If I were a playwright rather than a critic, I would write a play, "The Anguish of Trump", that told a tragedy in the style of Camus' "Caligula". It would show his despair and anger at having lost the presidency, much worse than previous incumbents who have lost and can solace themselves for what were their accomplishments, such as Popi having waged the Persian Gulf War, which he believed was a good thing. Even Herbert Hoover was rehabilitated in that he produced a major set of recommendations about the future of government and policy after FDR eventually left office, and Nixon, unsuccessfully, tried to rehabilitate himself. But Trump can't rest on his laurels because he never cared for them and so is simply a loser, the ultimate loser, bereft of any honor and without any graciousness. He had said nothing for five days after Election Day and presumably just fumed, and then he lashed out with accusations of fraud, none of which supplied with evidence, even his lawyers admitting there had been no fraud, and then blaming anyone he could care to for his defeat, including the claim that the pharmaceutical companies developing the coronavirus vaccines had deliberately delayed the process so that the Democrats could win the election. Trump's measures were thwarted by the permanent civil service, who supervised their ballot counting, and by judges who Republican appointed judges decided that there were no merits to keeping the voting certified. It is worth adding that certification by the states had not been previously more than paperwork, the election decided by whatever unofficial result was offered by the AP or even back to the time when the trusted Walter Cronkite declared an election decided. So we go through the legal process with utmost punctiliousness and Trump comes short. Trump stews, as is the just result of his nature, perfectly appropriate in a tragedy that tells what it is to be a person without values and so left to drift or to be battered by events, him being without a compass whereby he might right himself, and so the subject of a very Camus like theme.
There are one term Presidents who were regarded as honorable even if their presidencies were regarded as having failed. Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were three, each honored for their post Presidential services or for what had been accomplished during their terms. Jimmy Carter did accomplish the Camp David Accords even if he did not solve the problem of the Iran hostages and economic stagflation. George H. W. Bush thought he deserved to be reelected because of his win against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, but was defeated by the economic recession. In their very modest way, every President totes up his accomplishments and failures, regarding himself as a steward of the nation who has moved in some incremental way to further the nation, allowing posterity to decide the judgment, every President accepting that ultimate fate.
Not so with Trump. He does not seem to be concerned with either programs or posterity, in which case he might have been judged as an eccentric president who wanted a wall and other expressions of racism, but had furthered the conservative agenda for judicial appointments and deregulation and a tax policy of its own keeping, but Trump did not care about post-presidency accolades, only his remaining in the limelight, the ultimate reality show host rather than something beyond flim-flam. Trump doesn’t care about his posterity, which is a brake on all Presidents, even Richard Nixon who believed he had made mistakes and paid the very ultimate penalty and thought for the rest of his life to rehabilitate himself. Rather, Trump does not perceive himself as in any way having disgraced himself by becoming the first president in history to seriously try to disrupt the legitimate succession, his supporters having tried to treat certification of state votes as a political rather than pro-forma process. The shame of it is that so many will consider whether the Biden presidency was illegitimate, fostering doubts in many elections to come. For shame to Trump, and so Trump is not just a one term President but one that tested its legal framework, and so spectacularly different from those other Presidents who, as best they could, did what they could. There is no semblance of trying to continue doing the government’s work, as Nixon appeared to do, and as Clinton continued to do while in his impeachment and trial hearings. He plays golf, does not visit a summit, has no concern with coronavirus except to claim that the vaccines were deliberately held off until the election, and fulminates, as does Rudy Guiliani, who had a reputation as a conservative politician and administrator and now just a clown for his very well paid efforts to try to overturn the election in the courts.
Michael Cohen said that he cut corners so as to suit the desires of his chief, however much his chief dumped him if he were no longer of service. Cohen went to jail while Trump, so far, has not. The same is true of the hangers on other political leaders. “Julius Caesar” is the name of Shakespeare's play, even though it is the tragedy of Brutus, whose undoing is that moral righteousness nevertheless leads to an assissination done by a friend. Brutus is guilty long before he kills himself. The same is true of Trump. Guilliani was clearly demeaned by his association with Trump. Also notable is the woman who is the head of the General Services Administration, one Emily W. Murphy by name, who still refused to allow the transition team to move forward even though she is supposed to enable it so long as the person is regarded as having apparently won the election, and that has been certainly true about Biden since four or five days after the election. She agreed to it only today and only because Trump had approved it, though for reasons that remain unclear. Who pressured Trump to unclog the logjam? More to Murphy’s point, What will her grandchildren make of her action, however briefly in her reflected spotlight? Has she been even just punctilious, much less a profile in courage, rather than simply the enabler of a misguided effort to thwart the electorate? Few of us are asked to play a role, and she muffed it, though think about the millions and millions of people who think the Biden election, to their minds, is illegitimate. Maybe they will forget about it, but i wonder about their angry and misconceived idea of American democracy and how they will linger in further elections. I hope that the Republicans will nominate people of at least some stature. Chris Christie, who has judged the time is now to shift sides and so recapture his sense of being a legitimate prospect for president, is thinking of that, and so is Ben Sasse, who had all along disliked the president and that now serves as a laurel wreath, never mind his position on issues.
Jump over the hedgerows that block you from thinking about what Trump is. Never mind whether there were legitimate claims to pursue in the courts, the consequences being that all the appeals were dismissed as ridiculous rather than worth discussing. Never mind that it did take 39 days or so for Gore v. Bush was settled, in that there were real issues as to what happened in the Florida count. If Trump had been an up right person he could have made a speech to the American population two or three days after the election saying that there were serious reasons not to concede the election and that the courts would straighten it out and that the American people should be patient. But that is not Trump's way. He goes in hiding or in the golf course and intrigues about what he can do to overthrow the election. That is patent evidence that he is not being gracious much less statesmanlike. There is a reason for the civility whereby Senators and Congresspeople conduct themselves. It is a way to follow procedure and not become headstrong. In fact, the United States in its deliberations in public are more gentlemanly than is true in the House of Commons or the Knesset. Just not Trump.
In fact, Trump is instead an existential figure, sort of like Camus’ Meursault, even if having been arisen to a major figure, something Meursalt never did, and wouldn’t have done except for the fluke of the 2016 election. Trump is, unlike Meursault, who has no feeling, is instead filled with feeling, but is bereft of the values and the compassion that Durkheim and Hume would say are the essential qualities of life. To apply David Riesman’s “The Lonely Crowd”, Trump is neither inner directed, which means a person has a moral point of view, or is outer-directed, which means a person responds to the views of many around him, but he is without direction, which means pointless, and no full person can be that way. Greed and celebrity are not enough to make a person whole, even if cynics would say that sex, drugs and rock and roll are all that make a life. Trump is to be taken at his word in that, as the commentators say, Trump is “transactional”, which means that words are nothing except so as to gain a point rather than to have a point that gives a person a compass. To see Trump is to see people like him in their existential nakedness and that is a very strange and mesmerizing experience because it describes something human that is less than human rather than someone freed of one’s ballast, however much Trump champions are intrigued at the idea of being freed from what ordinary people have and do. We will soon see it past, but the spectre of it will continue, I am afraid, because such a spectacle is engrossing.