“Fear: Trump in the White House” by Bob Woodward

I was travelling, camping, talking with people across the Canada, when Woodward’s book came out in August of this year. Every bookstore I visited was sold out of the book. “It’s freaky,” said the bookseller in Owen Sound, “We sold out the first day.”

There was great interest, due to Woodward’s

reputation as a truthful, informed and courageous reporter. He uses a tape recorder, and has “access.”

But what I was looking for even more than the reporting and quotes was his insight into Trump himself. He uses a March 31, 2016, quote from Trump at the beginning of the book just before the Note to Readers:

“Real power is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear.”

He draws his title from it and uses it a couple times later in the book, but does not seem, to my eyes, to develop much of that insight into Trump. Perhaps in his wisdom he just assumes that ordinary people like me will be able to see from all the reporting in the book that Trump works and plays with fears.

But where I could really see what he thought was in the last paragraph of the last page of the book, where he writes of John Dowd’s resignation as Trump’s lawyer. Dowd, very experienced and astute, supports and likes Trump and was aware of his limitations, resigned because Trump would not take his advice.

Woodward’s last paragraph reads:

But in the man and the presidency Dowd had seen the tragic flaw. In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweetings, the obscuring, crying “Fake News,” the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: “You’re a fucking liar.”

It’s not clear to me that this fatal flaw directly relates to the”Fear” of the tile, but it may. Woodward reports two pages earlier Dowd as saying something that gets a little closer to the fear idea. He is telling Trump that he doesn’t have to worry about being impeached and says:

They’re not going to impeach you. Are you shitting me? They’re a bunch of cowards, the whole town. The media, the Congress. They’re gutless.

So perhaps that was the fear that Woodward was referencing – the fear, the true cowardice, within not just Washington but the US public itself.

Canadian Comfort

I’ve been in Canada for the last three months, taking a break from my life at home in the USA. Certain realities catch my notice quickly here.

The first thing I notice when I cross the border into Canada, which I do several times per year, is that my body feels more relaxed here.

I also feel hopeful. It’s as if the very fact that there is a place so close by which is not Hobbesian, not basically violent, reaffirms that feeling.

What I call “the Hobbesian view” brings a sense of urgency and doom with it, and a dismissal or diminishing awareness of the fundamental power of love and cooperation.

I notice here at least twice a day, every single day, some act of helpfulness or kindness, whereas I almost never see such things in Dayton, Ohio.

These observations may seem naive at first, and I am very aware of stereotyping and the weakness of national character studies. But the reality is nonetheless there and cannot be dismissed.

I’ve given a lot of thought over the years to the game of hockey, which I myself consider to be brutal, yet here seems to be considered honorable or even symbolic of the country in some way. I admit that I haven’t figured it out, that it seems anomalous to me. Even mature women here admire the game. Perhaps it’s one way of dealing with the inevitable reality of brutality in life, in the world.