I just found an essay I wrote when I was 10. It sounds exactly like President Trump.
What does it mean that the president of the United States sounds an awful lot like a little boy from 1980?
"As for campaigning, people don't want promises. They want action." — Noah Millman, age 10
This past Sunday, on a visit for brunch, my mother brought me a time machine in the form of an old valise. Inside was a treasure trove of documents from my childhood: photos, drawings, report cards, clippings, programs from the local drama club's productions. And, unsurprisingly for a budding writer, a wide array of written material.
I was particularly struck by one piece, written in November 1980 as part of a school assignment, describing my program should I be elected president of the United States. It began with the line quoted above.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
I don't recall the details of the assignment, but I can imagine what prompted it. The 1980 election loomed large in all of our consciousnesses, including us kids. After all, we'd sat on the gas lines with our parents. We'd watched the drama of the Iranian hostage crisis play out on the television every night. And we all still remembered the 1977 blackout. We knew the country had serious problems. As I detailed them in my essay:
The list is different from one we'd make today — though we're still worried about falling behind economically, about the poor job we're doing preventing the country's infrastructure from crumbling, and we're still panicked about a hostile regime in Iran.
But what I was struck by most was the . . . familiarity of some of the language I used when I talked about how to tackle these problems. You might almost call it my blueprint for making American great again.
Take it away, 10-year-old me:
OPEC is no longer our bugaboo, but Trump's emphasis has also been on how we're losing control of our destiny to foreign interference. They control something that we depend on. If we're going to solve our problems, we've got to take back control.
We've also got to take care of those bad hombres:
Again, what's most interesting to me is the Trumpiness of the language: the emphasis on control, and the smooth blending of a tough-on-crime message with talk of directly employing the unemployed that harkens back to the New Deal.
And guess who had already discovered fake news?
How should we respond to this fake shortage?
From the fulsome praise of coal to the gratuitous use of exclamation points, I was fully prepared for a career as a Trump speech writer.
Like the president, I knew how to throw a bone to traditional Republican advocates of federalism, small government, and local control:
But I quickly returned to themes that were closer to my pugnacious heart:
While Russia clearly played a different role in my geopolitical imaginings in 1980 than it does for Trump today (or, to be fair, than it did back in the 1980s), the parallels are still alarming. Like Trump, I believed that if you aren't aggressive from the get-go, you'll get rolled. Like Stephen Bannon, I believed that a war for global domination was imminent, if not already upon us. Like Michael Flynn, I was convinced that events in disparate parts of the globe were surely connected, even if no evidence supported my convictions.
Even my warm peroration is framed in terms of self-reliance and the need for strength:
So what does it mean that the president of the United States sounds an awful lot like a 10-year-old boy from 1980?
The obvious joke to make is that Trump has the maturity and depth of knowledge of a 10-year-old boy. But this is perhaps unfair to 10-year-old boys. Even if we looked like we needed a good dose of Ritalin (which was first licensed in 1955, though it didn't become popular until the 1990s), our minds were always working. If we were still able to observe the world as we saw it, and not merely reflect back what our teachers expected to hear, that's good. And heck, I'm kind of impressed that in fourth grade I knew America had the world's largest coal reserve.
Or perhaps it means that Trump's own impression of America was fixed in the 1980s? There's probably an element of truth to this, which may partly account for his peculiar policy mix, which includes warnings about '80s-era problems that have largely receded — urban crime in particular is at historic lows, notwithstanding dramatic spikes in a few cities like Chicago — along with problems, like the dislocations associated with de-industrialization and mass immigration, that first reared their heads in the 1980s and have only accelerated since then.
But what it really says, I think, is that the kind of rhetoric that Trump indulges in operates on an emotional level that a 10-year-old — and a 10-year-old boy in particular — would understand.
When I listen to my 10-year-old self, I hear a boy trying to act like a man: tough, uncompromising, and confident. Problems are huge — but the solutions are right there if we're strong and determined enough to pursue them. As the father of a boy, Trump's braggadocious posturing sounds very familiar — and it delighted my son during the campaign, who recognized a kindred spirit, and seemed to draw comfort from his presence on the national stage, as if it signified: I belong here, too.
He was less comforted when Trump won, however. He knows the difference between someone playing at adulthood and an actual adult.
And, at age 10, I did, too. My essay ended thus:
When the rhetoric fades, there's the reality of governance. There I fear my 10-year-old self had far more self-awareness than our current commander-in-chief.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
-
The Week contest: Stick guitar
Puzzles and Quizzes
By The Week US Published
-
'Sports executives ushered a fox into the henhouse'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
Disney and DeSantis reach detente
Speed Read The Florida governor and Disney settle a yearslong litigation over control of the tourism district
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Trump, billions richer, is selling Bibles
Speed Read The former president is hawking a $60 "God Bless the USA Bible"
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
The debate about Biden's age and mental fitness
In Depth Some critics argue Biden is too old to run again. Does the argument have merit?
By Grayson Quay Published
-
How would a second Trump presidency affect Britain?
Today's Big Question Re-election of Republican frontrunner could threaten UK security, warns former head of secret service
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
'Rwanda plan is less a deterrent and more a bluff'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By The Week UK Published
-
Henry Kissinger dies aged 100: a complicated legacy?
Talking Point Top US diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner remembered as both foreign policy genius and war criminal
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Last updated
-
Trump’s rhetoric: a shift to 'straight-up Nazi talk'
Why everyone's talking about Would-be president's sinister language is backed by an incendiary policy agenda, say commentators
By The Week UK Published
-
More covfefe: is the world ready for a second Donald Trump presidency?
Today's Big Question Republican's re-election would be a 'nightmare' scenario for Europe, Ukraine and the West
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Xi-Biden meeting: what's in it for both leaders?
Today's Big Question Two superpowers seek to stabilise relations amid global turmoil but core issues of security, trade and Taiwan remain
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published