What might Donald Trump do in the future, post-presidency?

With Joe Biden likely to become president, thoughts turn naturally to the near future, specifically the role of ex-president Donald Trump. Among those who regard Trump as a sort of cancer on the American body politic, there is some optimism about the Republican party — which did have electoral success while the boss was losing — being able to move on and reacquire something like its normal identity. Others are obviously afraid that Trump will remain the GOP's unchallenged prince, and may even be able to pull a Grover Cleveland in 2024.

I don't think there's much chance of the latter. My interpretation of Trump as a personality is that he is a sort of concentrated product of the deep philosophy of American salesmanship. As far as we know he has never cultivated a mechanical skill or displayed any impulse toward personal creativity (as opposed to, say, setting managerial and taste standards for business properties). We know he is not in the Lincoln bedroom in the evenings giving secret mandolin concerts or cooking crepes Suzette for select groups of comrades. Trump is in this regard very different from other ultra-rich American presidents, like Herbert Hoover, an engineer, or George Washington, a detail-oriented gentleman farmer.

Everything Trump has, and everything he has accomplished, comes from talk. He refuses to let words be put into his mouth by anyone else — by now everyone is familiar with the dance steps he does when it is suggested he ought to denounce something or acknowledge limits on his conduct, although they do not usually connect this to his business background. He has no superego exercising editorial control of his voice; if you are willing to do that, in the Trumpian mind, it is only a short step to letting others determine your values and objectives. That's for losers!

These habits carried him further than anyone would have thought possible, and hints at the power of a selfstyled elite “dealmaker's” exchange-based approach to life (although, of course, the salesman must avoid explicit talk of exchange: he must persuade the customer, and himself be convinced, that the sale is a pure “win” for both parties). We will, I think, have to learn to recognize the Trump personality type and concentrate less on Trump the person as a threat or an anomaly. His instinctive, somewhat impulsive approach is surely adaptable to any political philosophy, even though in 20 years it will be a mystery what anyone saw in the man. Most politicians aren't really very good salesmen. Now we know what can happen when someone from the world of hotel-hustling takes up politics as a hobby.

He got what he wanted: he became president, a title that, in the United States, follows one around for life as if it were an earldom, and which carries much more social power. The value of a second term in office to such a person is questionable, and most presidents quickly find other ways to fill their days when their time in the Oval Office ends. Trump is, after all, 74 years old. We forget this — ironically, because of sales technique.

The energy required for Trump to project unceasing vigour, to be the same fountain of chatter and blather and sardonic ebullience in front of every single camera must be enormous. If an ex-athlete could pull this off we'd attribute it to a lifetime of excruciating discipline. Trump's a tubby golf enthusiast who, perhaps aided by a strong constitution, absolutely always seems to be the same person.

If he won in 2024 he would be 82 when he finally wrapped everything up. It has always been widely remarked that Trump may not want to be president, although he wants to win, and he certainly discovered that exercising executive power in politics is not one little bit like exercising it as the CEO of Trump Inc. Whatever joy he was able to suck from the presidency came from the TV-star aspect of the job.

It will be much simpler for him to become a talk radio host, or its digital-age panmedia equivalent, and if he does something like that he will remain a powerful force in American politics — perhaps more powerful than Rush Limbaugh became in the 1990s, or Tucker Carlson now, but no more than that. And even these careers tend to be somewhat fleeting, or their peaks are. (Could Trump host a chat program without it involving unbearable amounts of butt-smooching and endless paeans to his leadership? One assumes the man cannot make boring content if he tried, but even fans would tune out from that sort of thing soon enough.)

The quest for a second term would require Trump to spend endless hours in evolving arguments over his first — and I find myself thinking that we perhaps need to go back and study how old Grover Cleveland, who is little more than a bundle of a couple dozen disconnected facts in my own mind, handled this. Trump caught the republic (and particularly the GOP) unprepared this time. Arguments over how he made his fortune or how much tax he paid proved to be no obstacle, since a rich man's wealth speaks for itself.

No doubt Trump will be attracted to the idea of a comeback, but comebacks are cherished by sports fans precisely because everything is difficult in a different way the second time around, and age can't be negotiated away. “The Art of the Deal” with time is that you lose.

TRUMP WILL BE ATTRACTED TO THE IDEA OF A COMEBACK.