No Trump

One story about Fred Trump stuck in my head. He would tell people that he was Swedish so not to offend his Jewish tenants. No problem, but he probably underestimated his tenants. And reinvention is an honest part of our American tradition, if that isn't weird.

I mean, there's something unavoidably dishonest about reinventing yourself. Maybe it can go in the direction of greater authenticity, but it can sure go in the other direction. Now Donald, the son, doesn't seem to understand that reinvention isn't an end in itself. 

He's in such a constant state of reinvention it would be fair to say there is no Donald, no Trump. He is a means to an end. The end, I suppose, is his image, a kind of hot-air balloon of immense size that he must work frantically to keep inflated. His visage is on it.

But it's not him. There is no him. He is the fulfillment of a trend starting, at the latest, with Ronald Reagan, the actor president, a trend of presidents as pawns or props, on the Republican side. It's hard to imagine a greater non-entity than George W. Bush, but, voila!

They have found him, the Trumpster. It's also hard to imagine greater wreckage than was left by that Bush guy, but there's the potential there in Trump. Republican grandees are salivating, I'm sure. The end of the American state, as we have known it, is at hand.