THE TODDLER-IN-CHIEF

WHAT DONALD TRUMP TEACHES US ABOUT THE MODERN PRESIDENCY

DANIEL W DREZNER

University of Chicago Press, 282pp, £12

Until 63 million credulous Americans voted for him, very few Britons had heard of Donald Trump, a coarsegrained property magnate best known as the host of America’s version of The Apprentice. Now, every day, his temper tantrums, short attention span and other infantile antics make headlines, hence Daniel Drezner’s title. Like most other toddlers, says Drezner, Trump is ‘bad at building structures but fantastic at making a mess of existing ones’. And being a toddler, he expects others to clear up the mess.

In the New Statesman, the historian David Reynolds praised ‘this crisp, witty and highly readable philippic’, which echoes what Trump’s allies and aides have admitted: that the President acts like an immature child whom ‘they have to “manage” like “babysitters”.’ For instance he gets most of his information from television, which he watches for at least four hours most days. This is what prompts his notorious Tweets, ‘which is why aides often try – like responsible parents – to limit his screen time.’ But in the end, Reynolds quotes Drezner as saying, ‘the most important check on the Toddler-inChief will have to come from the American people’ at the next election.

In the Times, Justin Webb pointed out that egregious American Presidents are nothing new. Look at Nixon. But he described as ‘eerie’ this minatory sentence from the final chapter, which was written before the coronavirus pandemic and the trade war with China: ‘The idea of Trump coping with a true crisis – a terrorist attack, a global pandemic, a great power clash with China – is truly frightening.’