President Trump? That’s a hair-raising thought

The vanity, the arrogance, the lack of self-knowledge and the terror of impotence, they are all there in that thing on his head, that helmet, that pelt, that combed roadkill.

Six months from now the Americans will elect Trump as president. To find out why you can look at his policies, such as they are, or his hair, such as it is. Each will tell you the same thing.

His policies, such as they are, aren’t much, but they have the virtue of simplicity, which appeals to the voters he appeals to.

Those policies all derive from the slogan ‘Make America great again’, implying a return to the good old days when cars were big, Mexicans maids, blacks barely visible and the Chinese knew their place, which was in poverty. And in the Soviet Union there was a clearly defined national enemy to enjoy pointing an unbeatable military at.

To get back to this Eden, Trump plans to export immigrants, build a wall, slap tariffs on Chinese goods and demonise Islam. None of it will work as policy but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is working as rhetoric and will get him into the White House.

For obvious reasons Americans like the notion of making America great again and I have no doubt that Trump thinks that’s what he wants to achieve. But it isn’t. It’s just Trump’s conscious mind finding a way to justify a decision that his unconscious mind has already taken. The reason Trump wants to be president has nothing to do with America. He wants to be president only so as to be president.

In this, of course, he differs not one jot from Hillary Clinton or indeed from our own prime minister, who admits he wanted the job from the age of 10. At 10 years old John Key didn’t want to be prime minister because he believed that New Zealand needed to be put on the right true neoliberal path to prosperity. No, he wanted the job because he wanted the job. But at least he admits it. Trump doesn’t. Indeed, I doubt that Trump knows it.

Trump is 69, just one year shy of the Biblical allocation, an age at which the balloon of virility can go limp. And what better to reinflate that balloon than an injection of power? It’s like trading in an old wife for a young one. It’s compensation for a waning sperm count. And if you doubt that this is Trump’s real reason for wanting the presidency you have only to look at his hair. The vanity, the arrogance, the lack of selfknowledge and the terror of impotence, they are all there in that thing on his head, that helmet, that pelt, that combed roadkill.

The United States of America invented age denial and it remains the only place on Earth where the late Joan Rivers’ face could be considered a face. Granddad in any American sitcom has a full set of gull-white teeth and a thatch of hair like the shagpile in Trump Tower. Even when Reagan’s brain was short-circuiting, his quiff still stood an inch tall and dripped hair dye.

This is a society where the symptoms of age are the stamp of weakness rather than of wisdom. So deny it, fake it, deceive others if you can. Hence Trump’s hair. Just like his policies it is founded on nostalgia for a lost golden age.

‘‘Look,’’ he exclaimed at a rally, tugging on his forelock, ‘‘look, it’s all mine, it’s REAL.’’ That he bothers to say it shows he knows it isn’t so. His coiffure is as elaborate as an 18th century dandy’s wig. The places where his hair still grows are the places where my hair still grows, which is on the sides and the back. And there he lets it grow to prodigious length and then he flicks it up and over to the places where a young man’s hair grows, which are top and front. And there he curls it and bouffes it and sprays it into place and his forehead disappears and his pate disappears and, lo, he is young again.

It is truly remarkable that he can look in the mirror and think that this concoction looks OK, that it doesn’t look like roadkill, that it suggests his sperm are still doing press-ups.

And it is even more remarkable – and here is the real arrogance born of poverty of mind – that he imagines the voting public will also fall for it, will be deceived by this absurd confection into seeing him as in his prime and just the chap they need to lead the biggest army on the planet. But the most remarkable thing of all is that it’s working.