Citizen Trump

I can't speak for Millennials, but for Gen-Xers and older of the male persuasion The Godfather remains, even forty-four years after it's initial release, a key cultural point of reference and a font of practical wisdom. This only partially absurd idea was played upon cleverly in the 1998 Meg Ryan - Tom Hanks romcom You've Got Mail. I certainly have an affection for the 1972 Francis Ford Coppola directed classic, but for me the even greater cinematic male centric I Ching is Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. It's the story of a man who rises from humble beginnings to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. It begins with his fall (death, actually) and meanders backward and forward as a series of witnesses give a reporter their take on this over sized personalty's life. 

And Kane does, as the Tom Hanks character observes of The Godfather, supply all he answers of life. How to spend Christmas break - go sledding. What to have for dinner - Lobster Newburg. When should a nation commit troops to battle - you supply the prose poems, I'll supply the war. 

Joking aside, both classic films offer personality studies of men who assume power and how it affects them, as well as the people around them. Any parallels between truth and fiction are going to break down at a certain point, but fiction can still offer us glimpses into the working of human nature, and even current events. Cinemasins, which playfully points out mistakes in popular movies, both fresh and rotten, drew a not so veiled parallel between Charles Foster Kane, the protagonist - tragic hero of Welles' film, and Donald John Trump, in their reverent take down of Kane. A subplot in the movie has Kane using his newspaper empire and flare for the sensational to attempt a gubernatorial run, in hopes of one day running for the presidency. In 2016 Donald Trump has used his real estate development empire and, yes, flare for the sensational, to skip over the preliminaries and make a go right for the White House. 

Of course any comparison I make here between Kane and Trump breaks down rather quickly because one is a fictional character and the other is a very real, living person. But fiction, good fiction, gains us an insights into universal streams of human nature — its motivations and complexities. Though imperfect, a good old fashioned compare and contrast of these two figures can be profitable — the strange fiction helping us to understand the even stranger truth.

Kane and Trump are both men of wealth, power and influence who also crave public recognition and acclaim. They are men of business—one a press baron, the other a real estate tycoon— whose respective fields do not inherently invite celebrity, but are still used as excuses to mug for an audience. Welles saw Citizen Kane as an indictment of the acquisitive society, with his protagonist’s constant collecting of art, property and, to some extent people, a vain chasing after wind, with no other purpose than to fill some emotional void. In the case of Trump, we have conspicuous consumption, along with the conspicuous placement of his surname in big, bold letters on buildings from cost to cost. He has been a public figure for over thirty years, self promoting his way into people's living rooms, by way of his highly rated television show. Both men seek political office, many would argue, for ego purposes alone, as opposed to any real desire to be a public servant.  

There are clear differences between the fictional Kane and the real life Trump, of course. Kane, in spite of his humble beginnings as the son of a boarding house owner, was a man of cultured refinement and high ideals. Trump, although one could argue of the mannor born, is boorish, with no discernible core beliefs. While Kane’s wealth corrupts his progressive ideals, Trump’s material excesses are right in line with who he seems to be. It may be true, as his friend Jed Leland tells him the night Kane loses the gubernatorial election, that the whole run was about feeding his ego’s craving for love on his own terms. In spite of this, Kane really did have a crusading spirit on behalf of the common people, even if his ideals were perverted over time. Trump’s run really does seem to be purely motivated by his over sized sense of self and need of center stage. He poses as a pro—lifer, yet his assertion that women who have abortions could be charged and convicted in a post Roe world shows an ignorance for how real right to life advocates see the issue. In the early 1990’s he testified before a congressional committee, critical of the Reagan tax reforms of 1986, yet today runs on an economic plan similar to that earlier bill. The truth is that the fictional Kane was a complex set of contradictions and missed opportunities, much like the man who played and  helped create the character. Trump possesses no such complexity. His ego and appetite are not covering for some emotional hole in his soul—it is a direct product of who he is at his core. 

Charlie Kane's political career is undone by a sex scandal. Trump's may well be ended in a similar way, though our changing social mores has made that process more difficult, though still very possible. 

Both men portray themselves as outsiders contesting against well entrenched political machines. And both men also threaten to jail their opponent if they are victorious in their respective campaigns. In a highly dramatic scene, in a movie filled with them, Kane and his first wife Emily are lured to the apartment of his mistress, and later second wife, Susan Alexander by his opponent "Boss" Jim Gettys, where the four confront each other. Gettys threatens to release details of Kane's extramarital affair if he doesn't bow out of the race quietly. The sequence climaxes with a shot of Kane at the top of the apartment's stairs shouting about how he is going to send the party boss to Sing Sing, a reference to the prison in Ossining, New York. 

Some critics have argued that the scenario of Kane being forced out of the race because of marital infidelity was unlikely since so many politicians and big business people at the time had mistresses left unmentioned because going after such peccadilloes would only assure the destruction of both candidates. Whatever the actual political climate of 1916, when the fictional campaign was set, may have been,  we know that in the 1960's Nelson Rockefeller saw his chances of winning the Republican nomination damaged because of a divorce, and in 1988 Gary Hart had to drop out of the Democratic primaries because of a sex scandal. Whether these social standards are cyclical, I'm not sure, but just a few years later, Bill Clinton won two terms as president in spite of questions over his personal life. There was a time when insinuations of homosexuality could've been a death knell to anyone's chances of winning office, and today there are candidates who make their sexuality a part of their campaign. In the case of Trump it's not so much what he may have done (though there is that) but rather over his attitudes toward women. This may be the first time where someone is disqualified because of sexual thoughts or words more than his actual conduct. 

A person's thoughts and attitudes are a window into his or her soul, so I'm not suggesting the they should be dismissed so quickly. But what disturbs me more is his not so subtle implication that the election may be "rigged." Trump is calling into question the legitimacy of the process, and with it the validity of the result. We should not be so naive as to think that the source of at least some of the stories coming out aren't connected to the Clinton campaign, even if they don't emanate directly from the candidate herself, which they most likely don't. Every campaign, including Trump's, engages in opposition research, trying to find embarrassing information on the opponent and releasing it at the moment it will hurt the person most. I'm not saying it's good or right, or that it shouldn't be reformed, just that this is the world as it is. It's also fair for Trump to fight back, but such a rejoinder at this particular moment in history is dangerous, and shows an clearer view into Trump's mind and temperament than his adolescent sexuality.

Both candidates are skating on thin ice in this area. The Clinton camp is accusing Russia of influencing the election by blaming them for the hacking and leaking of emails embarrassing to their candidate. In Kane, his newspaper runs a headline the morning after his defeat proclaiming, "Fraud at the Polls." It's a move, transparent to the viewer, born of sour grapes that's not to be taken seriously. But in this real life corollary, talk of rigged systems and stollen elections have been rife all through the primary season. Bernie Sanders used such rhetoric during his run. But many today do not see such talk as the last act of a desperate candidate, but believe that the political process is compromised. Both sides are setting in place a way of calling into question the legitimacy of the outcome. 

The peaceful and orderly transfer of power from one president to another is a custom we can be rightly proud of in this country. We've had the outcome of elections honored during times of civil war, economic depression and, social unrest. We had the presidency transferred to an unelected vice-president after the resignation of a president over a political scandal. We've had election results that were clearly questionable, but each time the loser accepted the results for what they saw as the good of the country, in the spirit of this time honored tradition. 

On Sunday Mike Pence, Trump's running mate, was pressed on the question of whether his ticket would accept the legitimacy of the results. He said they "absolutely would." In spite of the fact that the polls show her far ahead, in light of the talk coming out of her side, the Clinton campaign should be asked the same question. I don't think that it is an exaggeration to suggest that we may face a Constitutional crisis, especially if the victory is narrow. There are segments of the public, on both sides of the divide, who do not see things through the lens of politics as usual, or questions over legitimacy as a tactic to get out the vote, or knock an opponent. They really do believe that something is fundamentally wrong with the political and economic system. The only questions left are how deep is the discontent and, how passionate will the reaction be?

Is Trump a real life Kane? The simple answer is no. As is sometimes the case, the fictional character is more complex, and sympathetic. Kane wasn't based on one man, the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, as is usually described. Orson Welles and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz incorporated the stories of several American industrialists into making a composite character. It's also been argued that Kane's personality had more in common with Welles than any of the other sources drawn on, thought the co-writer and director always denied it. Kane is a social reformer with a clear agenda. Trump doesn't have a coherent program and doesn't seem to really understand how the government works. Both men hit  a populist nerve in the electorate, a discontent with the system that fuels their political rise. The question remains if the flesh and blood Trump can succeed were Kane failed.