If someone were to compile a list of overworked American words, “genius” would compete for first place. I have heard it applied to artists, scientists, boxers, comedians, chiropractors and bricklayers. Recently, a friend referred to a plumber who thawed his frozen pipes as a “genius.”
This suggests that we have a habit of applying “genius” to anyone who happens to please us.
It should not be difficult to define the word. A genius is someone in possession of exceptional abilities or insights, usually in a specific field. If one were lying on a psychiatrist’s couch, completing a word-association exercise, “genius” would have a good chance of producing “Einstein.” But it would probably not prompt the name of the plumber who thawed those pipes, no matter how grateful one was for his success.
To drive my point home with clarity, let me separate some real geniuses from those whom we simply wish to flatter:
Thomas Jefferson, yes; Ronald Reagan, no.
Beethoven, yes; Jennifer Lopez, no.
Robin Williams, yes; Charlie Sheen, no.
The list goes on.
Which brings me to the strange case of Donald Trump. I say “strange” because Trump has not waited for others to proclaim him a genius, but rather has self-assigned the designator, referring to himself as a “ very stable genius” (perhaps in an attempt to offset Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly labeling him a “ moron”).
The thing is, President Trump is correct. He is a genius. I have never doubted this. As I watched the last presidential campaign unfold, and while others recoiled at his utterings and his antics, I quietly mouthed, “He will be the next president of the United States.”
Refer again to my comment about a genius being someone who possesses exceptional abilities or insights in a specific field. In Trump’s case, it is his genius for reading people. An inveterate New Yorker, he knew better than to lay his toxic bait in the cities, where urbanites had long ago pegged him as a charlatan. Rather, he went on safari and found appetites for his vulgar hogwash in the rural American underbelly.
He understood that if you can make people afraid (for example, Mexican rapists are coming to get us), then whipping them to the white heat of hysteria is a simple matter of procedure. Thereafter, they will do your bidding and follow you wherever you want them to go. How else can one explain the recent passage of a tax bill that will, in due course, raise the taxes of Trump’s supporters to fuel the affluence of the wealthy? Only a genius could manage such a feat.
But there is a danger here: conflating “genius” with “goodness.” Not all geniuses are good. History is rife with geniuses who were incorrigibly wicked. Take Pablo Picasso, a philanderer who sorted women into two groups — “goddesses and doormats.” Or chess master Bobby Fischer, a venomous anti-semite. Or novelist Virginia Woolf, who asserted that the working class was inherently stupid.
It seems, then, that being a genius enables great success in a specific area, but it can also blindside one to the point where the genius is intolerable to be around and poisonous to the nation’s comity.
The problem with having a genius in the White House is that those who elected him take credit for the coup. It is a sort of guilt by association. In other words, if Trump is a genius, then this must be testimony to the genius of his boosters. Therefore, anyone who impugns the genius of the president is impugning the genius of his base, which is why Trump’s approval rating is eternally mired at 36 percent and will not, can not, sink any lower, because such would be an admission of error. Which, by the way, is a very difficult thing for a genius to own up to.
Just ask the president.
Robert Klose teaches at the University of Maine at Augusta in Bangor. He is a frequent contributor of essays to The Christian Science Monitor and a four-time winner of the Maine Press Association award for opinion writing. His recent novel, “Long Live Grover Cleveland,” won a Ben Franklin Literary Award and USA BookNews award.
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