Blog

Tuesday: He just doesn’t get it.

Wednesday: He really doesn’t get it.

Thursday: What will it take for him to get it?

Friday: I’m starting to get furious that he’s not getting it.

Saturday: Why the F doesn’t he get it???!?!

Sunday: He’s the greatest American since Lincoln.*

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*This post was stolen word for word from my son, YA author Tommy Greenwald.

Our fixation on two leaders – Joe Biden and Donald Trump – each vying to be elected American president a second time is so great we cannot focus on the issues. I do not mean policy issues such as abortion and immigration. I mean systemic ones. Especially those that corrupt the political process.

High on this list I put money. Specifically, the astonishing ability of a few of the world’s wealthiest people to influence the outcome of an ostensibly democratic election. Such as Elon Musk. He is the quintessential example of a single individual with so much money and, in consequence, so much power that he is shaping not just the political conversation but the presidential campaign.  

Musk’s money and power are of course entwined. The second is a consequence of the first, for without his having more money than God he would have little or no power.

Musk’s power comes from two sources. The first is X, the social media platform that he owns and that, though weakened in comparison to what it was in the heyday of Twitter (its previous name), still packs a punch. Musk uses X as his personal political platform. He says whatever he wants on the social media outlet, easily and instantly reaching his nearly 190 million followers. He uses X to push and promote people and positions he prefers, and to demean and denigrate those he does not. Musk has already done what no other leader of a social media outlet has done up to now: come out guns blazing for a particular presidential candidate and vowing to help him how he can.

But that’s not the only way that Musk has promised to provide his preference – Trump – with assistance. He has also committed to donating to Trump’s cause a considerable chunk of change. Between now (July) and October Musk will pour $45 million each month into the presidential campaign. This $180 million will be given to American PAC, a political action committee dedicated to reelecting Trump.

To be clear: Musk is not alone in his munificence. For instance, earlier this year billionaire George Soros donated $60 million to Democracy PAC, another political action committee, this one dedicated to helping candidates who are Democrats. Republican candidate for vice-president, J. D. Vance, is another example. He owes his newly elevated status in good part to tech mega mogul, Peter Thiel. In 2022 Thiel saw a young, like-minded politican running for the Senate in Ohio; he decided to support his candidacy to the tune of $15 million. Musk is alone though in that he combines his fortune with his fame to ensure his voice will be heard.

I don’t blame Musk for his behavior for the simple reason that he is an addict. He is a leader who lusts, who is insatiable, who cannot control his cravings for money and power.* This means that for Musk having more money and more power will never suffice. He will always want more of each than he already has. As Churchill warned of Hitler, “His appetite will grow with eating.”

Churchill’s point was of course that Hitler would not – I would claim that he could not – stop of his own volition. If by the late 1930s England and France wanted Hitler to change his aggressive ways, they would have had to compel him to do so. Preferably before Germany invaded Poland, not after.

For Musk’s behavior then I blame not him but us – we the American people. We the American people who have done nearly nothing to rein in social media platforms. We the American people who have done nearly nothing to rein in spending on political campaigns. Leaders like Musk are doing what comes naturally – to them. If we don’t like it, it’s up to us to stop it.    

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For more on leaders who lust see my book of the same title, coauthored with Todd Pittinsky. (Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy, Cambridge University Press, 2021.)

The images of former President Donald Trump in the immediate wake of the attempt on his life – his face is bloodied, and his fist is raised – are already iconic. His defiance in crisis, his preternatural poise given the circumstance, are striking no matter your political persuasion.

Moreover, for the moment the moment feels transformative. Whatever the ultimate outcome of the election, Trump has gained on Biden. If the debate revealed for the world to see Biden’s weakness, the attempt on Trump’s life revealed for the world to see Trump’s strength.  

Which raises the question of why. Specifically, what is it about Trump’s response to what happened on Saturday night that is so impressive? That is so striking and seemingly singular that it has impressed itself on our mind’s eye. It is a question to which the great mythologist and storyteller, Joseph Campbell, had an answer. Most famously found in his literary classic, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Campbell was a scholar of comparative myth. His expertise, his brilliance, was in comparing myths in one country and culture to those in other countries and cultures. What he found was that some themes repeated themselves throughout history, and that they were not local or national, they were global. They were common to the human condition.

One such was the hero’s quest for adventure. Inevitably he (Campbell’s hero was always a “he”) descended into a dark place, an abyss of some sort, looking for something, though for what was not clear. Truth, perhaps; wisdom, maybe; strength or salvation? Inevitably of course the hero emerged triumphant, having completed a task that was a trial, that was more than could be accomplished by a mere mortal.

Several American heroes perfectly fit the formula. For example, Abraham Lincoln emerged triumphant having survived the crucible of the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt emerged triumphant despite both his legs being paralyzed by polio. Martin Luther King, Jr.  emerged triumphant, the single greatest hero of the Civil Rights Movement, after his house was badly bombed, wife and child sleeping inside; and after he endured being relentlessly hunted and hounded.  

Does Donald J. Trump rival their astonishments? Not hardly. But let’s face it: it sometimes seems he has near magical powers. Powers to escape responsibility. And to survive, even surmount personal, political, legal and financial crises.

• His entire life Trump has paid little price for his wrongdoings, his grifting and chiseling, and then some.
• During his one term presidency he was twice impeached only to be twice acquitted.
• Since he’s been out of the White House, whatever the strength of the several legal cases against him, most have been either derailed or delayed.
• The Supreme Court did him an enormous personal and political favor with its recent ruling in strong support of executive immunity – a decision that could save him from several prosecutions should there be a second Trump presidency. .
• That assassination attempt against Trump resulted in two people dead (one the would-be assassin) and two critically injured. Trump meantime escaped the murder and mayhem with a grazed right ear.

This is not exactly the stuff of archetypical heroes. Nor is it the archetypical hero’s journey that Campbell had in mind. Trump is not another Lincoln, Roosevelt or King. Still, we are, it must be acknowledged, watching man who is extra-ordinary. An outlaw who’s always a step ahead of the law. An establishment outsider who’s metamorphosed into the consummate insider. A gambler who’s continuing to beat the odds. A magician whose greatest trick is to pull himself out of a hat. A survivor with nine lives.  

Withal, I do not minimize Trump’s brush with death. The question is, will the whiff of death, his own, change him? If he has in him even a smidgeon of heroism, it will. If he does not, it will not.

Joseph Campbell on the hero’s journey:

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out the source of what you are looking for.

The prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House for a second time is as alarming as appalling. Which is precisely why the division right now among Democrats – should President Joe Biden stay or go? – is so unsettling.

Memories are short, and this too shall pass. Whoever leads the Democratic ticket will have a unified party around him, or her. But… the fact that Biden’s refusal to exit the political stage has brought Americans to this point is lamentable. If the Democrats win big in November – with whoever is at the top of the ticket – all will be semi-forgotten and semi-forgiven. But if they do not, and if, worst case scenario, the Republicans win big in November, Biden’s name will forever be blackened.  

So far as I am concerned, his disasrous performance in the recent “debate” is not relevant.

So far as I am concerned, what today’s polls say or don’t say is not relevant.

So far as I am concerned, how he performs later today in that NATO press conference is not relevant.

So far as I am concerned, the fact that his administration gets high marks on different subjects is not relevant.

What is relevant is that a critical part of Biden’s job – of any leader’s job – is to prepare for his succession.

Given his age, and given that Trump never got off the political stage, and given that this left the American experiment singularly vulnerable, President Biden should have planned from day one of his presidency for who would succeed him. Specifically, he would have promised the American people that his would be a one term presidency – and meant it. He would have chosen a vice president who by wide agreement would have been a worthy successor. He would have mentored the woman he did choose as his vice president, preparing Kamala Harris to succeed him, either should it be suddenly necessary or for when his single term was over. He would have fostered other possible successors, especially promising younger Democrats with visibility on the national stage. He would’ve spoken to senior Democratic leaders such as Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and James Clyburn, asking for their input on who might someday succeed him. He would have long ago been listening to the American people who long ago worried that for a second term Biden’s age alone was a disqualifier.

But Biden did none of these. To the contrary, he is still digging in, refusing to quit his day job unless and until he is, almost literally, pushed.

Some two weeks before that disastrous debate I posted to this site a piece titled, “Biden Shakespearean.” I’ve thought for some time that whatever his virtues, and they are many, he had what could become a fatal flaw. I wrote this:

Shakespeare’s tragedies – such as Hamlet, Henry V, and Julius Caesar – all have heroes with tragic flaws…. They are leaders with followers over whom they rule. But there is nevertheless a chink in their armor, a flaw that is not, simply, a defect. It is a flaw that is fatal, that leads ultimately to disaster, even to death. Is Biden so afflicted? …. Has his unquenchable ambition been his fatal flaw?  

There is a reason George Washington has been called the “Father of His Country.” It is because a great leader is like a great parent. One of their tasks is to prepare, and gracefully usher in the next, younger generation. And then there is the other, subsequent task. To do as Washington did – to leave when the time comes.

Neither is a lesson that Biden learned.

One of my mid-March posts was a radical relook at the gender gap.* Why I wondered were still so few women in top positions of American leadership and management. To answer the question, I surfaced a topic that’s typically taboo. The differences, the determinative differences, between women and men – both physically and psychologically.

In the post and in a chapter for a forthcoming volume on women and leadership, I referenced the impact on women of, for example, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, breast-feeding, and menopause. I included on this list fertility issues, which few men attempt to address but many women, about ten percent of women, do.

Today’s post is an update on women and fertility – specifically on what some women do to slow the biological clock by freezing their eggs. Their hope is to make it easier for them to have a baby later in life, typically in their mid-to-late thirties and early to mid-forties.**

Of course, many women don’t know that freezing their eggs for the purpose of getting pregnant at an older age is even possible. Further, many women who do know and would like the opportunity do not have the resources – financial, personal, professional – to undertake fertility treatments. Finally, most women who do know about freezing their eggs and who do have the resources either never consider or decide against fertility treatments.

But in recent years the number of women who freeze their eggs has shot up and it’s growing every year. “In 2015 there were about 7,600 egg freezing cycles recorded nationwide, and by 2022 the number hit 29,803, a nearly 300 percent increase.” Moreover, in some white-collar industries some companies cover the costs of fertility treatments – not out of the kindness of their hearts but because they are competing for talent.

But people should understand that fertility treatments are one of the reasons why women pay a much greater professional price than do men for the physical and psychological differences between them. It is women not men who go through the egg freezing cycle, which starts when they inject themselves once or sometimes twice a day with hormones. The cycle takes two weeks; it ends when a physician extracts however many healthy eggs with a needle. Further, to increase their chances of someday having a viable pregnancy, some women go through the cycle more than once.

On the surface this might seem no more than fourteen days of inconvenience. Fourteen days during which women might well be unable to conduct business as usual. But the effects of such treatments are experienced not once in a woman’s lifetime but twice.

First, in the present, given fertility treatments sometimes have unpleasant or even debilitating physical side effects such as headaches and cramping.  Further are psychological effects – issues involving fertility can be distracting as well as draining. In an article that appeared last year in Time, one woman described her experience this way: “After countless negative pregnancy tests, a second infertility diagnosis, and a miscarriage that nearly broke me, my world quickly started to revolve around getting pregnant. I used every fertility app under the sun; cut alcohol; followed the ‘fertility’ diet religiously; I even hired a spiritual healer.”  

Second, are the future effects of fertility treatments. While their purpose is to maintain the option of having a baby, the point is for this to happen usually five, ten, or even fifteen years down the line. This means that the ultimate outcome of a successful fertility treatment is likely to coincide with when women are hitting their professional stride. When they are most likely already to be in or to attain high ranking positions of management and leadership.

Let’s be clear. Being pregnant, giving birth, breast feeding (which over 80% of American women do), and for the indefinite future caring for a child is the ultimate personal commitment. Which inevitably means it is the ultimate professional distraction. If, therefore, a woman gives birth in, say, her late thirties or forties, to assume this will have no impact whatsoever on her ability or ambition is to assume something without evidence that is, moreover, counterintuitive.  

Women who are determined someday to lead or manage should make no mistake. Until the workplace is more forgiving, and exercising leadership is less demanding, fertility treatments might someday in some way incur a professional price. I am not insisting that they will. I am suggesting that there is a good chance they might.

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*A Radical Relook at the Gender Gap – Barbara Kellerman

** Some of the information as well as the quote in this post are from this New York Times article:  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/29/business/egg-freezing-fertility-benefits.html

Today is Independence Day, July 4^th, 2024. Given the day is serious as well as celebratory, I thought to provide a primer. A simple primer as a reminder of what this holiday has meant in the past – and what it could mean in the future.

The first American Revolution was fought by American colonists against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Their original struggle was for greater autonomy within the British political system. But when they realized they could not get the freedoms they wanted, the colonists rebelled against the system itself. The leaders of the American Revolution rebelled against the leader of Great Britain, the King of England, George III.

Independence Day commemorates ratification of the Declaration of Independence. It commemorates the triumph of the leaders of the first American Revolution against the leader of Great Britian, a ragtag victory that ended in the establishment of the United States of America on July 4, 1776. 

George Washington was the greatest leader of the Revolutionary War period. He was a military hero, commander in chief of the Continental Army that fought for and won independence. And he was a political hero, first as president of the Continental Congress which hammered out and finally ratified the Constitution. Second as first president of the United States, a post to which he was twice unanimously elected by the Electoral College.

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. It was ratified in 1788, but it is not frozen in time. It has since had 27 amendments, the first 10 known as the Bill of Rights. The Constitution remains as it originally was: an object of contention not only among political leaders but intellectual ones, in the law first and foremost, who interpret it differently, sometimes radically differently.

The Heritage Foundation is a contemporary, activist conservative think tank. It has played a leading role in the American conservative movement since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Moreover, it has taken on greatly increased importance in recent years, during what became in time Donald Trump’s third campaign for the White House.

Spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation is Project 2025, an extraordinarily ambitious plan to reshape the federal government. Among its most important goals is to consolidate power in the hands of the executive, at the expense of the other two branches of government. If Trump wins the November election, Project 2025 will be the blueprint for his second term. Critics are not happy. They assert the Project would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, and even the separation of church and state. Republicans though are making no secret of their intentions.     

“The Second American Revolution” is a phrase recently used by Kevin Roberts. Roberts is president of the Heritage Foundation. He used the word “revolution” to state his intention with crystalline clarity. Specifically, to transform Project 2025 from theory to practice – which is to say to to transform American government. Said Roberts: “We are in the process of the Second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

While the idea of a second American Revolution is anathema to some Americans, many others are attracted to it. Attracted to a conception of leadership in America that was just bolstered by the Supreme Court, whose recent rulings are completely in keeping with Project 2025. To make the American presidency far more “imperial” than it has ever been before.

But, hey, not to worry. If the First American Revolution eventually resulted in a federal holiday, the Second American Revolution is bound to as well. Just think of it as a trade-off – you give us an autocracy and we’ll give you another day off!

Most people who are leadership experts are like most people who are not. We focus or even fixate on the leader – often to the exclusion of everyone and everything else. But yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to expand presidential power was a stark reminder that leadership is not a person. It is a system! A system that consists of three parts, each of which is of equal importance: Part I is the leader. Part II are the followers. And part III is the context within which the leader and the followers are situated.

Yesterday’s court decision changed the context within which presidential power is exercised. By giving the chief executive wider legal leeway – specifically, here, giving former President Donald Trump substantial immunity from charges that he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election – it expanded the power of the executive.

If you believe in a very strong presidency this is a good thing. If you do not – if you are persuaded of the virtues of checks and balances, one branch of government no more powerful than the other two – this is not a good thing. To give you a sense of the exceedingly strong dissent, a short quote from Sonia Sotomajor, one of three liberal justices that remain on the nine-member court: “Today’s decision to grant former President’s criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.” (Italics mine.)

Among the framers of the American constitution no single issue was as divisive as the amount of power granted the American president. On the one side were those like James Madison who strongly believed in power being equally distributed among the three branches: the executive, legislative, and judicial. On the other side were those like Alexander Hamilton who was concerned that without a strong executive the new federal government, composed of 13 previously independent colonies, would not hold.

No accident then that it was Hamilton, known to favor a muscular presidency, who penned paper number 69. The Federalist Papers were a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay, published in the late 1780s. Their purpose was propaganda – to persuade voters of the newly created United States to ratify the proposed Constitution. If there was a single hook on which the authors hung their case it was the American presidency. It was to assure voters their president would not be a king – would in no important way resemble the King of England against whom the bloody Revolutionary War had only recently been fought.

To this end Hamilton argued in paper number 69 that the proposed American presidency bore no liking to the detested British monarchy. He noted, for example, that unlike the king the president was to be elected and only for four years. That unlike the king the president was vulnerable to being impeached. That unlike the king the president did not have absolute power to enact or overturn a piece of legislation. That unlike the king the president did not have absolute power over the militia. That unlike the king the president would need the advice and consent of the Senate before signing a treaty.     

America’s Founders and Framers would be stunned to find that well over two centuries after country’s constitution was ratified it is still being fiercely fought over. For we should make no mistake. The decision issued yesterday by the nation’s highest court addresses the same question as at the center of the Constitutional Convention. Is the president a king in that he is – as was George III – above the law?

The first book I ever wrote – this was decades ago – was titled All the President’s Kin. The point of the book was simple: we badly underestimate the political impact of the presidents’ – and presidential candidates’ – wives, children, parents, and siblings.* Usually, one or more has a profound effect on who gets elected and on how presidential power is exercised.

Never has this been truer than now, when it can reasonably be argued that the outcome of the next presidential election depends on the conduct of Jill Biden. Jill Biden, the wife of President Joe Biden. Jill Biden who, by every account, is his most ardent supporter and closer to him than anyone else. Jill Biden, who by every account has believed with all her being that come November the present president is the only one who can defeat the former president, Donald Trump.

Which raises the question of the morning after. What is Jill Biden thinking this morning? And what if anything will she do in the aftermath of the most disastrous performance in the history of American presidential debates – her husband’s?

Donald Trump was true to form. He was neither substantive nor focused and he lied as incessantly as shamelessly. But as Democratic operative David Plouffe pointed out, on the debate stage he seemed not three years younger than Biden, which he is, but thirty. So, because it was immediately clear that Biden was looking totally terrible and sounding even worse, what he said mattered not a whit.

From everything we know about Joe Biden, Jill Biden is the only person on the planet who could, maybe, persuade him to pull out of the presidential race. So long as she refuses to consider the possibility, so will he. Which means that if events in the next few months play out as they did in the last few, she, every bit as much as he, will be responsible for returning Trump to the Oval Office. It’s why, at this pivotal moment in American history, her civic responsibility could not possibly be greater.

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*Every presidential spouse has been a wife.

Have you ever seen the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, grinning from ear to ear? No? Want to? If yes, check him out sitting in the passenger seat of a spanking new Aurus, with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin behind the wheel.* The scene took place last week in Pyongyang, a reflection of the affection between the two men whose relationship has gone from being wary allies to best pals.

Most of us associate Putin with his unprovoked attack on Ukraine, the result of which was a war that has now gone on for well over two years. The costs have been enormous. It is the largest land war in Europe since the end of the Second World War. The casualties – Ukrainians and Russians – tally in the hundreds of thousands. And the destruction is widespread. Reportedly more buildings have been wrecked in Ukraine than if every building in Manhattan had been leveled four times over. In some places, such as the small city of Marinka (previous population 9,000), not one resident is left.

Meantime, Americans have by and large lost interest. In the early months of the war Ukrainian flags were flown clear across the United States. But by now the war has been relegated to the margins of our concerns. Still, we should make no mistake. Not only does Putin remain a major menace, the more he eats the greater his appetite.

In my most recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse, Putin is mentioned but he is a sidebar. I deliberately chose not to focus on such a blazingly obvious example. But we should make no mistake. Putin is the archetype of a leader who – because he has not been stopped or even once during his entire tenure been seriously slowed – has gone from bad to worse.

The beat goes on. With every passing month Putin becomes more menacing. Only recently he authorized drills so Russians could practice the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Only recently he said he would consider changing Russia’s protocol as it pertained to the use of nuclear weapons. And only recently he implied that small European countries – think Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – would be easy for Russia either to conquer or obliterate.

But nothing Putin has done has greater implications for the United States – his archenemy – than his outreach in Pyongyang. Putin made clear that while the West might be concentrating on a regional chessboard, Europe, he is focusing on a global one, which includes Asia.

Russia and North Korea are now locked in their tightest embrace since the coldest days of the Cold War. As is usual in such arrangements, each side is giving the other what they want. Putin is getting the weaponry he needs aggressively to pursue his war against Ukraine. Kim is getting the energy and technology he needs aggressively to grow his space and missile programs.

The United States meanwhile has been watching Asia with a wary eye. But not because of Russia. It is because of China that President Joe Biden shored up America’s relations with its allies in the Indo Pacific, including South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Still, the West needs to be clear. There is one world leader who more than any other poses a threat to its interests. There is one world leader whose identity is so wrapped up in a victory that he will not, cannot, tolerate a loss.There is one world leader who rules with an iron fist over a country that has more nuclear weapons than any other. That world leader is not China’s Xi Jinping. It is Russia’s Vladimir Putin.   

Earlier in his tenure the idea that Putin would send arms to bolster North Korea was unthinkable. Now we know that he will do what he thinks he must to win in Ukraine. Which is precisely why, though he has already gone from bad to worse, it’s possible if not probable that, unless he is stopped by someone(s) or something(s), he will go from worse to worst. So far as the West is concerned there is not a single leader anywhere in the world who presents a greater threat to its political, military, and ideological interests.   

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*Aurus Motors is a Russian luxury car company. Putin’s own presidential car is an Aurus, and when he paid Kim a state visit, he came bearing gifts, one of which was, you guessed it, an Aurus.

One of the most important things to know about Donald Trump is that he has no real friends. Never did. Not a single friend with whom he has connected over a long period of time and with whom he has had anything resembling a close relationship. Trump is a loner and has been so lifelong.

As a teenager at the New York Military Academy, he usually disappeared into his room after dinner. Years later his classmates did not remember a single class member “that he was particularly close to.” At Fordham University, where Trump spent his freshman and sophomore years of college, his experience was similar. He was friendly with some of his peers but had no real friends. It was the same at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where Trump finished college. Years later, one of his Wharton classmates recalled that Trump had no one close to him, and that he never “palled around with anyone, quite frankly.”

Things were no different years later, after he became a successful and wealthy real estate developer. Once, in an interview, Trump was asked if there was anyone in whom he confided. He replied, “No… I tend not to confide…. I don’t trust people. I’m a non-trusting person.” One of his biographers, Tim O’Brien, captured the consensus, when he described Trump as “one of the loneliest people I’ve ever met. He lacks the emotional and sort of psychological architecture a person needs to build relationships with other people.” *

If there are any exceptions to this general rule, one could argue, if lamely, they are his first three children, whose mother was Trump’s first wife, Ivana. By all accounts his relationships with his two sons from his marriage to Ivana, Donald Trump, Jr, and Eric Trump, have a history of being fraught, and there is no evidence they ever were personally close. But they have long been in business with their father – they play prominent parts in The Trump Organization – and they were and still are politically active on their father’s behalf.

Not so much though Ivanka, his daughter from his first marriage, who by every account was forever her father’s favorite. It’s hard to exaggerate her role in Trump’s affective life. Until he lost his second campaign for the White House, Ivanka was his Golden Girl, his Golden Child who could do no wrong. By every account it was she and she alone who was singled out for his special attention and affection. Trump admired, and adored, everything about his first-born daughter, from what he saw as her singular beauty to what he deemed her singular brain. (Trump has a second daughter, Tiffany, by his second wife, Marla Maples. Maples raised Tiffany as a single mother with an absentee ex-husband who largely was an absentee father.)

Though Ivanka had no qualifications for the post, none, soon after he became chief executive Trump appointed her Assistant to the President. During his four years in the White House, he would refer to her as “unique,” suggest that if she ever wanted to run for president she would be “very, very hard to beat,” and sometimes call her “Baby” during meetings.

Nor did it suffice to bring Ivanka into his Oval Office orbit; her husband, Jared Kushner, was part of the package. Despite his equally complete lack of relevant experience, Kushner was named Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor. In short order, he became an indispensable presidential aide, a power in his own right, presumed an expert in everything from the criminal justice system to the border wall, to tensions in the Middle East, to politics and the pandemic.

In this case though blood was not thicker than water. After the American electorate voted Trump out of the Oval Office, Ivanka and Jared made haste for the exits. They promptly sought to reestablish their own lives and rebuild their reputations, which inevitably meant distancing themselves from her father and his father-in-law. As they were embarrassed by their past and worried that it would taint them for years to come, It meant pretending that the White House years had never happened. Until now.

Now, as Trump comes close to securing his second Republican nomination for president, Ivanka at least is reassessing her situation. Reportedly she is “warming to the idea of trying to be helpful again” – helpful, that is, to her father – and privately assessing “when it might make sense to reengage with the campaign – and even whether to take a job in the administration if Trump wins.” **

Will Ivanka return to her father’s fold – or will she not? No matter. The transactional nature of her relationship to her father has become painfully apparent. Same with the rest of Trump’s clan, including his wife, Melania, who remains as she did during her four years as First Lady. Largely – and for months at a time entirely – invisible.

Did I mention the leader was a loner? A lifelong loner with no capacity for intimacy with anyone else but himself?  

In his private life Trump is deeply, completely alone. To suppose this is irrelevant to his public life is to ignore the intersection between politics and personality.

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*The quotes in this section are from Barbara Kellerman, The Enablers (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

** The quotes in this section are in Bess Levin, “Ivanka Trump Has Gotten the Urge….” in Vanity Fair, May 3, 2024.