Trump’s the embodiment of Chance the Gardener

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

One of my favourite films of all time is ‘Being There’ starring Peter Sellers and Shirley McLaine. It’s about a simpleton, called Chance. He has lived his whole life working as the gardener for a rich recluse. He dresses in the old man’s cast-off clothes which are all bespoke, but date from the thirties. When the old man dies, poor Chance is cast out onto the street for the first time. It’s early 1980s in Washington DC and it’s violent and unpredictable.

To cut a long story short, Chance ends up being befriended by a rich woman with powerful connections in politics.

Sellers is just extraordinary as Chance the Gardener. He never changes expression and all he can talk about is the seasons, particularly spring when there is growth.

Chance becomes a celebrity. Washington insiders are fascinated by him. Some thinks of him as an enigma and an economic prophet. Soon he is being talked about as a possible Presidential candidate. It’s brilliant but kind of scary.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Last week, we got more ample evidence (on top of a mountainous pile generated in the past year) that there’s more than a passing resemblance between the two stories. The difficulty is that it’s not fiction real – there really is a dope in the White House.

Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury, on the first year of the Trump presidency is unputdownable. One of the extraordinary revelations is how his most senior advisers describe him, variously as an idiot, a child, unstable, and a moron. The latter comment was made by Rex Tillerson, the secretary of State.

What was worse is that aides found it impossible to brief Trump on anything. He would not read any brief and would lose interests in briefings (especially on foreign policy) after three sentences. All his reference points and political bearings came from the three TVs he had in his room, which was giving him a constant diet of right-wing Fox News garbage.

The book reveals him as completely self-obsessed, vain, indifferent, bullying, with no curiosity other than burnishing his own image.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.