The Twilight of Donald Trump

Each of us decides, at some point in our lives, which dramatic genre we inhabit. Is your life a tragedy? A comedy? As an academic, I aspire to live my life as a rather exalted BBC documentary, but somehow it always gravitates back to sitcom. I have friends who shoot for Hollywood costume drama, but inevitably wind up in low-budget soap opera. 

Some American presidencies have been authentic tragedies: certainly John F. Kennedy’s. Indeed, it would take an Aeschylus to do full justice to the Kennedy family’s version of “The Oresteia.” Other presidencies have been more comedic: Aristophanes would have enjoyed Bill Clinton’s presidency, not least because Clinton had the genially bawdy personality that the Athenian playwright liked to give his heroes. 

With good reason, Henry Kissinger quoted Shakespeare at Richard Nixon’s funeral, for Nixon’s self-destruction was an authentically Shakespearian tragedy. But what will Donald Trump’s presidency turn out to be? If you believe the prophets of American tyranny, it is already a tragedy — a ghastly combination of Coriolanus, Macbeth, and Richard III. I’ll take the other side. This, my friends, is a comedy. It may even be a full-blown farce.