The Fall of the Mad King
Five hours ago my wife hands me a note scribbled on the back of an envelope. Biden wins Nevada! Enough electoral votes to secure the 2020 presidential victory! The moment has been anticipated for a long time. So we hi-five, do the power bump and reflect briefly on what has just happened. Biden, a democrat, has won the greatest popular vote in the history of American politics.
As deftly summarized by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd… “After accepting in 2015 that he had missed his moment, that he was too white and too old and too male and too befogged by grief over Beau, the soon-to-be 78-year-old has seen his moment come back around.
“F Scott Fitzgerald was wrong. There are second acts and what could be more American than that?”
There are hundreds of theories of how this happened, but little consensus of the prevailing causes. Here’s my theory: Rope-a-Dope.
I think Joe Biden was seriously underestimated.
In two previous tries for the White House, he had been decidedly underwhelming. He had no outstanding liabilities, but neither did he have any particular strengths. No one seemed excited about him. They were twenty candidates applying for the same position with little to tell the apart. Joe Biden’s reason for trying one more time to capture the presidency of the United States was:
“I’m entering this race to stop Donald Trump from becoming President of the United States. This race is nothing less than for the soul of America. It may be the most important race in our lifetime.”
Those are almost the identical words that democratic operative James Carville, nearly fifty years ago, in his famous War Room address had used to rally his rapt, dewey eyed volunteers behind a relatively unknown, but charismatic man from Hope (Bill Clinton). Incredibly, it worked then (with the help of a thousand other things) but could lightning strike twice? We’ll never know. What we do know, is that just months ago for some unexpected reason, the stars began aligning behind Joe Biden. The tipping point was the South Carolina primary. On the verge of being eliminated, the blacks, grateful for the Yeomen-like service Joe Biden rendered, as Vice President for their hero Barack Obama, answered Nancy Pelosi’s clarion call, for 11th hour democratic unity, to stave off the common enemy — Donald Trump: a mighty blue wall, such as rarely been seen, rose up, sweeping all before it, one by one, Joe Biden toppled his opponents. Overwhelmingly, a party on the brink of dissolution, became an unstoppable blue wave.
And Joe Biden, beneficiary of an unthinkable blue wave, became the people’s choice! Like Lazarus, rising from the dead, Joe Biden found something he had been searching for all his life. He found meaning, he found purpose; he found a calling — a calling not rooted in the hokey, small town values that had been drilled into him in Sunday school in Scranton, Pennsylvania, values he had obediently unquestionably followed, but values forged in the smithy of his soul: by the tragic death’s, when he was 28 of his young wife and daughter; by the gut-wrenching tragedy 20 years later of his beloved son, Beau (from brain cancer), a few years ago. It was too much to recover from that (in his late seventies), plow forward, and mount a third campaign — against ferocious odds — for the Presidency of the United States. But Beau — who had a special relationship with his father (“they finished each others sentences”), whose faith in his father and belief in his abilities knew no bounds, begged his father not to quit. And it was Beau who prevailed. Beau was dying but running, yet again, for President was a way, the only way to preserve his memory, to give meaning to the short life and death of his beloved son. Whatever the case may be, once Biden reentered the race, things began falling into place. He stopped being a gaffe machine. He stopped meandering when he spoke. He stopped looking as if he were on the verge of tears. In their first televised major debate, Biden not only held his own, but he clearly outperformed his over eager rival who seemed to be looking for an early knockout. The pendulum had started to surge the other way. For the first time, Biden raised more money for his campaign than Trump. For the first time Trump stopped dominating the headlines. From the beginning, polls showed a preference in the popular vote for Biden. It was a preference that no matter what Trump did or did not do, it hardly moved.
As election day drew near, Biden’s lead swelled to nearly 10 points, an absolutely incredible lead: Even more incredible was Trump’s indifference, the demeanor of supreme confidence in the final outcome.
November 5/6/2020
People are dancing and singing in the street. Is it real? Has the mad king at long last been defeated? That’s what the headlines of The New York Times is proclaiming. Unbelievably Trump — true to form — is refusing to concede, refusing to grant closure, refusing apparently to accept reality! So is this one more stunt, one last, desperate attempt to stall the inexorable hand of fate, one more eleventh hour plot to bend reality to his autocratic will? It’s November 12, nine days after the election and still no closure! For the past fifty years I’ve lived in New York, written about New York, studied New York, and earned my living as a professional psychotherapist. I have a thousand thoughts about Donald Trump (some of them are even positive). There’s never been a politician who gets in your face as much as Donald Trump. It’s time to say what I think. To speak plainly, as non-politically as I can, without bells and whistles, bearing in mind I am not a pundit, an expert (and have no aspiration to be one). No one except me and my family care what I think. That said, I stand behind what I say. I’m putting it in the form of a hypothetical Q&A (in which I am both the interviewer and the interviewee).
Q: O.K so what’s in store for us?
A: If you are referring to missiles in the air — a nuclear confrontation — I don’t think so. I don’t think human blood, human sacrifice is Trump’s cup of tea. He’s had a number of opportunities to bring things to a nuclear boiling bowl and each time (wisely) he’s backed off.
Q: Why do you refer to Trump as “the mad king”?
A: I got that from Bill Maher, who I think has one of the most original comic minds in America. It conjures for me a deranged fiddler who somehow has cast a speed over sixty million otherwise wise, sane people who are blindly following him. The only problem is the mad king never expected to win. I don’t think he wanted to win. I don’t think he ever had a plan to stop whatever momentum Biden had. He wanted the credit for order and some semblance of tranquility to be restored to the public domain. He may not be exciting, but is he predictable enough? In fifty years in the public eye, he has not been the target of a major scandal. He has never been indicted. He has never been in the cross hairs of a lurid sex scandal. He has never been the proponent of a major public health bill (like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that was DOA (dead on arrival)). To an unusual degree, Joe Biden has maintained a high likability factor. And it seems to be just what the doctor ordered (for America). The more agitated, the more rattled Trump becomes, the more centered Biden becomes.
Q: OK. If Trump never really wanted to be President why is holding on to it for dear life?
A: It is an amazing thing to see, I know. All I can say is that Trump drank the kool aid and became an instant addict. The order of power, immediate gratification, an exhilarating and variably positive feedback were something he had never experienced. He saw no reason to give it up.
Q: What do you think was Trump’s greatest weakness?
A: It wasn’t any one thing. People kept waiting — now that he had won the presidency to clean up his act, to take some responsibility, some accountability for the sixty odd million people who not only followed, but are loyal to him. But he never did. He acted as though, if they voted for him, it was up to them to deal with the consequences of their behavior. He was flattered by their votes, but he refused to feel obligated.
Q: Do you think Trump was a patriot?
A: No. As indicated he felt patriotism, in all its forms, was “for suckers”. He arranged for a family doctor friend of his father to get him medically excused from having to serve in Vietnam because of (suddenly discovered bone spur) here the nickname “Danny Bonespur’s”. He arranged (by paying them for someone to take his SAT for him (by pretending to be him)). By his own admission, he never read a book in his life. According to linguistic analysis, his working vocabulary rarely exceeds the sixth grade level.
For many people (myself included) what is now disturbing is that Trump does not care what other people think. So long as you do not laugh at him, you can disagree with him all you want. But you cannot laugh at him. If you do, he will double down (just to spite you). He will go to any length to be defiant, to double down, to get in the last word.
In this week’s New Yorker, David Remnick deftly summarized thee challenges ahead:
“As President, Trump never seemed to realize how much wreckage, political and spiritual, he was inflicting on the country. Nor did he care. For him, the Presidency was a show starring himself, and everyone had to watch. The job came with a big house, a motorcade, a fabulous plane, limitless business opportunities, and, best of all, round-the-clock media attention. At a rally late in the campaign, in the Lehigh Valley, in Pennsylvania, he glanced at an eighteen-wheeler that was parked nearby. ‘You think I could hop into one of them and drive it away?’ he said with a smirk. ‘I’d love to just drive the hell out of here. Just get the hell out of this. I had such a good life. My life was great.’ To the end, it was all about him.”
Gerald Alper
Is the author of
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Patient
Psychodynamic Studies of the Creative Mind
His new book is
God and Therapy
What We Believe
When No One is Watching
