By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, August 04, 2016
Donald Trump, the man who defied every political rule and
prevailed to win his party’s nomination, last week took on perhaps the most
sacred political rule of all: Never attack a Gold Star family. Not just because
it alienates a vital constituency but because it reveals a shocking absence of
elementary decency and of natural empathy for the most profound of human
sorrows — parental grief.
Why did Trump do it? It wasn’t a mistake. It was a
revelation. It’s that he can’t help himself. His governing rule in life is to
strike back when attacked, disrespected, or even slighted. To understand Trump,
you have to grasp the General Theory: He judges every action, every
pronouncement, every person by a single criterion — whether or not it/he is
“nice” to Trump.
Vladimir Putin called him brilliant (in fact, he didn’t,
but that’s another matter) and a bromance is born. A “Mexican” judge rules
against Trump, which makes him a bad person governed by prejudiced racial
instincts.
House Speaker Paul Ryan criticizes Trump’s attack on the
Gold Star mother — so Trump mocks Ryan and praises his primary opponent. On
what grounds? That the opponent is an experienced legislator? Is a tested
leader?
Not at all. He’s “a big fan of what I’m saying, big fan,”
attests Trump.
You’re a fan of his, he’s a fan of yours. And vice versa.
Treat him “unfairly” and you will pay. House speaker, Gold Star mother, it
matters not.
Of course we all try to protect our own dignity and
command respect. But Trump’s hypersensitivity and unedited, untempered
Pavlovian responses are, shall we say, unusual in both ferocity and
predictability.
This is beyond narcissism. I used to think Trump was an
eleven-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about ten years.
His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a
craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where
the world outside himself has value — indeed exists — only insofar as it
sustains and inflates him.
Most politicians seek approval. But Trump lives for the adoration. He doesn’t even
try to hide it, boasting incessantly about his crowds, his standing ovations,
his TV ratings, his poll numbers, his primary victories. The latter are most
prized because they offer empirical evidence of how loved and admired he is.
Prized also because, in our politics, success is
self-validating. A candidacy that started out as a joke, as a self-aggrandizing
exercise in xenophobia, struck a chord in a certain constituency and took off.
The joke was on those who believed that he was not a serious man and therefore
would not be taken seriously. They — myself emphatically included — were wrong.
Winning — in ratings, polls, and primaries — validated
him. Which brought further validation in the form of endorsements from
respected and popular Republicans. Chris Christie was first to cross the
Rubicon. Ben Carson then offered his blessings, such as they are. Newt Gingrich
came aboard to provide intellectual ballast.
Although tepid, the endorsements by Ryan and Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were further milestones in the normalization of
Trump.
But this may all now be jeopardized by the Gold Star
gaffe. (Remember: A gaffe in Washington is when a politician inadvertently
reveals the truth, especially about himself.) It has put a severe strain on the
patched-over relationship between the candidate and both Republican leadership
and Republican regulars.
Trump’s greatest success — normalizing the abnormal — is
beginning to dissipate. When a Pulitzer Prize–winning liberal columnist (Eugene
Robinson) and a major conservative foreign-policy thinker and former
speechwriter for George Shultz under Ronald Reagan (Robert Kagan)
simultaneously question Trump’s psychological stability, indeed sanity, there’s
something going on (as Trump would say).
The dynamic of this election is obvious. As in 1980, the
status quo candidate for a failed administration is running against an
outsider. The stay-the-course candidate plays his/her only available card —
charging that the outsider is dangerously out of the mainstream and
temperamentally unfit to command the nation.
In 1980, Reagan had to do just one thing: pass the
threshold test for acceptability. He won that election because he did,
especially in the debate with Jimmy Carter in which Reagan showed himself to be
genial, self-assured, and, above all, nonthreatening. You may not like all his
policies, but you could safely entrust the nation to him.
Trump badly needs to pass that threshold. If character is
destiny, he won’t.
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