Politics - News Analysis

Politico: ‘Trump is on the Verge of a Breakdown’ — His Instincts Are ‘Irrelevant’

As someone forced into glutinous media consumption, it seems to me that I arise every day to a more panicked and intense media landscape. Some of it is because panic pays the bills, a sick side-effect to the media’s business operation, but not entirely harmful, either. And I think some of it is because all of us, even the fairly sophisticated among us who always knew Trump’s inherent limitations, are just starting to emotionally absorb how bad this crisis could be, and just how much worse it will be due to one man’s incompetence flowing down to those around him.

Politico must sense the exact same moment because the site that is occasionally an administration apologist sets it all out on the table this morning:

Now Donald Trump during the pandemic is giving a new generation has reason to wonder whether he—like other presidents who suddenly find currents of history shifting violently before them– is on the verge of breakdown.

Trump emphatically has faced real opposition, and reveled in it, on his path to power. But he has met earlier chapters of adversity, in politics and business, with reliance on traits—bluster, defiance, implacable self-promotion—that, however unorthodox, served him quite well in the old context.

Well, we could spend all friggin’ day arguing what the hell Politico means by “served him well” in that context. It is not exactly stunning that a situation has arisen where psychotic bluster and self-promotion doesn’t work, thousands of us have been writing about the “what-ifs” in a real crisis for a long time. Besides, can you point to an adult with only one tool (whatever that tool is) that can successfully navigate life? And bluff and bluster have never once worked in a real crisis.

A real crisis, of any kind, needs experience, planning, discipline, and wisdom, not a single quality of which has Trump ever been able to display since he was a 3o something on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991. Politico might be right that he is on the verge of a breakdown, but only because he’s been on the verge of a political breakdown since the day Jeff Sessions said he would recuse himself from the Russian investigation. From the beginning of Trump’s presidency, he’s always acted like he’s twelve hours and one New York Times’ headline away from being handcuffed out of the White House.

How he hasn’t blown a coronary artery by now is extraordinary. Maybe he has perfect genes. Regardless, none of this is “new.”

It is just “hyped” more each day, which will happen when suddenly everyone is just as exposed in a crisis as anyone else.

The Politico article hits one nail on the head, though. Let’s take the positives and tip our hat:

If there is any common trait of successful presidents, it is what Lippmann called “resiliency”—the capacity for personal growth, for recalibration, and for principled improvisation in the face of new circumstances. If there is any common trait of failed presidents, it is incapacity for growth—a reliance on old habits and thinking even when events demand the opposite.

The capacity for growth is not the secret sauce to a successful presidency, it is the difference between successful adulthood versus one that descends into more extreme old behaviors, usually accompanied by more extreme use of alcohol and pills. What Politico just laid out is actually the prescription for what the United States needs right now – seeing this challenge as a huge opportunity to show some mature growth and renewed capacity, as can arguably be said happened during 9-11. Under this man, we’re likely to sink into more extreme old behaviors.

Regardless, Trump is very much on the verge of a political and personal breakdown, more so each day, while this nation is also on the verge of a political and sociological one. Whereas he has never shown a penchant for personal growth, the American people have – quite recently. No serious argument can be made that we can have such a moment under such a man. Thus, if it takes a one-man breakdown for us to move out from under this shaking rock, so be it. Only personal growth through pain and sacrifice can keep us moving forward, without breaking down ourselves.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom

meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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