Post #160: The George Washington Test

14 Nov. 2024

     Americans have idolized their marble-bust son of Cincinnatus for so long that there would be little point, at this late stage, in reopening his file. He became the father of a new nation, and whether his greatness has been exaggerated is a moot point. We may remember a legend more than a man, but let it stand: all societies need their myths. A more interesting question, 250 years later, is wherein his claim to fame really consisted.

     By most accounts, what distinguished Washington was not any great genius or brilliance that made him tower above his contemporaries. Nor can his record, in the war of independence particularly, be called spotless, or his triumph entirely self-made. (It was a close call in which others, even other nations, had a significant share, as is well known.) Where he did shine, indisputably, was in his ability to represent and unify a nascent people, and to tolerate beside himself men in many ways more gifted than he, who could supply what he lacked. Neither Jefferson nor Hamilton were easy characters to get along with (who is), and there were rife tensions between them that eventually broke out into open conflict; but Washington was able, in his first term anyway, to keep them in line and by his side, albeit with considerable difficulty.

     I have spelled out at length why I do not see a Washington in Mr. Trump, and neither do I see a Hamilton or a Jefferson in Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy. (I know nothing of their possible rivalries or divergences in vision.) But they have their qualities, no doubt, so let me propose a simple test that would prove wrong, if it were successfully passed over the coming months and years, much that I fear about Mr. Trump. Let us see whether he really can and will let these two iconoclasts do their thing for the full term, without removing them for attracting too much attention or even stealing his show (I don’t mean in fact, necessarily, but to Mr. Trump’s mind). If the arrangement lasts the full term, or even a substantial portion of it, enough to leave a major imprint, then I will gladly revisit and correct accordingly my impression of Mr. Trump. In that eventuality I might even be willing to concede that only a rogue character like he would have had the nerve for so radical an experiment in reinventing the mechanics of government—if that is indeed what lies ahead, and not just a lot of smoke and mirrors.

     My wider, more philosophical (as opposed to narrowly political) point is that we cannot any of us possess personally all the qualities needed for making full sense of the world, and acting on it. We are all lopsided in some way, and that goes for the individuals in question as much as for anyone. But what the two newcomers certainly do have, in stark contrast to Mr. Trump, are sharp, clear, highly analytical and disciplined minds. Whatever one may credit him with, I will not yield on my diagnosis that Mr. Trump is sorely lacking in this quality, which is what makes him so hard for me to listen to. I will grant, by the same token, that he may have other qualities that are not visible to me because of how he talks and acts.

     We all get different impressions of the events around us, depending on what we are looking for, and what I see (and don’t see) is beset as much by blind spots as anyone else’s perspective. Politics is particularly fraught in this way: in what I’ve called the kaleidoscope effect (#15, 68), even the slightest shift in angle produces an unrecognizably different picture, indeed very nearly a different political reality altogether. If we cannot appreciate how much depends on angle, without implying any deficiency, then we must suspect, reciprocally, that the other side is suffering from some kind of delusion, or even derangement. Such charges are flung about very carelessly these days, and I have not always kept the distance I should; but I am trying, at least, in my better moments.

     From what I gather, not first-hand but from those close enough to know, Mr. Trump does not have a very promising record of getting along with high-profile appointees. There is great fanfare at the outset, then a cooling off, then a sudden dismissal, often from one day to the next. It may be that senior soldiers, who bring their own kind of haughtiness to interactions with civilians, are not the best witnesses to Mr. Trump’s character, especially once the relationship has gone sour, but the pattern is not easily dismissed. Nevertheless, when I try to look at these situations from the other side, it is not so hard to imagine how the leader of a political rebel movement would clash irreconcilably with establishment figures who consider themselves “the adults in the room.”

     Trump’s ideas of loyalty may resemble far too closely for comfort those of a mobster, and his opposites were not wrong to insist that they had higher obligations than to him, namely to the law, the Constitution, and the people. If one considers rebellions against the establishment to come with their own kind of legitimacy, however, Trump’s side of the story should perhaps not be dismissed quite as readily as I too have been inclined to dismiss it. We all have an interested perspective on this, depending on where we stand, not the dispassionate and fully informed one that we would need to made truly even-handed judgments. I continue to be very wary of Trump, based on what I’ve read about him; I just wonder whether there is perhaps another way to see him that I have been missing.

     At any rate, however one may judge the past and however skeptical one may be of better outcomes in the future, let the past be set aside for now and the possibility kept open that this time will be different, perhaps because these two latest “political sons,” are more congenial to their godfather than the previous set. They have POTUS before them, after all, while he is dealing with the richest man in the world, a distinction bound to impress him more than anything else, perhaps, never mind the boyish fantasies that they clearly have in common. (To call them boyish is not to dismiss them: the girls have their games too, so why shouldn’t the boys, whatever I may think of them personally? Neither cars nor Mars are the least bit attractive to me, but that is my business, nobody else’s.)

     What a blessing it is (or is not) to be living in an age that has such characters for its heroes, is another matter. I am not inclined, personally, to make a hero of Mr. Musk, let alone a superman. The Marvelization of the world these past fifteen years looks utterly infantile to me, and an evident overcompensation to boot. (That even Jordan Peterson, previously not easily suspected of infantilism, should take up this lingo and speak of “X-Men” worries me not a little.) I would not dream of judging anyone by his net worth, and in this determination I know the entire line of profound human thinkers to be behind me in battle formation, from the Buddha to Jesus, from Lao Tzu to Socrates, from every saint and sage I’ve ever heard of to every great mind on historical record. (Ayn Rand does not make the cut, I’m afraid, and anything from these past thirty years must be excluded as being still far too fresh to count.)

     I’ve contemplated at some length the hero with a thousand faces, and Nietzsche’s overman, and neither looks anything like Mr. Musk to me. The canonization of the ultimate nerd as if he were the savior of mankind is itself a pathology of our age, not a recommendation. That being said, however, Mr. Musk is a remarkably intelligent person to get so close to power, and so is Mr. Ramaswamy. They may not be Socrateses by a long stretch, but they are certainly cogent and coherent; they can give a proper account of themselves, in the Socratic sense, as their new boss—the anti-philosopher personified—cannot even begin to do. The combination of their respective strengths may do some real good, that is what I will say, no more and no less. Whatever gold pans out, I will applaud sincerely, but I will not swoon or do my salutations to these secular Suns of the twenty-first century. I would consider it blasphemous.

PS: The sneering has already begun, rather predictably, about Mr. Trump supposedly making Musk his poodle, and humiliating him in public by saying such things as “I can’t get rid of him: Elon won’t go home.” The trouble with this all-too familiar line of attack is that Trump’s sense of humor just does not carry with his political enemies, while his friends seem to understand it much better. At this early stage, at the very least, Mr. Trump could not possibly wish to alienate Musk; he has far too much to lose himself. If there were to be another high-profile falling out, Trump’s image could get very badly hurt, because Musk’s standing is so high not with the Beltway crowd, but with Trump’s own core voters. Given a choice between their two heroes, they would not all break for the President, to say the least.

     I would suspect, for what it’s worth, that Mr. Trump genuinely admires his Elon, in a way he never did his establishment appointees. And Musk in his turn, for reasons that go beyond money, probably sees more to respect in Trump than his high office alone. Maybe it is purely a calculated relationship, an arranged political marriage not a romance, but I have been swayed too often by the narrative that makes a monster of Mr. Trump. What do I, what can I know of the heart of Donald Trump, of his capacity for friendship and loyalty, and how dare I be so presumptuous as to say that it is not genuine? Let the two figure it out, and we shall see what happens.

     As for the fact that the vaunted DOGE will be extra-governmental, another cause for much contemptuous sneering, how could it be otherwise, if the whole point is to subject government structures to a radical review? Whatever Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy come up with will obviously need to be adopted as the President’s agenda and pushed by his allies through Congress—but surely that is the plan, if Trump is serious (while if he is not, no formal position held by Musk and Ramaswamy would make any difference). The potential reinvention of government is a giant threat to established interests, obviously, and we should be prepared for a howl of correspondingly gargantuan proportions. At the same time, it may also turn out to be the most remarkable and exciting thing to come out of this presidency. I am not saying it will be so, but I would not withhold my admiration if it were.