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.