President Donald Trump: Precursor or Potential Dictator?

        First and foremost, Donald Trump is a consummate entrepreneur.  Of the entrepreneur, the economist Joseph Schumpeter explained, “We shall understand… that we do not observe… the emergence of all those affective traits which are the glory of all other kinds of social leadership.  Add to this the precariousness of the economic position… of the individual entrepreneur…, and the fact that when his economic success raises him up socially he has no cultural tradition or attitude to fall back on, but moves about in society as an upstart, whose ways are readily laughed at….”

        Doesn’t Schumpeter in this brief description anticipate Mr. Trump to a “T”?  Consider the President-elect’s multiple bankruptcies, his lack not only of good taste, but also of intellectual ideas and moral underpinnings.  Consider how his opponents and the media laughed at him from the announcement of his candidacy until the evening of November 8^th.  He is indeed the epitome of the entrepreneur.

       Now let’s turn to political philosopher Paul Berman’s best known book, Terror and Liberalism (2004).  Reflecting upon Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin, he writes, “The Leader was a superman.  He was a genius beyond all geniuses.  He was the man on horseback who, in his madness, incarnated the deepest of all the anti-liberal impulses, which was the revolt against rationality.”

     Continues Berman, “And because this person exercised a power that was more than human, he was exempt from the rules of moral behavior, and he showed his exemption, therefore his divine quality, precisely by acting in ways that were shocking.”

       Doesn’t Berman in this brief description anticipate Mr.Trump the politician to a “T”?  Consider the President-elect’s mocking of a disabled journalist, the video of his locker room admission of sexual assaults, his defense of bankruptcy and tax avoidance as “good business,” and his threat to lock up his opponent.  Nearly half the voters in the national election found their candidate’s behavior acceptable, perhaps even laudable, and certainly not shocking. And they swallowed his irrational promises, his revolt against rationality, whole.

        A colleague of mine, an American expat working in investment banking in Hamburg, commented to me after the election, “Trump is like all the European populists, who of course can not deliver on their promises.  The real danger is what could follow Trump if his voters are disappointed and turn to an even more radical alternative.”

       This European perspective on Mr. Trump raises an interesting conundrum, no resolution of which is comforting for the larger half of the electorate who voted for Mrs. Clinton and the liberal status quo. 

       On one hand, Trump may aspire to the stature of “Leader,” ala Berman’s characterization.  Such an aspiration demands ruthlessness.  The wall must be built, the undocumented expelled, the Chinese sanctioned.  Or failing these daunting challenges, he must give us war.

       On the other hand, he may revert to his entrepreneurial instincts.  Having launched this newest ‘Trump Enterprise,’ he may prefer touring his 17 golf courses, leaving a vacuum in Washington to be filled by a new and more vicious Dick Cheney.

       Donald Trump, consummate entrepreneur and potential demigod, has unleashed the whirlwind.  Whether he chooses to ride it or cede the seat to someone much worse remains to be seen, starting in 2017.

        We will be wise to enjoy this Christmas season.  We may not see its like again for a while.