The Weekly Screed (#897)

The Elmer Gantry of Jamaica Estates

by David Benjamin

“… if he is interested in assuring the public that he can see beyond his narrow politicking on immigration to tackle truly urgent problems, here’s a starter list…”

                                — New York Times editorial, 4 Feb. ‘19

MADISON, Wis. — Wait, wait. Stop right there!

Just before Donald Trump’s second (tremendous, unbelievable, fantastic) State of the Union speech, the Times editorial board (see above) issued a slate of eight urgent policy proposals the president might want to tackle this year.

I hesitate to charge this august panel of distinguished journalists with stupidity. But no other word — except, possibly, “cynicism” — applies.

The day Chuckles walked into the Oval Office, the concept of policy became irrelevant. Trump does not understand what “policy” is, unless it’s about flood insurance at Mar-a-Lago. And if he figured it out, he wouldn’t like it.

The operative word in the above sentence is “like.” What does Donald like? This is the question the Times editorialists — and all of us — should be asking all the time. Today, America — at least the American presidency — is all about Donald.

Notwithstanding the Times’ brief onset of pious obtusity — addressing the president as though he were a sentient adult primate — the press has applied itself doggedly, if erratically, to the question of our every hour and every day. What does Donald like? What’s going on beneath that tortuously teased shock of platinum/orange Barbie-hair? 

Never before have journalists, pundits, commentators, talking heads and coffee-shop know-it-alls (this is my category) made psychology so prominent as an aspect of public affairs. In the past, a reporter who dared quote even an expert’s analysis of the presidential psyche risked his journalistic reputation — even in reference to a president as nakedly Freudian as Bill Clinton.

Now, it’s a slow news day when the term, “malignant narcissist” fails to worm its way into the news cycle. Journalists regale their readers relentlessly with armchair speculations that parse Trump’s language, pejoratives, misspellings and capitalization. There’s no end of examining for some deeper meaning his piques and quirks, his hairspray brand, his endless neckties, his Sharpie fetish, his tiny hands and and TV-viewing regimen, his tweets, tantrums and impulses, especially his impulses — all in the service of somehow sussing out the essence of a “leadership style” that has no leader. The media, in search of substance behind the tan, evoke the child in the joke who digs through a heap of horse manure expecting to find a pony.

There’s no pony.

A few days before the State of the Union speech, Katie Rogers wrote a Trump piece in the Times far more cogent than her earnest editors’ policy prescriptions. It covered Trump’s obsession with personal grooming, including his time-consuming coiffure (which he does himself). Rogers’ story, in any other administration, would be seen as little more than trivia and a mild embarrassment for its author. In this regime, however, chiefs of state the world over, from Caracas to Moscow to Cairo and Beijing, know full well that learning how Trump does his hair and what he does while it dries is far more revealing of the state of the American union than anything Chuckles might blurt about nuclear proliferation, economics or counterterrorism.

Vanity is the guiding light of this White House. It’s customary for West Wing workers to say that they work “at the pleasure of the president.” Never before was this so true because never before have we witnessed a president so obsessed and so crippled by the pursuit of profoundly personal pleasure.

The latest example of this dilemma was the announcement, immediately after he had completed his State of the Union ordeal (applauded mockingly by Nancy Pelosi), that he would be jetting off to Texas to mount one of his ego-erecting rallies.

These crowds gather, truly and purely, to serve the president’s pleasure. Looking out on a sea of white faces under red baseball caps, he spins — without a qualm of contradiction — combative fantasies about horrors and goblins that exist nowhere in reality nor even in his infinitely fungible “beliefs,” but to elicit applause, to trigger cheers, to lead idiot chants, to incite fear, hate and anger, to feast from a vast trough of raw emotion.

The Times may pretend that Trump is a rational actor questing after policy solutions. His crowds know better — that he is a creature of undiluted emotion, most of it spontaneous, ugly, transgressive and deeply needy. He needs those crowds, and they, in turn, need him, in a way that reminds me of tent shows and megachurches.

One of the distinct developments in American religiosity is the concept, especially among small, breakaway sects in the evangelical movement, of a “personal savior,” a Jesus with whom each worshipper cultivates a private bond. The believer conjures a Christ who serves at the believer’s particular pleasure. The believer does the same for his idiosyncratic Christ. Although the believer might stand amongst a throng of ten thousand hymn-singing, chanting, swooning and babbling fellow faithful, he is communing in a customized cocoon with a unique Jesus monogrammed with his initials, imbued with his attitudes and prejudices, loves, hates, friends, enemies, angels, monsters and food allergies.

Likewise, for the ten thousand-odd souls at the rally in El Paso on Monday, there will not be one Trump. There will be ten thousand personal and particular Trumps.

I did a little research into the great charismatic evangelists in our history, from Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson to Billy Graham and Oral Roberts, in search of a Trump analog. None of Donald’s seeming forbears matched, because each in his or her own way was sincere. The great Christian spellbinders had genuine faith and they cared about the people in the congregations. As self-absorbed and megalomaniac as they were — and they were — they were each and all rooted in a quest for the salvation of their followers.

Elmer Gantry was a fictional character. Donald Trump is the real deal. Like Elmer, he only makes a show of caring for anyone and… what of salvation? It’s like “policy.” He doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

Trump expects adoration from his congregation but has nothing to return beyond a mess of pipe dreams, catch-phrases and buncombe. He could offer more. After all, he’s the president. But that’s the point. He’s the PRESIDENT!!! 

Everyone remembers the story of the loaves and fishes and what Jesus did. Given similar circumstances and a nice big crowd, what would Donald do? 

I know. Too easy.

He’d order Kellyanne to make him a huge fish sandwich. Then he’d eat it in his car and complain that no one brought any tartar sauce.