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.
Americans pay a lasting price for shuttered newsrooms. Fully 40 percent of New Jersey’s voters know “very little” about their two candidates for Governor. They know even less about how the state constructs and spends its budget. What we have instead is rants from local talk radio, fueling hard-right fantasies of government that are a long way from the realities of governing.
The press has rightly been called “the fourth branch of government.” It’s a given that any open society benefits from a free and vigorous journalism. Reporters are our eyes and ears, especially when their reporting shines a light on questionable governmental actions. A diminished local press impairs our need to be engaged and informed citizens.
These conclusions combine to make a familiar civics lesson. But the ideal of a “watchdog press” stands in stark contrast to the disappearance of news outlets and staffs around New Jersey. The state is not alone in facing diminished local reporting; with some exceptions it reflects a national pattern. Where there used to be hundreds of reporters spread over newsrooms in Trenton and Newark, there are now just a few dozen. The parent company of both The Star Ledger and The Trenton Times has cut staffs to the bone and lost over half of their subscribers. Advance Media now has a staff of just 30 in Trenton, closing even their nearby State House bureau. “Beat” reporters who used to focus on crime, education, and politics must now scramble to write shorter stories on fewer topics.
It is still true that “if it bleeds it leads.” Murders, fires and traffic accidents often get some coverage. But stories about trends and long term patterns—or basic news about governmental initiatives, policy shifts, state and local funding cuts—often fall between the cracks. As a capital, Trenton is in a relative blackout compared to some capital cities like Denver, Sacramento, or Des Moines. This is more ironic because New Jersey is an affluent state with a well-educated population. In numbers of citizens, it is about the size of Israel. But compare Trenton’s capital paper with the Jerusalem Post, where there is much more daily reporting.
The problem has been made worse by the abandonment of a New Jersey coverage at the New York Times. It’s now the case the a huge population center in the Garden State hardly exists on the Times’ news pages. That’s a bigger deal that it might seem. Many subscribers are residents of New Jersey, but they are given more stories from Brooklyn or Queens than from Jersey City or Newark, which are easily within eyesight of Midtown.
Of course, print media everywhere are struggling. But it is also reflected in the sparse online stories that remain. Young Americans do not have a newspaper habit. What news they see tend to come from aggregators like Facebook or Google Play. The only bright spots are a few websites like Politico-New Jersey or NJ Spotlight. But these are far less visible to the average citizen than a source like television’s News 12 New Jersey. The cable channel is helpful in filling some news gaps, but it offers less prime-time policy discussion than was available before the ill-advised sale of the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority. There is some coverage of the state from public stations in New York and Philadelphia. But it’s not enough.
We will pay a lasting price for shuttered newsrooms. Fully 40 percent of the New Jersey’s voters know “very little” about the two gubernatorial candidates less than one month before heading to the polls. They know even less about how the state constructs and spends its budget. What we have instead is rants from local talk radio “jocks,” whose hard-right fears of government are a long way from the hard realities of governing.
Reporter David Chen recalls recently walking down the hallway known as “press row” in Trenton’s State House, only to find it “eerily still:” the closed doors in the corridor resembling a series of “janitorial closets.” It’s perhaps a small sign, but nonetheless an indicator of why civic life has gone from being one of the glories of the American experiment to one of its perpetual embarrassments. The politics we get in this new atmosphere of willful darkness is perhaps the politics we deserve.
