The Small World of the Big Man

How Trump’s Parochial Vision will Affect Our Worlds

At six-three and 240 pounds, Donald Trump is a big guy by most people’s standards, ‘uge by his own*, commanding a large financial empire, and with an even larger personality, which hasn’t shrunk since the election.

Most would agree, by most measures Donald Trump was a big man before, who’s now, by some measures, the world’s biggest man, making it all the more remarkable that Mr. Trump’s world is so small.

Harking to the subtitle, we inhabit unique personal worlds, framed by our unique perspectives. We live within the same physical world, but not the same emotional worlds.

Think of it as emotional string theory.

We each do, in our unique worlds, what we deem best to accomplish our goals. Our judgement may seem flawed to others, but that’s because they’re in their own emotional worlds, not ours. In our worlds what we do makes perfect sense. In this regard the outsized Mr. Trump is no different from the rest of us, he lives in a unique world in which the actions he takes are those he deems best to accomplish his goals.

Were he still a real estate developer or reality show host, his choices, bullying businessmen less powerful than himself and issuing inflammatory tweets in the wee hours, might be exactly what he needs to do to accomplish his goals, to maximize his profits and fame. Though he’s failed at business, he’s also been very successful, and though we might question his fame, he is famous. He has leveraged other people’s capital and his reality show persona into a large personal fortune, public access, and fame.

His habits have allowed him to accomplish his unique, personal goals, but for better or worse, Donald J. Trump isn’t just a developer or reality show host anymore, he’s President Elect of the United States, and the limited vision that served him well in his world will likely limit, disturb, or wreak havoc on ours.

Take, for example, his grandstanding attempts to “save jobs” by threatening to impose tax or other penalties on Carrier and Ford, companies planning to move manufacturing jobs to Mexico. The number of jobs “saved” is fuzzy, but might in each case be as high as 700. Were President Trump to continue in this fashion, finding a new private business to bully each day, in his first year in office he’d have “saved” about 250,000 jobs.

To a businessman, even the largest businessmen, or a real estate developer or reality show host, a quarter million jobs is a stunning achievement, but to a US President a quarter million jobs is a drop in the bucket, a small fraction of the jobs we’d normally generate in a year if our economy were in good hands, or at least in hands that would keep to themselves, instead of meddling.

“Saving” a quarter of a million jobs each year, less than 0.2% of our job count, while our population grows three times that fast, is a losing proposition. In fact, while “saving” an almost trivial number of jobs by threatening financial or legal action against private companies that are breaking no laws, simply doing things he doesn’t like, how many jobs is he preventing?

How many foreign companies will watch, and decide to not build their next plant in our country? How many American companies will quietly decide to expand their foreign capacity instead of adding jobs here? How many rational people will decide rationally to reduce their exposure to an unpredictable, vindictive man occupying the most powerful position in the world?

We’ll never know, until after he’s gone.

All we’ll know is President Trump will have “saved” 250,000 jobs.

How many foreign investors will watch, and decide to not invest their money in our country? How many American investors will quietly decide to finance the foreign plants of foreign companies, or foreign plants of American companies instead of financing plants that won’t be built here? How many rational investors will decide rationally to minimize their exposure to a man who threatens to impose tax penalties on those who displease him and wreak havoc with foreign exchange markets to “get back at” countries he accuses of manipulating their currencies, as though The Fed doesn’t manipulate ours?

How much economic damage will a parochial President Trump do to each of us if, instead of pursuing policies on a national scale that affect hundreds of thousands of companies each day, to entice companies and investment to come here, if, instead of seeing the larger picture he retains the narrow perspective of his old personal emotional world, that of a real estate developer and reality show host, wherein he was able to accomplish his goals by, one at a time, bullying those subordinate to him?

We’ll never know, until after he’s gone and someone with greater vision, someone used to inhabiting a larger emotional world steps in.

How much social damage will a parochial President inflict on the rest of the world by viewing it as an American playground, one in which we make the rules and the almighty American dollar enforces them, one in which the prime consideration is how much profit our companies make?

How much political and cultural damage will his narrow world view do to us, when instead of draining the swamp and stopping the deal making, he doubles down with the same creatures that have inhabited that swamp and engages in the very same dirty political deal making?

Almost none of what candidate Trump promised would be good for any of our worlds. So why was he elected?

Because Americans recognized his narrow world view and felt comfortable with it because their own world views were narrow, because too few of us have tried to inhabit a larger emotional world, in which the consequences of what candidate and now President Elect Trump proposed and proposes look less attractive than they do from a smaller world?

Was Trump the first President elected, not because we admire and respect him, but because we recognize and feel comfortable with him, because we accept him as one of us, someone who’ll fight our corner in the same way we would?

Is that what we wanted, someone like us, someone as small as us?

Few of us measure up to the deeds and accomplishments of most of our Presidents. Few of us, if the chance at greatness were handed to us, would transcend our small selves and become great. Most of us would fail because most of us are small, most of us inhabit very small personal worlds, most of us have very narrow personal world views.

Failing in our own personal worlds is one thing, failing globally is another.

I’m not sure how wise we’ve been if, by electing Mr. Trump, what we’ve accomplished is choosing someone to run the world who reminds us of us.