Donald Trump does not support criticism. Imagine such a person as president. Chicago Grandstand

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One wonders if Republican leaders have begun to realize that they may have tied their fate and that of their party to a man with a disordered personality. We can leave it to the professionals to figure out exactly what to call it. Suffice to say that Donald Trump’s response to the various speakers at the Democratic National Convention was not rational.

Why denigrate the parents of a soldier who died serving his country in Iraq? And why continue for four days? Why attack the file of a decorated general who commanded American forces in Afghanistan? Why make fun of the stature of a popular former mayor of New York? Surely Trump must know that at any convention, including his own, people stand up and criticize the opposition party nominee. They get their hits, just like your party got their hits. And then you move on to the next phase of the campaign. You don’t make fun of every person who has criticized you. And you especially don’t pick fights you can’t win, like against a grieving Gold Star mother or a general. It’s just not in your interest to do so.

If you’re a Republican, the real problem, and the thing that should keep you up at night… is that the man can’t control himself.

Robert Kagan

The fact that Trump couldn’t help it, that he clearly wanted to, as he put it, “punch” everyone who spoke against him at the Democratic convention, suggests that there is really something wrong with man. It’s not just that he’s incapable of empathy. It’s not just that he feels he has to respond to every criticism he receives by attacking and disparaging the critic, no matter how small or inconsequential. If you’re a Republican, the real problem, and the thing that should keep you up at night as we head into the final 100 days of this campaign, is that the man can’t control himself. He cannot abstain even when it is manifestly in his interest to do so. Moreover, his psychological pathologies are ultimately self-destructive. (Disclosure: I was a guest speaker at a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton last month; I have no role in her campaign.)

Trump is, in this regard, different from a normal politician. A normal politician knows that no matter how much criticism is under your skin, the thing to do is smile and ignore it. You don’t have to think so. You don’t even have to appear to say it. But that’s what you do, if only to avoid further damage. Trump cannot make this simple self-serving calculation. He must attack anyone who opposes him, even after defeating them. He has to keep talking about Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s father, even after Cruz throws in the towel. He has to humiliate New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, even after Christie lies down in front of him.

Many Trump supporters admire him for his bold challenge to political correctness. But his political incorrectness may just be an unintended side effect of his illness. Some of the insults he throws back at his detractors are politically incorrect: racist and misogynistic taunts. But others are just plain childish: making fun of someone’s height or suggesting someone’s father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It is not really politically incorrect to say that a POW is not a hero because he has been captured. It’s just a way of saying, I don’t care if you’re a war hero. You criticized me and now I have to hit you. Trump’s insults are scattered and only sometimes strike the raw racist and xenophobic nerves of society. The most important fact is that he is unable to control his responses to criticism. It must double each time, even if it means sinking deeper and deeper into the hole.

Imagine such a person as president. What we’ve seen in the Trump campaign isn’t just a clever method of stoking people’s anger. It is also a personality defect that has had the effect of stirring up anger. And because it’s a flaw and not a tactic, it would continue to affect Trump’s behavior in the White House. This would determine how he would deal with other nations. That would determine how he would deal with criticism at home. This would determine how he governed, how he executed laws, how he instructed law enforcement and intelligence agencies under his command, how he dealt with the press, how he dealt with the opposition party, and how he managed dissent within his own party. . His personality flaw would be the dominant factor in his presidency, just as it was the dominant factor in his campaign. His ultimately self-destructive tendencies would play out on the biggest stage in the world, with consequences at home and abroad that one can barely imagine. It would make him the closest thing the United States has ever had to a dictator, but one with a dangerously unstable temper that neither he nor anyone else can control.

We can hope that it will not come to that. In all likelihood, his flaws will destroy him before he reaches the White House. He’s going to take himself down, and he’s going to take down the Republican Party and its leaders with him. It would be a tragedy if it were not for the fact that the party and its leaders, who chose him as their candidate and who now cover up and accomplice this troubled man, so richly deserve their fate.

Washington Post

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist at the Washington Post.

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