TO THE READER
Trump supporters probably recognize every quality described in this essay already. They have watched him closely, often for years, and many understood these dimensions of his character long before his critics were willing to consider them. This essay is therefore not primarily written for them.
It is written for the Trump hater.
I do not use that description for everyone who opposes Donald Trump. Disagreement is not hatred. A person can reject his policies, dislike his conduct, question his judgment or vote against him without surrendering fairness. I am speaking instead to people whose hostility has hardened into a certainty that Trump possesses no intelligence, courage, compassion, accomplishment or redeeming quality at all.
If critical thinking means anything, it must include the willingness to examine evidence that complicates our preferred conclusion. It is easy to analyze an opponent’s failures. The harder test is whether we can recognize his strengths without feeling that we have betrayed our own beliefs.
I am not asking the reader to approve of Donald Trump. I am asking the reader to become curious about him.
Keep an open mind. Consider the whole man rather than the caricature. Allow the possibility that a person can be deeply flawed and historically extraordinary at the same time. Perhaps that small opening small will tone down some of the hatred and let in a little appreciation for the history we are witnessing.
A FRESH LOOK AT AN AMERICAN PHENOMENON
I have written about Donald Trump before. But it has been several years, and he has survived, returned and accomplished so much since then that I decided it was time to take another look at him.
What follows is a shortened and condensed version of more than fifty pages of developing thoughts, notes and research. Even those fifty-plus pages would have been considerably longer had I fully fleshed out every trait. There is enough material here for a book—but my purpose is narrower: to assemble essential characteristics that explain why Donald Trump has been so persistently underestimated.
This is not intended to prove that Trump is flawless. He plainly is not. He can be boastful, abrasive, impulsive, repetitive and needlessly insulting. He has made mistakes in business and government. Some of his habits annoy even people who admire him. But admitting those qualities should not require us to accept the opposite caricature: that he is stupid, incompetent or merely lucky.
That caricature has prevented many intelligent people from understanding one of the most consequential figures of our time. Again and again, Trump’s enemies have predicted his political death. Again and again, they have mistaken a setback for an ending. They judge the latest round; Trump keeps fighting the entire match.
The thesis of this essay is simple: whatever else one thinks of Donald Trump, betting against him has repeatedly proved to be a very expensive mistake.
There are hundreds of thousands of extremely wealthy Americans, and there have been many times that since the nation was founded. Yet only forty-five individuals in all of history have served as president before Trump began his second, nonconsecutive presidency. He became both the forty-fifth and forty-seventh president— not because there have been forty seven men but because presidential terms are numbered separately when they are interrupted. Only Grover Cleveland had previously returned after losing office. Trump also became the oldest person ever inaugurated as president.
He turned inherited wealth and opportunity into a worldwide name. Then he placed that name, his fortune, his family and his reputation into the service of a political mission. Long before he ran, he told interviewers that he preferred his business life but might seek the presidency if the country became bad enough. Eventually he concluded that it had.
How did he get from Queens to the White House, lose it, and then return? Accomplishments alone cannot answer that. We have to examine the formation, instincts, appetites, weaknesses and unusual strengths of the man himself.
