Donald Trump’s quest for royalty
Editor:
Even after the American Revolution had been won, the attraction of royalty still lingered in newly formed America.
There were reported rumours of plots to establish a new American aristocracy with George Washington at its head. To others, it seemed so counterintuitive, after just having fought and won a war of independence against a king, it prompted Benjamin Franklin to write, “To honour parents is reasonable, but to reward descendants for an accident of birth is not only groundless and absurd, but harmful to our posterity.”
America was born a republic, yet much about Donald Trump would dismay the Founding Fathers. He’s a vain, temperamental businessman, use to getting his own way and, if nothing else, he’s willing to disrupt and destroy the norms in Washington trying to get his way. He can, by just being crazy enough make the presidency irrelevant. The more his tweets are seen as baseless, the less the president matters. Historians struggle to Ànd historical parallel in a so unusual a Àgure as Trump.
There has been trouble in the White House before: Clinton’s peccadillo with Monika Lewinski and Nixon’s Watergate, though in Mr. Trump case what stands out is his chaotic executive skills and poor execution of his overall presidential duties.
The fact that a child of the president would agree to meet and accept (if any) high level information, intended to help his father’s chances for electoral success, from an representative of a hostile foreign power is unprecedented in the history of the United States. It certainly raises the reasonable question: Would a son of a clannish family and domineering father not tell his father that he was making such an important meeting? For him not to tell his father deÀes reasonable assumption.
The fact that the president put his children as both White House counsellors and managers of his private business interest, spurning all reputable advice to place his business interest into a blind trust, is also unprecedented in modern times.
Defenders of nepotism, and there are some, argue that close relationships are able to offer the president more candid advice than any outsider. They note that some 16 presidential children have worked in the White House as various private secretaries, a tradition started by John Quincy Adams the sixth president, himself a president’s son who was employed as an unpaid grounds-keeper. However, none were ever appointed as the president’s inner circle of advisors, and more importantly this kind of concentrated nepotism tends to breaks down badly, when there is a bad president.
When ordinary aides Ànd themselves in that unhappy situation, a sense of duty to their country, their ofÀce or to the rule of law may prompt them to question further actions or to even resign. Other aides may be strongly motivated by self-interest and a desire to keep their good name from being soiled by an unÀt boss.
But when a child wields power at the pleasure of the parent, Àdelity to country or the rule of law must vie with deeper, more visceral loyalties. And that tug of loyalty is even more painful with a parent like Donald Trump: A clannish, vengeful man who by his own admission would send his children off to school warning them, “Don’t trust anyone.”
In contrast, any hint of disrespect towards a Trump child provokes indignation from the president. Few Republicans exercise robust oversight on his daughter Ivanka or her husband Jarred Kushner; both serve as senior advisors. Kushner has the highest level of security clearance and wields inÁuence over dossiers from domestic economics to peace in the Middle East.
If anything, Donald Trump is seen as an electoral aberration, ill equipped for the job of president, petty, vain and vindictive to boot. However, what is happening is that some leaders and tycoons are not remotely interested in the democratic health of America and merely understand the way to reach the clannish Trump is to Áatter and treat his family members as America’s new royalty. Trump likes that. Jon Peter Christoff, West Kelowna