Genius: Mises v. Trump
The genius-in-chief is slowly coming around to believing the coronavirus is a threat. Fox TV host Tucker Carlson had to talk him into it, reports the New York Times. Michael Grynbaum writes,
Off the air, Mr. Carlson has been urging Mr. Trump to take the threat of coronavirus more seriously. Last Saturday, Mr. Carlson drove from his residence in Florida to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, and spoke directly with Mr. Trump about the virus, according to a person with knowledge of their conversation.
It seems incredible the president, who famously describes himself as a very stable genius, would take his cues from a Fox talking head. It doesn't take long for Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker to make the point in their best selling A Very Stable Genius to write, “Trump’s ego prevented him from making sound well-informed judgements. He stepped into the presidency so certain that his knowledge was the most complete and his facts supreme that he turned away the expertise of career professionals upon whom previous presidents had relied.”
To understand the president, Rucker and Leonnig, provide the essential roadmap to the method of Trump’s madness. I have friends who consider the president a genius. For example, a particularly manical Trump supporter responded to one of my FaceBook posts with,
I see pure genius. Again and again, he does what no one thought was possible. Again and again, he defeats the powerful forces aligned against him. Again and again, he packs stadiums (and blow up network ratings) with decent, hard-working Americans who draw inspiration from him.
He continued his rant,
As [Ludwig von] Mises observed (he literally could have been writing about Trump): A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made.
But, the Genius authors provide example after example of the president’s shortcomings intellectually. When selected to read on camera the opening of the constitution’s Article II, Trump struggled. “It’s like a foreign language,” said the man who swore to uphold it.
Most economists recognize the benefits of free trade. Trump doesn’t get it. “Gary [Cohen], I don’t want to hear about free trade,” said the president. “We’re upside down. They’re ripping us off. All the jobs are gone. They’re ripping us off.”
To the contrary, the aforementioned Ludwig von Mises wrote,
History is a struggle between two principles, the peaceful principle, which advances the development of trade, and the militarist-imperialist principle, which interprets human society not as a friendly division of labour but as the forcible repression of some of its members by others.
I doubt Mises would have described the president as a genius: likely the opposite. Time after time, the authors provide snippets of Trump refusing information or briefings. “I know better than anybody else.”
Briefing books were trimmed to one page summaries with the hope the president would read them. But one page was and is too much. “The president has patience for a half page,” said a Trump confidant.
Plenty of the book retells the Mueller report story and the frantic legal maneuvering on Capitol Hill. What the authors make clear is Bob Mueller was a shadow of the man he once was. A more robust Mueller would have been lethal to the Trump presidency, but instead, was out maneuvered by Attorney General Bill Barr.
While not mentioned in the book, one can only wonder how the Senate would have handled the impeachment hearings and how the vote would have come out if John McCain had lived to, not likely fall in line, but also influence his friend Lindsey Graham, who, after McCain’s death has been four-square behind the president.
President Trump was exceedingly lucky, until coronavirus. A story in its infancy.
Mises, as if writing about Trump, wrote,
The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad govern- ments. The state can be and has often been in the course of his- tory the main source of mischief and disaster.
Rucker and Leonnig quote a Republican senator as saying, “He’s torn a lot of things up. He likes to break things. But what has he put together yet?”
In an enlightening part of the book, Anthony Scaramucci, communication director for what seemed like a minute, recalled a conversation he had with the president where he asked, “Are you an act?” Trump replied “I’m a total act and I don’t understand why people don’t get it.”
I get it. Genius? Hardly.
