Every week we ask interesting people what book they think President Trump should read. In the past, we’ve talked with Bret Stephens and Christina Hoff Sommers, among others. This week we spoke with the political philosopher Harvey C. Mansfield, Professor of Government at Harvard University and recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Mansfield is the author of Manliness and Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
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Adam Rubenstein: What should the president be reading?
Harvey Mansfield: It would be such an advancement for him to start reading at all or to read long things. Or at least, longer things, longer memos, articles, maybe finally books. Other presidents have read books, especially, George W. Bush. If the president got himself from the focus on the briefest statement of the most immediate event, he would have to do a little more thinking than he does.
So, the presidency is not a place for reflection, yet there’s a certain minimum that’s required for nourishing one’s strategic sense. Looking at the bigger picture enables one to prioritize, to see what’s first. There’s always a difference in what’s first in importance, and what’s first in urgency. And so, when you’re president you have to put together those two things. And, the only way to do that is with a little reflection and books. The very existence of books are the realization that books are important.
AR: If you had to pick a specific text with which the president could begin his turn towards books, which would you suggest?
HM: You know, this is difficult because it raises this question of what is first for him, or for a beginner reader, if I can use that expression. A first grader. Or for a seasoned reader who is ready to read. So he’s probably not ready to read The Federalist Papers, but something like that. Something which would introduce him to The Federalist Papers; it would give him a very good sense of what American government is all about.
AR: So Taming the Prince [Mansfield’s book on executive power] isn’t something you’d recommend?
HM: No, uh, that’s a little, I’m sorry to say, beyond him.
AR: I would say it’s beyond most.
HM: Yeah, right. [laughter]. Maybe, the very introduction on the ambivalence of executive power. That might tell him that an executive is formally weak, and informally strong. I think that whole idea might be of interest and of use to him. Or, he could read Machiavelli’s The Prince. That’s a book which is directed to people like him.
AR: Would you be more concerned or less concerned with a Donald Trump who has read and understood Machiavelli’s The Prince?
HM: [Laughter] You’re right. I mean, there is a danger that he turns his, what you might call, democratism, into an actual theory. He is essentially a demagogue, frankly. That’s the key word to describe him. You can give that a psychological expression, like narcissistic, but it’s better to say demagogue. He’s moved by the people whom he identifies as his target, his base, and he wants to impress those who aren’t admirers or supporters as well. So people, if they want to understand Trump, should look much more at those who vote for him than at him himself. I think he’s a kind of Chameleon. I think he happened to win as a Republican and so he’s had to use the Republican party, and it has had to tolerate him. But he could have been a Democrat as well. In his past life, I think he was in many ways, a Democrat. Being a Republican is where he saw the opportunity. So I’m still talking about him and the people that vote for him and not about what he should read.
There’s a chapter in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories—book 3, chapter 13—which gives a speech of the demagogue in Florence, who doesn’t have a name, who gives, what you might call the ‘-ism’ that attaches to the demagogue. So, the demagogue appeals to the baser instincts of the people, and is therefore always against, well, Machiavelli doesn’t use the term, always against the establishment. What does it mean altogether to oppose the establishment—all the way to the bottom, what do you have to do? How do you have to behave? I would say that’s a good place to understand the logical elaboration of Trump. But this isn’t something that one would recommend to him because he would just take it as incitement, rather than as something that would calm him down. What he needs is something to calm him down.
Maybe some of the political history written by Churchill would be good for him. The Gathering Storm is relevant to today, with its question of appeasement—Churchill was also in a cycle against the establishment, obviously in a prescient and responsible way. So that I think might give him a figure he could feel some sympathy with, and who behaved in just the opposite way: He made magnificent speeches instead of vulgar and rather stupid tweets. So that might be something like that. A political history, maybe Lincoln, a Republican president who rebelled against the establishment and the established view—he made the party Trump has now taken over, temporarily one hopes.
The office is bigger. The presidency is bigger than the president. He doesn’t look on it that way. He looks on it as something for him to manipulate and to use in such a way as to gain in the glory that he seeks.
AR: Do you think The Federalist Papers would give him the sort of rulebook, the reasoning behind the functions of government?
HM: That would help him, but again, it’s way above his attention level and span. It’s above him in both respects. There’s some event that might occur that might force him, or induce him to look elsewhere for advice and counsel. He might read something about some other part of the world or on the nature of dictators.
I’m reading a book right now that might be good for him; it’s by Victor Davis Hanson called The Second World Wars; “wars” in the plural because it was a fragmented war, it was broken up in different parts. And it’s full of judgments of individual statesmen or rascals, both the leaders on the Allies’ side and the Axis, and that’s rather good, it opens one’s mind both to the efficiency side of leadership but also the moral side of it. Overall he makes a judgement as to what Germany and Japan intended to accomplish by starting wars as they did.
AR: Would you recommend this, specifically, for the president’s dealings with North Korea?
HM: The moral factor is there, but it isn’t just moral denunciation. So that you get to see that these are not stupid people, but they made horribly stupid decisions. There’s a judgement about the German army, about how well it fought and was directed, and not only by Hitler but by people with no breadth of understanding. This is a good book because it is about historical figures, fairly recent, and everybody still remembers something about World War II. I’d recommend that for his attention. It’s a book you can dip into—get juicy parts and then set it aside. Victor Davis Hanson is a friend of mine and rather favorable to Trump, so that might further its accessibility to The Donald.
