Trump’s reckless abandon is the stuff of Greek tragedies

From the moment he came down the escalator at Trump Tower three summers ago, Donald Trump has expressed what could most politely be termed “disinterest” in the notion that governing a massive, non-contiguous country of 350 million people might prove challenging.

That his predecessors had failed to manufacture utopia was, he thought, down to their own moral failings. But provided he could be entrusted with the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump would get the ship righted quickly. Suffice to say, a year and a half into his presidency, utopia is not forthcoming.

The President’s ebullient optimism on the campaign trail and present frustration are fundamentally linked to misconceptions he has about the role of the presidency, and the role of the federal government itself.

Read more: Markets drop as Trump warns Iran of "consequences" in all-caps rebuke

First, the executive was specifically designed to be the weakest of the three branches of government, and the other two branches were given powerful tools to check what decision-making authority it did have. With experience in throwing off the shackles of a tyrannical monarch, the founders sought to ensure that future presidents could not enact immediate, wholesale change.

Second, the federal government is hardly ever an effective change mechanism for the problems which Trump diagnosed. The supposition underlying all of his campaign promises was that through legislative fiat, or even sheer force of personality, he could turn back the tide of economic or social history.

This is a classic feature of strongman leaders across the political spectrum, whose faith in the self tends to crowd out a realistic assessment of what their country needs, and how to best deliver it.

The consequences of this sort of leadership in weaker states are nothing short of calamitous; the Great Leap Forward, Holodomor, and any number of other genocides throughout the twentieth century stemmed from the belief that government could successfully cut up and resew the fabric of a nation.

The institutions of the US (especially the courts) are made of stronger stuff, but in the President’s brand of diplomacy and belligerent trade policy, we can see the sort of hubristic folly ordinarily reserved for Greek tragedies.

Nowhere has this folly been more evident than in the President’s trade policy, a 1930s throwback. Then, as now, the country miscalculated the degree of isolationism which it could afford.

Trump has spent a great deal of his time in office expounding upon the dangers of America’s trade deficit, and his plans to correct that non-existent problem. This is not surprising, given that tariffs and the adjustment of certain non-tariff barriers are the most powerful non-military weapons at the disposal of the President, with precious little congressional or judicial oversight.

Doing further damage to already frayed ties with the country’s closest allies will not bring back manufacturing jobs, or an economic raison d’etre to beleaguered Rust Belt communities – but pressing the “more tariffs” button is something which the President can do now, without needing to ask anyone’s permission. No matter the result of the midterm elections, we should expect to see more of this behaviour, not less.

The desire for the appearance of progress seems to have also overtaken foreign policy considerations.

Trump’s belief that a warm personal relationship with Putin, Xi, or Kim will be enough to paper over decades’ worth of animosity is, at best, unrealistic.

Given that these counterparts are all playing a longer game, one might even call this strategy dangerous.

On a quest for easy answers to impossibly complicated questions, the President has progressively weakened the United States’ position in the world. This is not irreversible, but will require leadership which respects the limits of its own knowledge and power.

Read more: We must defend liberalism and free trade more than ever

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