Trump is a flawed leader who is just right for the times

An unconventional President with his Vice-President. Picture: Getty Images

President Donald Trump has charged into office riding a wave of an electoral mood fed up with the old order, demanding change. He promises a new dawn, of an activist President who gets things done, after the torpid senility of the Biden years, a man who may even make America great again, and cleanse it of woke causes.

The public generally feels either of two emotions when a new leader takes office – hope or fear. This is amplified as never in living memory in the case of Donald Trump. On the fear side, an unscrupulous maniac is perceived who stands as a sworn enemy of everything progressive.

The most optimistic serious projection of the positive has been made by historian Niall Ferguson. He reads the Trump ascendancy as a sign of a changing vibe in geopolitical culture. The mood in the zeitgeist has shifted.

Trump is the latest and most significant example of the people striking back against the elites, demanding pragmatic realism and decisive action from governments. Europe has been the lead example so far, with rejection in France of the moderate centrism of President Emmanuel Macron, and electorates in Italy, Germany and a gathering tide of smaller nations, all demanding stricter controls of immigration and action on soaring costs of living.

Amid all the hype, hysteria and speculation that is accompanying Trump, two things can be said with confidence. Both are true, but at odds with each other.

Firstly, the negative. Trump is a person, simply put, who is unfit to be President. He lowers the office and diminishes the reputation of the country. The main issue is dignity. Walter Bagehot, in his 19th-century classic, The English Constitution, argued that a strength of the British political system was predicated on separating power from authority, with the responsibility for running the country vested in prime minister and parliament, the dignity of state vested in the Crown.

The constitutional importance of the monarch is in standing apart from political difference, serving as a higher unifying symbol, enduring and timeless, a figurehead uniquely placed to animate the nation.

In the United States, the two functions are concentrated in the one person, meaning that an undignified occupant disturbs the political firmament far more seriously than would be the case in Britain or Australia.

US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House. Picture: AFP

Trump is a convicted felon, he has shown little faith in democracy or respect for the American constitution, he lies shamelessly, he tars opponents with invented, crude slanders, and he is a blatant misogynist.

Further on the negative, there is questionable competency. The Trump personality is vain and vengeful, and demands total subservience from those who work with him. He might be typed a pathological narcissist – obsessed by how great he is.

As in his first term in office, there may well be a high turnover of people in senior positions, with declining quality of incumbent. Trump is reported to be lazy and quick to lose focus, which would not matter greatly if he were to remain surrounded by capable advisers and key departmental secretaries.

Yet in the end, leadership is judged principally by what it achieves. And the public tends to get used to the flawed character of a political leader, as it did in this country with Bob Hawke.

On the positive side, the times are suited to someone who is brashly decisive, times shaped by brutal dictators and terrorist organisations. Already, Trump’s warning that there will be hell to pay if the Israeli hostages aren’t released when he takes office has galvanised Hamas into panicked negotiation. The contrast is striking with the unending failure of the Biden policy of diplomatic negotiation. Trump’s intention, with Elon Musk in charge, to bulldoze government inefficiency would, if achieved, prove an immense public good.

Most significantly of all in global terms, Iran is on the back foot – the progenitor of strife in the Middle East, the country driving, funding, and arming most conflicts there.

Israel’s overwhelming successes in damaging Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, plus the sudden fall of Assad in Syria, have opened the path for the United States to press home the advantage of the moment. Trump is suited to carry this out.

Also in Trump’s favour is the declining prestige of Putin and Xi. The state of the Russian economy is parlous, the people are restive, while there are signs that Putin’s domestic reputation is fragile. Trump has a much stronger hand to force a negotiated peace with terms favourable to Ukraine.

With China, the economy is also in a slump and the confident buoyancy of the early years of President Xi have faded.

The sight of an unpredictable American President, given to strong words, is likely to make China generally more reserved in its expansionist ambitions.

Niall Ferguson’s optimistic reading of a changing vibe in the zeitgeist seems to me more plausible on the electoral mood front, and in the swing in international affairs into one favouring the democracies over the autocracies. The positing of a weather change in the wider culture is another matter.

The left has dominated elite thinking since the 1960s, and driven progressive attitudes through educational institutions, the arts, and into government bureaucracies and even corporations.

Reversal may occur in some domains, that of business corporations for instance, in which a reality principle governs behaviour. But schools and universities have not changed, nor have the attitudes of the vast majority of those in their 20s and 30s who are politically engaged, and nor has a vaguely progressive cast of mind, which became instinct, expressed right through the tertiary-educated upper middle class, colouring its values.

Trump has only two effective years before he becomes a lame duck – typically with a hostile congress, and both Republicans and Democrats turning their attention to who will succeed him. The political reality, as always, is one of the slow and hard boring of hard boards, to quote sociologist Max Weber.

It means almost always there will be the drag weight of inertia slowing down change and paralysing policy or dragging it towards the centre. In the American case, the President has the herculean task of swaying congress to move to his political will.

Finally, in looking forward, it is important to remember that history is the story of the unforeseen. The next four years may well see a surprise, unpredicted historical moment and Donald Trump himself may prove just one such surprise, either way.

John Carroll is professor emeritus of sociology at La Trobe University.