Reflections on Trump and Maccoby’s Article

If the past is prelude, Dr. Maccoby’s astute and well-reasoned article gives us a close-up view of how presidents, particularly presidents whose personalities exhibit (in his analysis) “productive narcissism,” dealt with the challenges of leadership by adapting pragmatically to social unrest in times of crisis. As a psychoanalyst and anthropologist, Maccoby’s research into the origins of public policies and the organizations and institutions they have created leads him back to the ancient Greeks and Pericles of Athens, who listed four competencies that should be regarded as timeless and underscore the characteristics the next president will need to lead. Maccoby reminds readers of these competencies and highlights the fact that a personality is driving public discourse and action. We all remember how inspiring Obama was, or Kennedy; their behaviors mirrored the best in us, in clear contrast to Trump’s behaviors, which many parents of young children censor, not wanting them to model themselves on Trump’s immature cruelties, such as name-calling or ridiculing people with disabilities.

By examining these reference points and applying them to presidents like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and contrasting them with Trump), Maccoby exposes increasingly obvious deficits in Trump’s ethos and leadership. He makes a clear

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case that this president is not simply flawed but dangerous when it comes to protecting Pericles’ four salient traits that have remained relevant throughout civilizations.

Psychohistorians may long study the origins of group behaviors surrounding COVID-19 and Trump’s desperate need for attention with his bizarre tweets and divisiveness in playing one group against another. Trump’s everyday firings of leading officials and racial bigotry have thrown the country into more chaos, from which he holds himself up as the only one (the savior) who can restore order (and now “law and order”) concerning race relations. Trump’s primitive impulse, outright flaunting of social norms, and dispensing with conventions voters have come to expect of their leaders (especially in times of crisis and economic despair), has led to an international explosion of political activism and protest. Even as these facts are made evident, Trump, as Maccoby shows, has some staying power, and it is only through critical inquiry that we can conclude why this person lacks the moral character for our highest elected office.

Maccoby accords significance to human experience by elevating key philosophical ideas or existential standpoints upon which one can stand firm, not only for oneself but for one’s community and nation. Other contemporary philosophers (for example, Sven Brinkmann) have also returned to the ancient Greeks’ emphasis on virtue to argue for less individualism, proceeding explicitly from the assumption that it is better to be a good (moral) person than to be oneself. Trump has created an anti-intellectual persona through his animated tweets, gross misspellings, vitriolic upper case letters, poor grammar, and even profanities. What would Pericles think of a leader who does this?

This answer is reflected in Pericles’ fundamentals regarding best practices for leaders who assume ranks of authority, practices Trump himself rejects. As itemized, one is the knowledge of the right policies; two is the ability to explain and convince people that these policies are right; three is advocating the primacy of national interest above the narrow interests of the nation’s leaders and their families; and four is honesty. Arguably, a template for Trump’s failure to put the country first came with his policy of caging immigrant (meaning Hispanic) babies and children, or even more egregiously, his refusal to acknowledge the threat of the wide-spread pandemic or provide necessary testing. Now he fans the flames of racial tension and civic unrest. From an ethical standpoint, being a

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strong leader must be considered an end in itself; personal authenticity is at best a means to be a good person and at worst a barrier to this.

Early on in Dr. Maccoby’s article, he contends that a leader should have knowledge of the right and fair policies to advance society and should also calculate for the others that these foundations are principled for. This requires integrity and consistency as well as an effective speaking style—an eloquence that Trump lacks, or more troubling, demurs from putting into practice. As Maccoby writes elsewhere, productive narcissists have the fortitude to push through massive societal reforms (such is true of Lincoln’s abolition of slavery), but not at the cost of breaking up the unity of the country. A true leader at this juncture would be looking to advance civil rights in the name of justice and humanity, but Trump seizes on the moment to relish in being oppositional as well as temperamental. Maccoby also points out Roosevelt’s pragmatism in honoring a code of ethics while at the same time restoring the nation economically and spiritually. Presidents like Lincoln and Roosevelt exhibited the traits Pericles designated as necessary and vital, putting the country ahead of their self-interest. But Trump lacks the gene for empathy.

Sadly, I think Trump does care about others, but only in how they reflect what he wants to see. One has the eerie sense that he is always watching himself as if to prove his exaggerated capabilities have earned him not only respect but reverence. Hence his now-famous (infamous to many?) photo opportunity of holding up the Bible in front of the stately church in Lafayette Square as if it was a WWE (world heavyweight) championship trophy.

Maccoby’s early analysis of narcissists (like the CEOs of big corporations) showed they can be not only self-promoting but also seductive and charming. Perceived threats to their superiority can trigger rage or tantrums; moreover, they are emotionally icy and highly distrustful. We can see this distrust in Trump’s maligning of former cabinet members, his breaking with loyalists like Jeff Sessions, and his need to constantly replenish his stock of potential admirers and flatterers. This goes back to his role on The Apprentice (2004-2017), where he presented himself as the boss servile contestants had to address as if he were a king. His grandiosity is only matched by his serial assaults on others and his stoking of the tensions between the left and the right as well as between the races. Any psychoanalyst, I believe, would identify Trump’s binary think-

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ing as a result of some early maternal deprivation dating back to infancy.

However, as Maccoby points out in this article and other writings, narcissists can be productive and inspiring, and we all have narcissistic elements in our psychic structure. Figures like Napoleon, Gandhi, and Roosevelt determined the social agenda after leading their countries through crises and wars. While productive narcissists like Lincoln and Roosevelt used their judgment and moral character to lead the U.S. through turbulent times, Trump fails to go beyond his self-interest in securing his reelection, even risking the health of thousands of people by holding rallies where he wants to see sycophants crowd in at their own risk, perhaps never donning a mask (he, of course, doesn’t want to be sued by anyone who falls ill from the virus). One can only imagine Trump’s level of envy and rage when surveying the vast, incomparable “crowd sizes” of passionate mourners attending daily funeral rituals and protests in the name of George Floyd, a true martyr, not like the cheap imitation of one Trump believes himself to be.

As Jennifer Senior aptly wrote, unproductive narcissists like Trump “live in terror of being upstaged” (“This Is What Happens When a Narcissist Runs a Crisis,” New York Times, April 5, 2020). I don’t imagine that Dr. Maccoby would think Trump could be rehabilitated in the past or now to become an effective leader. I cannot think of a more cautionary tale than the fissure between Trump’s fantasy of himself and the way the world has now come to view him.

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