Frank Bruni had an interesting column the other day in the New York Times. Naturally, it was about Donald Trump, and naturally, it registered disapproval. But the point was more psychiatric than political: Entitled “Donald Trump Could Really Use a Friend,” it assembled a host of testimonials to show that Trump, while a man of wide acquaintance, has no close confidants, no old chums with whom he can unwind, no buddies in whom he can usefully confide.
“Show me a person who has no true friendships,” Bruni wrote,
You might call this the Barbra Streisand theory of statecraft: People who need people are not just the luckiest people in the world but make the best political leaders—much to be preferred to introverts, the phlegmatic, or the naturally aloof. A convivial president, so the thinking goes, would be much more likely to empathize with his fellow countrymen, to seek out their company, yearn for their approval, strive to understand what makes them tick.
George W. Bush’s appeal, for example, was explained by the assumption that voters would rather have shared a beer with Bush than with his political opponents, Al Gore and John Kerry. It’s a reasonable assumption—certainly true in my case—and a compliment of sorts to the former president. But of course, as a key to classifying presidents, or judging their quality, it’s nearly meaningless.
Indeed, Frank Bruni’s argument for “true friendships” probably tells us more about the needs of Bruni than the defects of Trump. For what Bruni wants in a president is not so much an effective politician or shrewd statesman but a well-adjusted monarch, a comforting paternal figure, an empathizer in chief who will answer prayers, pronounce the right platitudes at just the right moment, put the faithful at ease.
The trouble is that there’s little evidence in history that such admirable people make good presidents, and considerable evidence that the sort of Trumpian character that Bruni cites with horror—solitary, self-regarding, ruthless, defensive—describes some of our most successful, even popular, presidents. George Washington was notoriously somber and laconic, deliberately forbidding. Andrew Jackson may have been the people’s president but few people found his close company a delight. Abraham Lincoln liked to make wisecracks and was kind to subordinates, but was also afflicted with a deep, even morbid, melancholia.
Would any of these Olympian figures, or America, have benefited from infusions of true friendship? I doubt it.
For the blunt fact is that the pursuit of the presidency has long required a single-minded purposefulness and drive that self-selects humans with whom you might not wish to share a beer—and some of our more “normal” presidents (the elder George Bush comes to mind) have had a better gift for friendship than for politics.
This is a characteristic, incidentally, that transcends ideology. Bruni may have guessed that his description of Trump’s friendless ambition and brutal calculation is unique or uniquely Republican; but there were moments when he could easily have been rendering a sketch of, say, Franklin Roosevelt. Bruni was struck last year when Ivanka Trump and her brothers told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that when they sought “quality time” with their father, “they went to his office, his construction sites. They met him on his terms and terrain.” But of course, the very same was true of FDR and his sons, who had to make appointments to see their father in the White House.
One might argue, in fact, that our most admired recent presidents have been those who shared the same coldblooded instincts but managed to communicate empathy and cheer. Dwight Eisenhower was a taciturn career officer with a sharp mind and few close friends, but Americans tended to see him as a benevolent average joe. Ronald Reagan’s appeal was intense and bipartisan, but he was a stranger to his children and devoid of boon companions. Barack Obama still inspires something like adoration among Democratic voters; but Democrats in Congress saw him rather differently, and even his legion of admirers in the press noticed his distant, disdainful arrogance.
None of this is meant to explain, or rationalize, President Trump’s behavior in office, which veers dramatically between the conventional and the astonishing. But just as the country squire Roosevelt managed to convey an unlikely affinity for the Forgotten Man, so our own Forgotten Men discovered hope last year in the nouveau riche Trump. Whether their faith will be justified has nothing to do with Donald Trump’s nonexistent circle of friends.
Philip Terzian is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
