What do you call a president who, in the middle of a deadly pandemic, repeatedly spews falsehoods, insults political opponents and praises himself? A-U-T-H-E-N-T-I-C. You call him authentic.
After all, the 2016 presidential election was all about authenticity (here, here and here). The pundits and the pollsters kept telling us that, for all of his failings, Donald Trump was seen by voters as being authentic. The Donald won the election, the story line went, because he was real and Hillary Clinton was fake. This bizarre binary standard for evaluating politicians extended into 2020. Reams have been written about potential Democratic presidential candidates and their authenticity or lack thereof.
Why are we treating authenticity – irrespective of the content of a person’s character – as a virtue? Clearly, Trump is no phony. He’s the real deal. But the deal is terrible. He is authentically bad, immoral and indifferent to the needs of others. Why is that kind of authenticity virtuous? How did we get here?
Well, don’t blame Aristotle. The architecture he provided for ethical systems that lasted centuries revolved around such virtues as courage, honor, temperance, truthfulness, justice and friendship. Authenticity did not make his list. In fact, Aristotle went in the opposite direction, advising us to emulate others who have these virtues until they become habitual with us.
Then, in the 18th century, a Genevan philosopher named Jean-Jacques Rousseau, advocated an alternative view, one in which authenticity – being true to one’s self – sits atop his ethical hierarchy. Rousseau, according to academicians who studied him, saw pure, unvarnished authenticity as the most important source of happiness and psychological coherence. He believed that people are naturally good and that their authentic selves cannot harm others since “their self-love is moderated by concern for others.” Rousseau developed this school of thought roughly 300 years before Donald Trump roamed the earth.
The late social critic and academic Christopher Lasch was, however, very aware of the self-absorbed Trumpian archetype. More than 40 years ago, he wrote a book called The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. In it, Lasch noted the similarities between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and authenticity. He wrote that narcissism and authenticity are both characterized by “. . . deficient empathetic skills, self-indulgence and self-absorbed behavior.” In other words: An authentic narcissist is still a narcissist. And wholly without virtue.
The political fascination with authenticity did not begin with Trump. It exploded with him and, if we are lucky, it will end with him. But this bizarre phenomenon has been building for some time. Think back to the Bush v. Gore election in 2000. The rap on Gore was that he was too stiff and had a propensity to overinflate his resume. Bush, despite – or maybe because of – an antipathy toward good syntax, struck people as more real, the kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with.
This desire for authenticity in leadership is certainly understandable. Politicians have long been seen as crafty, cagey characters who say one thing and do another, who appear overly buttoned down and tightly scripted. Add to those perceptions the current environment of rampant distrust and disgust with our government and political systems, and you can begin to see the attraction of someone who simultaneously wants to trash the status quo and appears to be genuinely authentic.
Like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Yes, they are lightyears apart in so many ways. Yet their appeal has embraced the same two elements: being authentic and promising to blow the system up. Sanders’ brand of authenticity is considerably different than Trump’s. Bernie is not a narcissist. But his fans constantly boast about how their candidate hasn’t changed in 40 years. Indeed, there is a lot of truth to that. Sanders has forever believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat, the evil of capitalism and value of class warfare.
In many ways, Sanders’ authenticity is more pure and moral than Trump’s. In the finest Rousseauian tradition, Bernie is stridently faithful to his principles. They reflect his true self and he is not of a mind to modify them in order to enlarge his base. Therein lies a serious problem for a presidential candidate. His allegiance to an ideology makes him authentic, endears him to his followers and advances his movement. But given his narrow appeal to a minority of the electorate, and the absence of the slightest rhetorical nod to wanting to be “president for all Americans”, he lacks the votes to win. To Bernie, being true to himself is more important than winning.
That is decidedly not the case for Donald Trump. To him, it’s all about winning. He has no ideology or core beliefs. His positions on . . . well, on everything, change with the wind, depending on what he thinks will help him win. He spent the first three weeks of the coronavirus crisis insisting it was a hoax that would soon go away. Then he became a “wartime president”, leading the battle against the dreaded enemy virus. As cases started doubling every few days, as temporary morgues were built near hospitals, he talked about a quick return to normal. On Sunday, responding to a bipartisan outcry, he backed away from abruptly ending the war, saying, “Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won.”
All of these dramatically disparate moves were about only one thing: Trump’s perception of what would best help him win reelection. That’s authenticity. That’s being true to his narcissistic self.
It has been said that this life-and-death crisis we are going through will forever change us. Let us hope that one of those changes is a massive rejection of the notion that we should pick our leaders on the basis of unbridled authenticity, regardless of how obnoxious and odious a candidate’s behavior may be.
Aristotle had it right. Virtue doesn’t lie in being true to whatever kind of self we may have. Virtue is about qualities like courage, honor, honesty and justice that provide a better life for all of us. Authenticity without virtue is no more than a fool looking into a mirror.