For the first time since his entry into politics nearly a decade ago, President-elect Donald Trump is enjoying a honeymoon. A CBS News poll finds majorities approving of Trump’s handling of the transition process. Voters are either excited or optimistic as to what he will do as president.
Winning a second term often gives presidents a lift. For example, after Richard Nixon was reelected in 1972, 67 percent approved of his performance.
But Nixon’s honeymoon was short-lived. The break-in at the Democratic National Committee had occurred months earlier, and the coverup was well underway by the time he began his second term. The seeds of Nixon’s political destruction were already planted. By the time he left office, only 24 percent of the public stood by him.
Shortly after his 1972 landslide victory, Nixon demanded the immediate resignations of his Cabinet and staff members. The criteria he set for future employment in a second term boiled down to one word: loyalty.
The homage his staff and Cabinet members paid to Nixon proved problematic. Few told Nixon that the Watergate break-in was wrong, or that he should let the Justice Department independently investigate the break-in.
Nixon and Trump formed a mutual admiration society. After a 1987 appearance on The Phil Donahue Show, Nixon wrote Trump that his wife, Pat, thought Trump did “great.” Presciently, Nixon added, “She is an expert on politics, and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!”
It’s not surprising that these two sympatico presidents would find such kinship. John Dean observed that both men fed upon “the waves of each other’s personalities … These are two authoritarian personalities who would have a natural affinity for each other.”
Like Nixon, Trump inspires fear. But deep down he is filled with a cesspool of insecurities. It was Trump’s anxiety of facing Joe Biden in 2020 that led to his first impeachment. After telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to do him a “favor” and find dirt on Biden’s son, Hunter, the House began an impeachment inquiry. At the time, Biden was leading Trump in the polls, 48 percent to 41 percent.
Trump’s fear of losing led to his second impeachment, after he incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol to to prevent Joe Biden from assuming the presidency. “Defeat,” after all, is not a verb associated with the Trump brand.
After Nixon’s resignation, political scientists began examining presidential character as a predictor of performance. The most prominent of those studies was James David Barber’s book on presidential character, whose theories continue to be taught in many college classrooms.
For Barber, the most worrisome presidents are those whom he classifies as “Active-Negatives,” whose activity “has a compulsive quality, as if the man were trying to make up for something. He seems ambitious, striving upward, power-seeking. His stance toward the environment is aggressive and he has a persistent problem in managing his aggressive feelings.” Trump is the spitting image of this description.
Barber lists Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Nixon as exemplars of this Active-Negative persona. Note that not one of those administrations ended well.
Trump is the Active-Negative president reincarnated. As Barber wrote, the Active-Negative president “keeps returning to himself, his problems, how he is doing, as if he were forever watching himself.”
Bill Clinton describes Trump as “strong and wrong,” a candidate who beat the “weak and right” Joe Biden. But the reality is that Trump is a weak, insecure man, continuously seeking affirmation — and his paranoia has him seeing enemies everywhere.
In this, Trump has much in common with Nixon. In 1990, Nixon composed another letter to Trump after the New York developer’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Commiserating with Trump, Nixon wrote, “I know nothing about the intricacies of your business enterprises but the massive media attack on you puts me in your corner!”
The character flaws shared by Nixon and Trump created self-inflicted wounds for both presidents. Leaving the White House in 1974, Nixon allowed himself a moment of public candor, saying, “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
Like Nixon, Trump is a man consumed by hatred of his supposed enemies. In a Meet the Press interview, Trump declared that the members of the House Select Committee that investigated the Capitol riot “should go to jail.” Trump has former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in his sights, writing in a Truth Social post that the former Wyoming representative likely broke “numerous federal laws” which “should be investigated by the FBI.”
Threats of prosecutions on a massive scale have prompted Biden to consider issuing preemptive pardons to those targeted by Trump.
Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to be director of the FBI, has an enemies’ list reminiscent of Nixon’s famous enemies list. Consisting of 60 names ranging from Lloyd Austin to Alexander Vindman, it’s a litany of those who, Patel claims, constitute the “deep state” arrayed against Trump. This reflects the revenge and obeisance that will characterize Trump’s second term.
Retribution was not what Americans voted for in 2024. Just as the public condemned the Watergate break-in as an illegal act of political vengeance, Trump will face the wrath of public opinion should he embark on a campaign of revenge and retribution.
Like Nixon, Trump’s second-term problems will not originate with the Democrats. Instead, the seeds of his downfall lie within his flawed persona.
Forecast for 2025: Troubled waters ahead.
John Kenneth White is a Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of America. His latest book is titled “Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism.”
