I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking ‘Oh no, now that Trump has gotten a deal signed for Middle Eastern peace, Duane will never let us hear the end of it!’
Well, rest easy.
Don’t worry about that.
But I do have a question for you. And it isn’t one that has only one answer, which would mean that I was trying to trick you into giving some credit to Trump. And first of all, it does seem that he has been successful in brokering the deal that has freed the hostages and stopped the bombing. But what I’m curious about is this.
Trump has been the most successful guy in the world at making people mad at him, and yet he’s the one who gets the Jews and the Arabs together after all these years that you and I have listened to trouble in the Middle East. And that was lots of years. Why is that? We all know that any number of world politicians who have been in office in the last fifty years would like to be getting the kind of credit that Trump is getting now.
So here’s the question.
What kind of mix of personality traits does it take to be successful in political leadership?
The question jumped out at me on Monday while watching some of the news coverage of the Middle East settlement. And the thoughts that got me were something to the effect of ‘nobody but Trump could have gotten this deal!’ And: ‘Only the resolute personality of Donald Trump could have brought this peace!’
Resolute personality? Shiver me timbers, everybody hates the guy, especially the media, yet here they are saying he has a ‘resolute’ personality.’
And maybe they’re right.
If a ‘resolute personality’ means that a person having it would work towards solving a problem even if it meant incurring the criticism of many, in other words, having some backbone, maybe it’s a good thing. I would think it is. We’ve seen it now in the Middle East, we’ve seen it with the sealing of the US/Mexican border, the protection of women’s sports, the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities and dealing with what I consider to be America’s near bankruptcy. This list is, of course, debatable, just as we can debate whether white is white and black is black.
I have always wondered if Trump, while seemingly able to get things done, would ever be able to get the many millions of people who don’t like him to ever change their minds if they could see that his worth as a politician may be different than his worth as the guy next door. Because that may be what many of us do, determine our fondness for him with the same measurements that we apply to our neighbours.
I agree that Trump may make a lousy neighbour.
But many of our neighbours might also make lousy presidents.
It could be very easy to say that President So and So was a nice guy. He may have been, but did he get anything done? Can we name anything that So and So did? Could he have brokered peace in the Middle East or kept the US from going broke?
Someone told me recently that Trump is a bully. She was right. And to that list, you can also add that he’s rude, is a braggart, and many more things. And the list would be absolutely accurate!
Trump isn’t the first politician to take a hard line in solving problems. When our Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was faced with the murder of one, just one, individual in the person of Labour Minister Pierre Laporte in 1970, he invoked the War Measures Act. It seemed pretty heavy-handed, and he took some criticism for it, but the list of deaths in that issue stayed at one. The recent Middle Eastern war killed over 70,000 people.
Winston Churchill took a lot of flak when he opposed his British government for their foolish policy of appeasement towards Hitler. He did, however, fight the issue through until the policy was changed to recognize that a military solution was the only solution.
So could it be possible to get a president who would be both a terrific president and a decent neighbour as well? We would like to think so, because we do like to admire those who lead us. But it seems like it’s very much a challenge.
If, however, another conflict arose that could kill thousands more, would we want someone to stop it? That war is, unfortunately, already raging, and so far, according to Wikipedia, over a million people have already been killed in the Ukraine-Russian War.
So the dilemma is likely this: is it possible to ever have a political leader who has the traits that it takes to deal with the really big issues (and there are more issues than just wars), who is also a nice person? I have a hunch that that’s a very difficult bill to fill.
It seems to me, though, that if there was a list of people who might take on the big issues with any hope of success, it would be a very short list, with likely only one name on it, and the person named may not be as nice as we would all like. The name would change as the years rolled along.
And would it ever be a neighbour’s name?
