A little ‘Mein Kampf ’ lies in ‘Art of the Deal’

It was August 1924, and Adolf Hitler was pounding away on his Remington portable typewriter in a small prison cell outside Munich. He was writing Mein Kampf and reaching a climax of self-infatuation. Increasingly convinced of his messianic mission to save Germany — from Marxists, from economic misery, from the Jewish world conspiracy — Hitler spun his own self-image to historic and histrionic heights.

“At long intervals of human history,” he wrote, “it may occasionally happen that the practical politician and the political philosopher are one.” This combination of the man of action and the man of vision — Hitler had in mind Napoleon, Frederick the Great of Prussia and himself — was what made the great leader uniquely able to prevent his country’s “downfall” and “collapse.”

In short, the solution to Germany’s calamitous post-World War I misery was … Hitler. He understood that he had to reach past the nitty-gritty of desperate 1920s pocketbook issues to the Germans’ sense of themselves. Regaining an “inner feeling ” was the key, he explained, because only that could lead again to “national greatness.” Germans, humiliated by the war’s aftermath, craved self-respect even more than bread, Hitler rightly sensed. Sound familiar? While Donald Trump is no killer, he shares Hitler’s goal of national greatness. Like Hitler, Trump has a preternatural sense of the voters’ inner needs, not just their material distress. They want, even more than jobs and security, a sense of their value in an unmoored world.

And Trump offers the same route to achieving renewed greatness: himself. A born demagogue believes that only he has the skills needed to save the day.

Each man is (or was) skilled at setting up boogeymen: For Hitler, it was Jews, Marxists, the hated French and the “lying press.” For Trump, it is Muslims, Mexican illegals, the Islamic State terrorist group and the Chinese who are supposedly cleaning our clocks. When convenient, Trump includes the “dishonest” media.

Yet, like Hitler, Trump understands the importance of journalists to his political enterprise. In 1987, Trump wrote in the book he now holds up as a kind of Trump bible, The Art of The Deal: “If you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you. … Even a critical story … can be very valuable.”

Hitler said after a violent beer hall rally, “It makes no difference whatever whether they laugh at us or revile us. … The main thing is that they mention us.”

Comparing Trump to Hitler is slippery business. No one serious sees Trump as a genocidal psychopath seeking world conquest. Even so, the man in cell No. 7 was operating on raw instincts that, in the end, won him Germany.

In his book, Trump wrote: “It’s instincts, not marketing studies,” that drive the good deals. No deep thinker, he is as instinctive as a politician can be.

Eerily, those instincts are also winning the presidential candidate a large slice of American politics.