In Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece Brideshead Revisited there is a secondary character named Rex Mottram. Rex is a wealthy Canadian businessman who is now attempting to enter English society. He sees politics as his entryway to such elite status. As part of his scheme, Rex discerns that he must marry well. He sets his sights on one of the novel’s main characters, Julia Flyte.
Rex should have thought a little harder. While Julia descends from the bluest of bloods, the Flytes present a problem: they are Catholic. Not exactly a ticket to high political office in Anglican England. Still, the Flyte money and status are enough for Rex. He decides to convert.
Rex is not much interested in Catholic theology, though he is impressed by the Catholics’ ability to “put on a good show.” For him this is merely a transactional affair. It is precisely Rex’s indifference that makes him such a difficult convert. The priest tasked with instructing Rex in the faith describes Rex as “the most difficult convert I have ever met.” Rex hasn’t “the least intellectual curiosity or natural piety.” His general tactic is to simply ask the priest what the right answer is. For example, when asked whether Christ has two natures or just one, Rex responds with, “Just as many as you say, Father.” When questioned what he means by prayer, Rex’s pithy response is, “I don’t mean anything. You tell me.” Most comically, the priest poses this conundrum to Rex: suppose the Pope says it’s going to rain, but then it doesn’t, what do we make of that? Rex’s illiterate reply is, “I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it.” Rex memorizes large parts of the Catechism but is too intellectually lazy to ponder what any of it means. He just needs the answers to the test.
It turns out that Rex has been previously married and divorced. He didn’t bother to tell anyone as he didn’t know it mattered. This means the end of the Catholic wedding. Not wishing this to get in the way of getting what he wants, Rex and Julia marry at a small, nondescript, non-Catholic ceremony. It is not giving away too much to note that the marriage does not go well.
Rex Mottram can help us understand the personality of Donald Trump. While Trump is often described as right-wing and his affiliation with the Republican party naturally gives a partisan tinge to his activities, he is a remarkably nonideological and nonpartisan person. If you lined up all the Republicans who ran for president in 2016 (there were sixteen at the apogee of the contest), Trump would have been the first or second least conservative candidate. Trump ran against the Iraq war and the traditionally hawkish Republican foreign policy. He expressed no interest in the national debt or government spending. He was probably the least free market oriented of the candidates as witnessed by his embrace of protective tariffs.
Trump is something of a shapeshifter. He takes whatever position he thinks will get him ahead. In his adult life he’s been a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent. He donated money to Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid. He even contributed to Kamala Harris’s campaign for attorney general of California. Trump ran in 2016 as a pro-life candidate, but not many years earlier he described himself as very pro-choice. Now, of course, he presents himself as an abortion moderate. It was the suggestion that he’d nominate his liberal, very pro-choice sister to the Supreme Court that scared his campaign into issuing a list of conservative judges he might suggest elevating to the Court, a list that included Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. We also do well to remember that after the 2012 election, Trump’s criticism of Mitt Romney was not that Romney was soft on immigration, but too hard.
Trump and Rex Mottram have in common a lust for power. Both will say whatever they need to say to get that power. They are rich, calculating men with few if any convictions other than the desire to get ahead. Trump’s supporters, then, are dupes. Trump’s actions throughout his life suggest that if he calculated that he would enhance his position by throwing his MAGA supporters under the bus and going all in on the “irredeemable deplorable” line, he’d do it. Trump is only saying what he says and doing what he does because he thinks it will get him power.
In some ways that’s a positive characteristic. Trump, for example, is actually much closer to the average American on most issues than is Kamala Harris. She has a distinct ideology; he does not. Trump typically (but not always) figures out where most people are and simply says that. In this sense, you could describe Trump as an ideologically moderate, pragmatic politician.
But this is also a problem. Trump is a man with no convictions. Combine that with his populism and you get Trump’s demagoguery. We’ve witnessed the lengths Trump will go to in order to retain power. So far, his excesses have been largely rhetorical, albeit with hints of sinister actions. Who knows what will happen if he once again ascends to power. The concern over Trump should not be about policy; he’s a deal maker, not an ideologue. The concern should be about the way in which he continually distorts the American soul, undisciplined as he is by any actual principles and the Mottram-like laziness that prevents him from thinking seriously about serious matters. Trump’s supporters tie themselves in knots trying to explain Trump’s various positions on public policy. If Trump says it is raining but it is not, Trump’s most ardent defenders are happy to claim that it is raining, but we can’t see it because we are insufficiently MAGA.
Rex Mottram is a buffoonish, comedic character. His vices contribute to certain dreadful results, but at least those results are confined to one family. Give a Rex Mottram actual power, however, and many will pay the price.
I think you nailed it. However, I believe that Trump has some polices that span his public life. He has always supported tariffs as a main economic tool, extreme harshness on suspected criminals, tended toward isolationism, and opposed non-European immigration.