Bob Schwartz

When the following note was written, Trump was still in the first year of his first term. So much has happened since that we may forget that Trump 1.0 was just an earlier model of Trump 2.0. I was then speculating that things could be worse with a smarter and more skilled demagogue. What I didn’t imagine was that the next demagogue wouldn’t be smart, skilled, knowledgeable, attractive, or capable, but would be Trump himself.

Donald Trump thinks of himself as the greatest demagogue America has ever seen, a popular savior and Supreme Leader at a time of widespread dissatisfaction, whose loyal cult of personality allows him to get away with anything.

He has turned out to be wrong, for the simple reasons that he has no real governing skills, that he is psychologically unstable, narcissistic and childish, and that he is monumentally ignorant of national and world affairs.

Some think that once this peculiar chapter is over, and a potentially tragic and dangerous chapter it still may be, America will choose to swing back to stability, sanity, intelligence, competence and moderation in its leader.

But here is a different thought. What if America still has a passion for radical change in its government, and the next time chooses a real demagogue who is everything Trump is not, someone smart, knowledgeable, attractive, and actually capable of running the government? You know how people say that with Trump, the old rules of politics don’t seem to apply? What if that is true even after Trump, and what if we haven’t seen anything yet?

August 10, 2017