Dear {{first_name | Friend}},
(This FREE weekly newsletter goes out on Fridays at 16.00 to more than 14,000 members. Thanks for all the feedback on when best to send it. You have mixed feelings! And so do we. We’re going to crunch some data and come back to you…)
You really don’t have to be a US politics nerd to grasp what an absolute shellacking Donald Trump took this week. And it was him - more than the Republican Party - at whom the ire of tens of millions of Americans was directed.
This was a generational massacre of Trumpism in two senses. First, it was the best Democrat performance in generations. They haven’t won like this since 1948; Tuesday night’s results surpassed even 1974, when voters exhausted by Watergate, Vietnam, inflation and scandal slapped Nixon in the face and sent a new generation of leaders to Washington. And that’s the second bit: this victory was defined by the emergence of a new set, or cohort, of undoubted future presidential contenders.
James Talarico, dismissed as “TalaFREAKO” by Elon Musk, who gave a mere $47m of his own money to Republican candidate Ken Paxton, won resoundingly in Texas - an astonishing result. (Can you imagine, by the way, the phone call Paxton must have made this week? “Hey Elon, it’s Ken. Thanks so much for the $47m. I’m so sorry but I still lost. Now, can I buy a Tesla to say sorry?”.) Abdul El-Sayed is 42, and Jon Ossoff, the Presidential candidate straight from central casting (though he’d be the first Jewish President), is just 39. Elsewhere, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is 37.
The other fascinating thing is the enthusiasm gap. Republican voters, who were once so excited by Trump, are now growing weary; but the new generation of Democrats has created frenzy and hype across America. Democrats were more enthusiastic than Republicans by about 10 percentage points, which is chunky. The Party has not been this excited since Barack Obama declared his candidacy ahead of the 2008 election. No wonder Obama has been out in force in recent weeks, doing stump speeches, campaigning with a zeal and speaking with a cadence that he didn’t muster in defence of his ageing and ailing political brother Joe Biden. For Obama, now the elder statesman of the party, this is the chance to be the father figure. And those candidates I mention above will work like hell to secure his personal endorsement for the presidency.
None of this is to suggest that Democrats control Washington. They don’t, and with the power of veto on his side, and no revealed preference for compromise, ever, Trump is not about to discover a long suppressed fondness for co-operation. Old dog, new tricks etc. But it’s worse than that. I think that one consequence of this week’s historic repudiation of Trump and Trumpism is that it could make the most powerful man in the world more dangerous than ever. It is always darkest before dawn, and the darkness of the past decade, in which America’s glorious, imperfect experiment in democracy slid into authoritarianism, may soon reach something like a grim apogee.
To understand why, we have to turn to a character familiar from History, and from Literature: the Mad King. And not just any King.
Donald Trump is King Lear.
Let’s do this in two parts: establish he’s a king, and then establish he’s Lear.
One of my heroes is the Victorian intellectual and essayist Walter Bagehot. He was the third and most distinguished Editor of The Economist, and author of (among other works) The English Constitution. Bagehot had this lovely line about politics in our country, which I am fond of inverting. He said that, in England, “A Republic has insinuated itself beneath the folds of a Monarchy.”
In America, under Trump, the opposite has happened. A Monarchy has insinuated itself beneath the folds of a Republic.
Joe Biden often said that America was founded on the principle that “there are no kings in America”. That principle is not redundant, but in practice it is abandoned. What makes Trump a king? Every bit of his character and conduct. Kings have courts, and courts are populated by courtiers. In the court of a king, courtiers derive their power through proximity to the king. Loyalty is the true currency; those who show it are rewarded, and those who don’t are punished. The yearning for validation and approval reduces courtiers to sycophants, whispering sweet nothings in the ear of the King to secure advancement and his good favour. In this way, courts are like cults. Who could look at the Trump White House and doubt, even for a split second, that he is surrounded not by colleagues, but courtiers?
Moreover, Trump is obsessed with pomp and pageantry. He has genuinely tried to turn the White House into the White Palace. Maybe a Gold Palace, or a Cheesecake Factory: certainly, a palace. A real estate tycoon with a penchant for the garish, he unforgivably demolished the East Wing and East Colonnade to replace them with a ballroom, doubtless covered in his preferred gold leaf. What right of it was his, as mere steward and custodian of the presidency, to erase so much history? Alas the ornamental side of life much appeals to the boy from Queens, and he spends a lot of time thinking about his regalia. He was furious, for instance, when the white tie he wore to meet Queen Elizabeth II didn’t fit him well, despite the blame lying more with his paunch than his tailor. Pure kingly vibes.
The history of royalty is in large measure a history of corruption, and the way in which the Trump family have enriched themselves over recent years has sickened many Americans. In a time of rising real incomes, a decade ago, Trump’s wealth was an advantage: he’s already made money, so he doesn’t need to enrich himself, went the logic. In a time of falling real incomes, he and his kids actually have enriched themselves - probably to the tune of billions of dollars - while launching a catastrophically misjudged war, stoking inflation, and failing on most domestic policy fronts.
And the final crucial way in which Trump is a mad king is through his being a patriarch. He sits atop a dynasty. Not just his kids, each vying for seniority, but his grandkids, required to perform on public occasions. And this is where we get to Lear.
Trump is King Lear.
I love King Lear. It’s my favourite work of Literature, not just by Shakespeare, but anyone. I hold it to be the supreme literary achievement of the Western canon and, as I’ve argued before, its profundity and tragedy arise from the fact that it is full of comic structures without comic forgiveness. I’ve seen some great performances of Lear in my time, from Jonathan Pryce at the Almeida to my friend Sir Ian McKellen at the Minerva in Chichester, but nothing comes close to Trump in the White House today.
Lear was the king who went mad, madder and madder, the infirmity of his age and the fragility of his soul unable to cope with the refusal of his favourite daughter, Cordelia, to express her love for him - even as her sycophantic sisters, Goneril and Regan, did just that. He ends up on a heath, howling, raging, furious - but, like Trump after these mid-terms, conscious that his powers are waning:
No, you unnatural hags, / I will have such revenges on you both, /
That all the world shall—I will do such things,— /
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be /
The terrors of the earth.
On this analogy - Trump as Lear - of course Marco Rubio and J D Vance are Goneril and Regan. (Ignore the Trump sons). Those two want the keys to the kingdom, the chance to succeed their political father, and their fealty to the king has had to become ever more public, ever more gushing, for them to secure his love.
But it is Cordelia’s love that he wants. And who could that be? Step forward, Ivanka Trump. The loyal, more understated daughter; the favourite; the clever one; the one whose approval Daddy Donald most wants; the one who wants nothing to do with politics and yet who, by marriage and by birth, cannot escape it. Ivanka Trump possesses a poise, even grace that makes a sharp contrast with her brash siblings - and certainly with Rubio and Vance.
We could have a bit of fun with who might be the Fool, and who might be Kent; but I think I’ll leave it there. Trump, like Lear, is an angry old man. More than that, he is an insulted angry old man, desperate for love, but who has just been monumentally slapped in the face by the American people.
This humiliation, and the hyper-macho fight for the future of the Republicans that is about to play out in a very, very public manner, make Trump more dangerous today than he has ever been. An outbreak of conciliatory behaviour is unlikely. Don’t expect him to give back the money he’s accrued. With time running out, he’s likely to exploit his presidential power in ever more unpredictable ways.
On almost every single measure that Americans care about, Trump is thought to have been a failure as a President. This matters hugely beyond America too. Around the world, those who benefited from Trump being in post realise that, if the Democrats take the White House in 2028, things might not be so rosy for them anymore.
That is why I believe the chances of both a major global recession and conflict have increased - and one particular military action which, were it to materialise, would be cataclysmic for the whole world, and potentially plunge us into something akin to a World War.
I still don’t think it will happen, on balance; but my antennae, and conversations with some well placed sources, tell me that the chances of China invading Taiwan have significantly risen.
Would they dare? What happens if they do? That will be the subject of next week’s newsletter.
Humanity’s fork in the road
AI is the biggest story of our times. There are a lot of very smart people I know who can’t sleep at night because of what’s happening. And others who - rightly, in my view - are excited about the astonishing gains for health and productivity.
If you want to understand what it actually is, the rate at which its developing, and why we, as a species, are essentially at a fork in the road, please check out this week’s episode with Ian Hogarth. As he himself says, he doesn’t do many of these interviews. I really think you’ll find it useful. As he puts it, AI could go on radically different paths. To take two very very broad ones: it could be like electricity, in prompting an industrial revolution, improving lives, and generating tremendous productivity. Nobody wants to go back to the world before electricity. Or it could take the path of recursive self-improvement, in which case we lose control.
My key takeaway from this urgent, enlightening conversation: it’s in the next 12 months that we find out which path humanity will take.
You’re in esteemed company, obviously, when listening to these shows, by the way. I said I wanted last week’s episode with Daisy Christodolou to be the most useful conversation about Education you hear this year. Well, the hugely influential former Ofsted boss called it “comprehensive and unmissable.”
I want this week’s episode to be the most useful conversation you hear about Technology this year. Well, the former Technology Secretary had this to say about it, which rather took me by surprise. Thank you, Liz Kendall.
A humble ask: is please do kindly Subscribe or Follow wherever you listen to these conversations. It’s free, and pressing that button really helps us to grow, and to bring you bigger and better ideas and guests and episodes. Thank you.
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The ARC of Recommends
A weekly selection of life-enhancing delights, curated by your humble correspondent, in response to popular demand. I think you will enjoy them.
Visit:
Rockfish. Mitch Tonks’ Rockfish restaurants are consistently excellent. I’ve eaten at them perhaps two dozen times, across Budleigh Salterton, Exmouth, Exeter and Dartmouth. There are others too. When you think of how hellishly hard life is for restaurants at the moment, I honestly just take my hat off to those who produce such quality and such value. The fish are twice fresh: from the sea, and from the pan. The chips never fail to be legendary. The restaurant in Budleigh has improved since opening, and the children’s menu is always on point. Seafood is such a key part of our cuisine, as a coastal nation, and I know the lengths Rockfish go to so that they minimise negative consequences for our natural inheritance. Plus they give you colouring sheets and crayons, and play the Shipping Forecast in the toilets. What’s not to love?
Read:
Gruffalo Granny, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Naturally, no sequel could come close to the original Gruffalo story. But the appearance of a new book in the Gruffalo series is such a huge moment in the Western canon. Julia Donaldson has been a very big part of my family’s life for many years. We have all of them, and I’ve read a few perhaps 50 times. A lot of authors think kids books are easy to write - and then they start writing them. Packing so much plot and character into so short an emotional narrative requires huge skill and occasional genius. Donaldson and Scheffler certainly possess the latter. This new book is a delight.
Watch:
Tyson on Netflix. I love Boxing - the history, the grace, the skill, rivalry and huge champions. I think I got it, like so much else, from my dear Dad. He loved Tyson. As a kid, we’d have VHS tapes of his greatest fights, and though I think he didn’t really want me to watch them, I did. In fact we’d watch them over and over. Tyson is such a damaged, tortured soul, and the story of his apprenticeship at the feet of the great trainer, promoter and manager Cus D’Amato is one of the most seductive stories in all sport. Tyson is hard to understand at times, owing to his slurred diction - something I’ve been accused of more than once. And he was often as much of a thug in his private life as in the ring. I’ve only watched the first two episodes, but they’re magnificent. Donald Trump, as a New York plutocrat, inevitably shows up.
Listen:
A Promised Land, by Barack Obama. Through his recent campaigning, Obama has reminded a global audience of his powers of oratory. It’s true that he’s special in this regard. He has huge vocal charisma, from the intonation and cadences, to the body language that go with it. But at the core is the power of story-telling. And he tells his own story particularly well. This magisterial memoir, the first in a series, covers his account of the campaign to get elected. That was an exhilarating time in politics, and his perspective is wise and reflective, nearly 20 years after the events he describes. It’s also funny. Obama was often criticised for being too professorial, but he knew how to crack a joke, and in this great audio-book, which he reads himself, there are plenty.
ARC Alert(s)
A couple of minor house-keeping points.
Poor Ed Conway was stuck in a foreign location with his family at the end of half-term, so couldn’t make our recording. We’ll re-schedule that.
Separately, as I hope you’d both expect and forgive, we’re constantly experimenting in lots of different ways as we get the business up and running, and the ARC Universe expands. I really want to create a culture at my company where we disagree well and fail brilliantly - that is, learn from our failures, and improve through them.
We’re getting tremendous pick-up for the weekly long-form interview - but they seem to really get going on Thursday afternoon rather than Thursday morning. So next week’s episode will be released at 16.00 rather than 7am. I hope that’s ok.
Thank you so much for all your time and support for our shared mission.
Happy Friday.
Yours ARCfully,
AMOL
