Stability and Genius: Trump

I recently sucked it up and read Team of Rivals. My dad gave it to me years ago, and I finally realized that if I ever wanted him to stop talking about it, I'd need to read it.

You can't get more than a few hundred pages into the book - that is, through the Introduction - without realizing that Abraham Lincoln was a man of breathtaking talents. An autodidact with broad command of the Western Canon, he also had an almost supernatural sense of people and politics. And, yes, he looked a lot like Daniel Day-Lewis.

Lincoln came from nowhere to lead the country at a time of great crisis. Reading Team of Rivals, I felt lucky in two ways. First, that Doris Kearns Goodwin's editor insisted that she keep the book under 800 pages. Second, that in electing Lincoln, we managed to choose just the right person as president in a moment when "good enough" wouldn't be good enough.

You can't help but notice the parallels to the election of 2016. The economy was in recovery, but not to the degree that certain very wealthy people would have preferred. Marriage equality was now the law of the land, making nearly one hundred wedding cake artists slightly uncomfortable. And there was a real chance that the FBI wouldn't arrest Hilary Clinton and give us the show trial and public execution that we'd all been waiting for. It was a dark moment.

Out of the darkness, like Abraham Lincoln with the benefit of 150 years of evolution, we were presented with a candidate who had all the knowledge, experience, and drive to tackle the big problems that we confronted. But she had a vagina, so we elected Donald J Trump.

After a year as president, we thought we knew Trump, as a business maestro, an international leader, a great sword dancer.

But until recently, we didn't realize that he's not just an historic talent. This week, he let us in on his secret.

After 40 years in the limelight, a prime-time TV show, 18 months of campaigning and thousands of tweets, the truth is revealed: he's a very stable genius. And then, in case you didn't hear it, he sent out his basement gnome to tell us again...

If Trump and his gnome say it, it must be true, as he's the most truthful president in history. This chart, comparing Trump's truthfulness to Obama's, tells the story: Trump is six times as truthful as Obama.

Let's celebrate our good fortune then, the gift of having a leader that is exceptional in his stability, his genius, and every other "good word" you could apply to him (though it would be nice if he looked like Daniel Day-Lewis, right?).

To understand his greatness, let's examine "stability". In America today, who's our model of stability, of reliability, of safety?

Matt Lauer, of course (seen here being coached by Trump). Matt's there for you every morning, a smile on his face, ready to go. He comes into your home to serve you but not pander. We can count on Matt.

If Matt Lauer is our model of stability, who then would be our examplar of genius. Let's simplify this way: who's managed to make the most money while delivering the least value. Surely, these are the unmistakable signs of genius.

It should come as no surprise that our paragon of intellect comes from Trump's own neighborhood (though he's now retired elsewhere), one of the most successful investors of all time, Bernie Madoff. His genius in investing has never been equaled and may never be beaten by anyone who conforms to SEC regulations. When other investors got bogged down with "trades" and "records" and "reality", Bernie leased an entire floor in Manhattan where he could invent his own reality.

Sound familiar? When Einstein didn't like Newton's reality, he created his own. Likewise, Bernie transcended the conventional reality of Warren Buffet and his ilk. And the genius of our age, Donald J Trump, brews up a fresh pot of his own reality each morning. What does E=MC^2 mean to Trump? We can't imagine.

Einstein (had Trump's hair). Jobs (wished he had Trump's hair). Merkel (Ph.D., sure but only in Physical Chemistry). Oprah (couldn't get a gig on Apprentice. Sad!). All exceptional, but none of them very stable geniuses.

No matter how you do the math, no person - or combination of people - can measure up to our president, Donald J Trump. As he himself shared so eloquently, "throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart." Like, really smart indeed!