For the past year, culminating last week in an especially bizarre period, Americans have lived through a political nightmare.
To get our bearings, here is a brief review of recent events.
First there were nasty public conflicts with our most important allies, Germany, France and England, during which our president boasted of having bullied these and other allies to provide more financial support for NATO forces — something they were well on their way to doing anyway.
There followed a “summit” in Helsinki, Finland, where Vladimir Putin denied that his regime had meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Standing next to him, our president said that he took the Russian dictator at his word (though an American grand jury had just indicted 12 Russian military intelligence agents, and our own Justice Department was detailing the offenses of Russian agents at a press conference in Washington). This golden opportunity to stand up for a vital national interest in credible elections was lost forever.
Next, it was revealed that, during their secret confab witnessed only by translators, Putin had proposed to allow American officials to interrogate the 12 Russian agents, in return for allowing Russian authorities to question American officials, including our recent ambassador, about crimes they allegedly committed under Russian law. Our president saluted this “incredible offer” from the Russian president, but the U. S. Senate, by a 98-0 vote, stunningly renounced it.
To cap it off, the president announced that he was sending John Bolton, of all people, to invite Putin to visit the White House this fall. He did not say whether that meeting would take place before or after our mid-term elections, but House Speaker Paul Ryan declared that the visit would not include an invitation to address Congress. An honor like that, Ryan remarked acidly, is reserved for allies.
The week’s shenanigans left even Republicans wondering if the benefits for them — among them, solidifying their control of the Supreme Court, tax cuts and “reform,” an emasculated Environmental Protection Agency and an eviscerated Affordable Care Act — justified the price being paid in damage to their partisan brand.
Some openly mused that the time might finally have come to disentangle themselves from this loose cannon. However, given what polls reveal about support for this president from rank-and-file Republicans outside the Beltway, it would be a mistake to bet on such a divorce.
For perspective on the maelstrom that swirls around the Trump administration and us all, I have dusted off my copy of “The Prince,” by Niccolo Machiavelli. Why should we read “The Prince?” Not to learn what our president and his minions are learning from it, but because we are living in a Machiavellian moment.
Who was Machiavelli (1469-1527)? He lived most of his life in Florence, Italy. A diplomat and influential counselor to Italy’s elite, an historian and philosopher, his writings have become part of the western canon of political philosophy.
As a graduate student in the mid-1960s, I served as a teaching assistant to Professor Allan Bloom, later the author of “The Closing of the American Mind.” Bloom’s survey course on political philosophy presented Plato and Aristotle as the source of wisdom about politics. This consensus, which began in ancient Athens, was carefully continued in Saint Thomas Aquinas’ teachings about politics, Bloom taught.
In other words, it was not Christianity that wrecked it. It was Machiavelli who did that. By his cynicism, he opened the way for Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, and from there the descent into Nietzschean chaos.
Among Bloom’s students at Cornell was Paul Wolfowitz, later an influential neoconservative adviser and ambassador during President Ronald Reagan’s administration.
So why did I dust off my copy of “The Prince” in search of insight into our turbulent times, when so much seems to depend on the machinations, whims and fickle appetites of amoral people?
Machiavelli lived in such a time. His works, especially “The Prince,” are sometimes read as advising such behavior. I read him differently, as knowing, quite realistically, the nature of the times and devoting his thought to trying to navigate, to survive, in such turmoil.
The term “Machiavellian” is sometimes used as an epithet, meaning amoral, such as Iago in “Othello.” Machiavelli addresses most of his counsel to “princes,” that is, leaders of their nations.
Sometimes, though, he addresses citizens of republics. To them, his advice is: be wary of scoundrels, princes who try to manipulate us. It is we citizens who need to be Machiavellian, to cultivate a Machiavellian mind and vocabulary in order to understand our Trumpian era.
What does Machiavelli advise? A good example is his teaching on the uses of being un-predictable. (Perhaps President Richard Nixon actually did study Machiavelli’s teachings.) Fortune, he says, is a woman. To master her, one must be cunning and forceful. Do not look weak. Do not appear to change your mind. It invites contempt.
Cartoonists are having a heyday with the president now, after his pitiful claim that he was using a double negative when he questioned whether Putin had meddled in the 2016 election. But how much will it hurt him with his base and with Republicans. That is a crucial question. And that, to use one of his favorite expressions, “remains to be seen.”
Which should a ruler seek, to be loved or hated? Actually, Machiavelli concludes, it doesn’t matter very much. The important thing is to be feared.
Our president seems to embody this political virtue almost perfectly. Occasionally he allows his counselors in the White House to persuade him to seek love. They give him apologetic scripts to read. But instinctively he knows better, and soon he departs from their contemptible script and inserts his own modifiers. The press and learned pundits howl at the inconsistency, but soon they are reduced to noting that once again, he seems to have survived their withering critique.
We used to describe President Reagan as being like Teflon. No criticism stuck to this genial man.
Our current president is quite different. He is oblivious to critics. Like a crazed, cornered animal fighting for his life, he understands that he must perpetually be on the offensive. Such animals are dangerous.
Don Robinson, a retired professor of government at Smith College in Northampton, writes a regular column published the fourth Thursday of the month. He can be reached at drobinso@smith.edu.