The Method to the Madness
By Allen Salkin and Aaron
Short 300 Pages, All Points Books
On the inside of its dust jacket The Method to the Madness describes itself as “a Rosetta Stone for understanding Donald Trump.” It falls far short of living up to that billing, in large part because the authors seek only to explain how the unthinkable could have happened. How could the egotistical and unsuitable Donald Trump have ever succeeded in becoming President of the United States of America. Salkin and Short focus on the years between 1999 and 2017, and by doing that they miss a more important story.
For that story you have to go back to a 1987 interview with Larry King in which Donald Trump laid out his complaints about the conduct of American foreign policy. In that interview Trump explained that America was being ripped off. Sound familiar? America was spending its treasure defending nations that should have been defending themselves, and that America's dependence on oil from the Middle East was forcing it into unnecessary military involvement there.
Here we are, going on three years into Donald Trump's first term as president, and we find that President Trump's accomplishments to date include reviving the U.S. energy industry making America energy independent for the first time in decades, forcing NATO partners to pick up more of the costs of there own defense, withdrawal of military forces from the Middle East in a way that does not permit the resurrection of ISIS, as opposed to the Obama administration's precipitous troop withdrawals that brought about the rise of ISIS in the first place. While all this is going on Trump has been renegotiating trade deals with the aim of correcting trade imbalances that cost American jobs. In other words, starting in 2017 Trump has been attacking the problems he described to Larry King in 1987.
It's the story that Salkin and Short don't tell, but the one they should have, since it demonstrates that Trump had reasons to run for president that went beyond just being president. Perhaps it's because he continued to hold those beliefs for over thirty years that his journey to the White House took decades. It's likely that Trump had one shot, and one shot only, for accomplishing the goals that he hoped to achieve for America.
Unfortunately, writing the wrong story is not the book's only flaw. It is organized for unreadability. Each chapter starts with an italicized summary of what is to follow, and then there are several pages of paraphrased snippets from source interviews conducted by Salkin and Short that buttress their points. Slogging through them becomes tedious.
The first chapter of the book, Tipster, ends with a snippet from Donny Deutsch, and advertising executive and MSNBC TV host – not a fan to Donald Trump. He said:
“Trump is not well read. He's not a sophisticated thinker, but he's an evil genius. Call him an idiot savant, whatever you want, but I've never seen a guy who understands messaging and consistency of messaging and staying on brand and being able to be true to the brand but also evolve the brand at the same time. The guy's a genius.”
That Deutsch passage, obviously of prime importance since it's the last word in the chapter, seems to sum up the book. Whatever your bias on Donald Trump, The Method to the Madness has something for you: Unsophisticated and not well read, call him an idiot savant. But the guy's a genius. In the end no minds will be changed.
Oh, and did I mention Trump's a racist? Chapter 11 is about “The N-word,” in which Trump is accused of using it and others swear it never happened. But with Trump and his perceived flaws, what may be true must be true, so the benefit of doubt goes to the accuser. Nothing new there.
The last chapter, The Announcement, ends with the thoughts from Justin McConney, Trump's social media director, as Trump concluded the announcement that he was running for President of The United States. There is no doubt about McConney's distaste at having to work for Donald Trump.
“My boss was running for president and now I was doing his social media unwillingly. It wasn't something I wanted to do or work on. I was trying to leave before it happened.”
How tragic and heart rending. And then we get to the epilogue, “The Centre Cannot Hold.” The title is from a poem by William Butler Yeats, the first stanza of which goes like this:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Trump is elected. Anarchy is loosed upon the world. Or so say the authors. But Salkin and Short, and their book, are off the mark. Anarchy has only been loosed upon the Democratic Party. Salkin and Short spend 300 pages trying to show how Donald Trump made it into the White House. The bigger and more important story is about what he's done since he got there.
