one happy, integrated, united, and allegedly “flat” world. These men—and they are all men—have ridden to power stoking a nativist nationalism that seeks to repel a globalization gone rampant, even as they have done so using the new media technologies that have been created and enabled by this globalization.
To understand Trump better then, look at his political contemporaries, not at his political ancestors. Which of his peers does he most resemble? All the populist strongmen of today profess an abiding love of their countries, coupled with a suspicion of the intentions of other countries. They claim that they shall make their nations strong (or at least stronger) by keeping out people and noxious cultural influences from other nations. However, while the xenophobia—shading into paranoia—of Erdogan, Modi, and Putin is deeply felt, that of Trump and Johnson is largely instrumental. Trump is married to an immigrant, has business interests in many countries, and would like to have business interests in more countries still. Johnson has ancestral roots in Turkey and was for many years married to a woman of Indian descent. And, most damagingly, before writing a widely noticed column in favor of Brexit, Johnson drafted an unpublished column arguing the case against Brexit.
By upbringing and instinct, both Trump and Johnson are cosmopolitans. Yet to further their personal ambition, both rode the wave of anti-immigrant (and quasi-racist) xenophobia to political success. There are striking similarities in how they obtained the votes they needed for their victories. Trump brought to his side large sections of the white working class that had previously voted Democratic, while Johnson did likewise with lower-class white Englishmen who had previously voted Labour. Through their artful and disingenuous way with words, these elitist cosmopolitans were able to effectively seduce people of a very different class and cultural background from themselves.
Trump and Johnson are also akin in their disregard of the distinction between private gain and public responsibility. Neither knows or cares to understand the concept of “conflict of interest.” Trump’s abuse of his office is of course on a far grander scale; he accepted a private jet, while Johnson merely had his legal expenses paid for and refurbished his residence partly at public expense. Both are also prone to nepotism, though again Trump takes this to another level. One of Johnson’s last acts as prime minister was to nominate his own brother for a peerage. In each of his terms as president, Trump has actively promoted the financial interests of himself and members of his family.
It was personal vanity that largely, if not exclusively, animated Johnson before and while he was prime minister. Likewise for Trump as president. However, for several reasons, the capacity of Trump to damage his country is far greater. First, Johnson knew deep down that he was something of a joker—an impostor whose ride to power was all one big lark. Trump, on the other hand, takes himself all too seriously. He is motivated as much by personal pique as by pride, as seen in his escalating war with Harvard University, which would have entirely subsided had it have followed the model served up by Columbia University and obediently submitted to Trump’s whims.
A second reason that Trump is more dangerous than Johnson is that democratic institutions in the United States are somewhat less robust than in the United Kingdom. The custom of Prime Minister’s Questions and the real-time televised debates the sessions initiated held Johnson, as well as his predecessors and successors, more properly to account than the U.S. Congress does the president. The U.K. Supreme Court has shown itself to be more independent and autonomous of political pressure than the U.S. Supreme Court. The British press is more pointed and precise in its criticisms of politicians’ failures than its wordy and earnest U.S. counterpart. Most significantly, perhaps, dissenters within Johnson’s own Conservative Party, as well as mounting public anger at his misconduct, compelled him to resign before his term ended. On the other hand, Republicans have thus far shown little willingness or ability to check Trump’s excesses, whatever the costs to their party or country.
I might also note that Johnson’s fall was also facilitated by the fact that—unlike India, Russia, Turkey, or the United States—Britain does not usually fall for personality cults. Before the cult of Trump, there were the cults of John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George Washington; before Modi, the cults of Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mahatma Gandhi; before Putin, the cults of Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Peter the Great; before Erdogan, the cults of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Suleiman the Magnificent. Boris’s skepticism about himself was of a piece with a wider skepticism among the British about politicians who take themselves too seriously. Let us not forget that they voted out Winston Churchill immediately after the end of World War II in Europe.
Finally, while the United States at Trump’s ascension was the richest, most powerful, and most influential country in the world, Britain when Johnson became prime minister had already entered a period of steady and irreversible decline. Its economic importance had shrunk, and its influence in global affairs had diminished even more. Brexit merely modestly accelerated a process that had already gained significant traction. Whoever became prime minister, it would remain, in the immortal words of Guardian columnist Ian Jack, “the country formerly known as Great Britain.”
Trump claimed to make America great again. What he has instead done is make himself more powerful and dangerous. The costs of his whimsical trade policies will be considerable, the costs of his attacks on the country’s great centers of research and innovation incalculably larger. Little wonder that the one person most pleased with his reelection must be that other populist strongman, Xi Jinping, whose own desire for personal glory does not always supersede his wider ambitions for China’s greatness.
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