You were expecting Henry V? More fool you.
I’ve written too much about this loser already, and I expect there will be more to be heard from Brother Willie. For now, a brief gloss to defend the headline.
First: Trump is an Id (Incandescent/Driven) with outrageous father-hunger. An Is is negotiable; he wants to be liked. An Ic is implacable, which is why you’re more likely to find him in government or other inescapable spaces, rather than in business. An Id is a carney: He will say whatever it takes to get the deal done, and every scruple you find on the man will have been put there by conscious intention, rather than by long-standing habit of mind. Steve Jobs was Donald Trump with slightly better values. Look for this profile in memorable politicians from history – whose crimes we are most often only too happy to forget.
Id is a hardy reptile, and Trump is a very big lizard, owing to the outrages that made him what he is. Every bully on every playground is telling you awful truths about his homelife. That Trump has only gotten worse as a bully, all his life, is how you can measure the scale of his outrage. He is a man out of Sophocles, and in all the worst ways. I look forward to according him nothing but pity.
But Donald Trump is a Prom King, not an actual leader. He is Driven for Incandescent purposes, not the other way around, which means that how other people see him will always matter more to him than getting the job done. This is why he has been a serial failure in business, contrary to his blowhard claims: The claims matter a hell of a lot more to him than the failures.
Moreover, what people see as Trump being a leader is actually Trump being the Prom King, the social arbiter who sustains his false status by pre-emptively rejecting all potential challengers. He doesn’t have an actual following. What he has is a clientele in the Roman sense: People who crave his material and emotional favors, but who will abandon him as soon as the goody bags are gone. The Irreproachable is never more than one misstep away from being the Untouchable.
Actual leadership is a manifestation of the Driven temperament. A Dc will lead his people toward slow but steady success. A Di (like me) will lead people to explosive success or to equally-pyrotechnic failure. But a Ds will lead his followers to what they all will see as an ideal glory – “We few, we happy few” – even if they have to die in the quest.
Donald Trump cannot do any of that because the Driven virtues and values cannot be faked – no matter how much Scott Adams wishes they could. An NLP-informed salesman can hustle a rube. A PUA-enriched heel can bed a roundheeled gal. But only a truly Driven personality can convince people (especially Sociables) to set aside their own goals for his – enduringly, joyously and gratefully.
Donald Trump is a paper dragon, fearsome from a distance, flamingly incandescent up close – as we saw last night in Iowa. He is a fake hero – but actual leadership cannot be faked.
