It can be no surprise that a businessman known for turning his name into a brand would also see himself as a master dealmaker. There is perceived power in the flattering perception of being several steps ahead of competitors.
Anyone struggling to parse the President’s behavior confronts a virtual festival of personality tics. There are the graceless declarations of his “high” intelligence, the pretension of being a master strategist, and the unearned certainty that accompanies the declaration of bogus truths. The endless issuing of false claims is especially stunning (i.e., The U.S. has the highest taxes of any nation; Fredrick Douglas is doing an “amazing job,” etc). And then there are all of the threatening tweets and serial name-calling. Vituperation used to be a White House rarity; it was never a presidential form. Presidents have customarily vented in private and praised in public. Trump’s manufactured feuds not only mark him as an indifferent caretaker of important traditions, but a figure who sees an advantage in the constant name-calling. Its management by division, using presidential rebukes as forms of intimidation.
What is going on with this needy and self-dealing figure? Why the manufactured hostility? Have we ever had a leader who was so imprisoned by limited rhetorical skills?
Trump’s kind of bluster seems to be a consequence of both his social awkwardness, and a New York aggressiveness expressed in the language of marketing. Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm described a “marketing personality” as a character type common in individuals captured by a compulsion to sell themselves as a commodity. It follows that they find personal legitimacy in self-referential comments affirming their acceptance and enviable success.
Normally a marketing mentality comes with a degree of affability. A communication form such as selling is intrinsically “other-directed.” But if a person is not capable of other-direction, and if the “brand” to be preserved is one’s own name, there seems to be a clear motivation to engage in aggressive self-protection. This can take the form of the preemptive bluster that defines Donald Trump. But it also includes immodest assertions of power, such as using 20-foot letters of his name on the outside of his buildings. Both the aggression and self-promotion function to assure the doubting that he’s a “player,” and “deal-maker:” the smartest man in the room who can bend anyone to his personal goals.
There is perceived power in the flattering perception of oneself as several steps ahead of competitors. Mastering markets results in a lot of talk about “tactics” and “targets,” “ratings” and “winning.” It persists even if true success alludes him. Indeed, ambiguity over genuine markers of achievement actually helps, since it allows individuals to declare their own “winning” moments. Investment analysts, traders and marketing “creatives” are often deep into this game, and often able to profit from the mystifications that come with vaguely understood “deals,” “yields,” “growth projections,” and “branding.”
All of this seems to be a particularly masculine need. No set of thought-patterns are fully gender-specific. But it seems clear that there are psychic rewards for performing what seems like the uniquely masculine stance of the consummate strategist. In fact, this male can find it downright fun to watch a set of strategic masterstrokes play out. We usually need a film like George Roy Hill’s classic The Sting (1973) to pull it off. The story of a “con” played against a ruthless New York mob leader remains a thing of beauty, helped by the fact that male icons Paul Newman and Robert Redford seemed to relish their characters’ guile. In a different way the same anticipation of secret moves sprung the unsuspecting is obvious when listening to a ‘color commentator” rhapsodize about the ideas of an NFL coach. And while women play poker and frequently win, it’s mostly the men around the table who love to talk about strategy.
Our point is that it’s frequently enough to perform the attitude of a consummate strategist. And so in Trump we find that specific questions about future presidential actions—a few as consequential as whether the nation will wage nuclear war with North Korea–end up being answered with no more than a half smile and a “we’ll see.” The real estate tycoon relishes these teases. They are meant to remind us that he already has some winning plan. It’s a developer’s prerogative to bet on on implausible promise. Never mind that the building planned for an empty field will never be built. An illustrator’s evocative image on nearby sign is reason enough to celebrate. In the same way all the talk of “action” coming from this White House functionally diverts attention from an administration foundering amidst legislative and diplomatic failures.
The rhetoric of strategy is inherently inflated with bluffs. But that feature destabilizes when used by a head of government. Governments need transparency and predictability, neither of which are possible if a leader imagines that leadership is a game of moves and countermoves.
Traditional residential campuses like my own are as close as the nation gets to building utopian communities. Within their leafy quadrangles they house artists, historians, philosophers, physical and social science researchers, wonderful libraries and theaters, and cadres of support staff ready to help anxious undergrads.
A little personal history. I had no idea that the map of my life had been laid out when my parents dropped me off in front of Aylesworth Hall at the edge of the prairie. The year was 1964, when Colorado State University was still proud that the farm animals in the Veterinary School resided at one end of the beautiful Oval. That began an unbroken fifty-four year trek from one public campus to another. To be a teacher is also to be a student. The roles sometimes blend, but they exist in a circumscribed world. To this day I have no idea what it would be like to work in a corporate office. All I know is campuses, students and colleagues. Even so, I count myself lucky that students leave our weekly sessions together usually no worse for the experience. They are (mostly) a pleasure to work with.
Some of my former campuses were small. For a year I taught at what is now the University of Worcester in the English Midlands. The campus was a mix of simple red brick buildings and a few metal quonset huts–all that some public universities could afford, given the spartan budgets of post-war Britain. What the college lacked in amenities was easily made up by a pleasant group of academics who became friends and colleagues. The only sour note was the college’s new “principal,” who could barely abide the yearly arrival of another American exchange professor. Colonial upstarts pained him; it registered on his face as clearly as if you had just driven a car over his foot.
But I digress. I finished my undergraduate years at Cal State at Sacramento, a sprawling collection of blocky buildings surrounded by lush gardens that you would expect at a posh Miami hotel.
All of the five campuses that have been my homes where public universities. And Cal State typified some of their best traits, with faculty interested in teaching (not a given in American universities), students aware that this was their moment to make a better life, and modest fees made possible by the flourishing California system. The early generosity toward higher education in most states was reflected in my tuition, which was sixty-three dollars a semester.
When I moved on to graduate study at the University of Pittsburgh, the good citizens of Pennsylvania paid for living expenses and the much higher tab for tuition. The deal was that I would be a diligent student of rhetoric, and that I would teach some courses in public speaking (not very well, as it turned out). I like to think that I’ve partly repaid the faith shown to a stranger by later giving back to students on another nearby public campus. But the consequences for state-supported campuses will be dire if local governments continue to disinvest in higher education.
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Quimby’s Prairie John Davis
Conventional residential campuses like my own are as close as the nation comes to building utopian communities. Only half of America’s college students have the benefit of these self-contained islands. Even fewer have the advantage of a good liberal arts education. In spaces between their leafy quadrangles they house artists, historians, philosophers, physical and social science researchers, wonderful libraries and theaters, and cadres of support staff for our increasingly anxious undergraduates. Many academic landscapes were designed to be park-like and sheltering, often with quirky results. On my campus “Quimby’s Prairie” is a rich carpet of green grass ringed by neo-Georgian structures, but it is also near another quadrangle called “Green Lawn,” which is mostly a prairie.
Pitt’s Heinz Chapel
Even in cities most campuses even are designed to allow students to exercise their birthright as pedestrians. Cars are usually pushed to the periphery: a physical manifestation of the metaphysical idea of a space for contemplation. A campus is usually a series of “commons” meant to facilitate these frail but vital functions. Nearly every space is a communication platform of one form or another: classrooms, of course, but also theaters and recital halls, restaurants and student centers, seminar rooms, group-work areas in a library, lounges in dorms and academic buildings, picnic groves, benches under old oaks, chapels, offices and purpose-designed spaces for all forms of media. The best campuses unfold as a series of indoor and outdoor “rooms” that encourage direct unmediated communication. It’s a wonderful thing that some progressive cities and tech giants have tried to capture for themselves. But it is easy to overlook what we may be losing.
The idea of constant connectivity trivializes these spaces. Smartphones never leave a student psychically alone.
Changing times mean that these refuges devoted to the exploration of human and natural phenomena must cope with a culture that intrudes in unhelpful ways. There is no question that the frailties and addictions of the larger world need to be visible, but the idea of constant connectivity trivializes these spaces. Smartphones never leave a student psychically alone. Large blocks of space and time were meant to make possible the sequential thinking that reading Aristotle or McLuhan require. Now, those hours are riddled with the temptations of the screen. These days a stroller around any campus will pass too many walkers who are unable to muster a simple greeting because they are on their phone. Their bodies may be in the most stimulating community they may ever know, but their heads are elsewhere.
Recently improved Wifi coverage in my campus building brought a wave of delight that I found hard to share. Rhetoricians trained in oral traditions are naturally sensitive to environmental elements that sabotage attention. You can guess that some of my students occasionally have to sit through admonitions to “live in the moment.” Too few notice what they may be missing the possibilities of their mini-utopia by focusing on digital devices that rob them of their time and peace of mind.
