Donald Trump Is The Ageing Patriarch Of A Decaying Order | Letters

Geriatric US presidents are a symptom of a failing political order, says Dr Georgios Samaras, while Jim Hatley wonders who would take over if the present incumbent is replaced

Re Gaby Hinsliff’s excellent piece (Never mind leading the free world, if Donald Trump were your ageing father, when would you take away his car keys?, 30 March), the concern over Donald Trump’s age and judgment is fair, but it also feels quite belated. American politics has long recycled elderly men and presented them as vessels of reassurance and national strength. Ronald Reagan was celebrated as decline and confusion were quietly discussed. Joe Biden was defended as the steady hand even as public doubts grew louder. Trump is simply the ugliest culmination of the pattern.

The deeper problem is that the presidency has become a screen on to which a failing political order projects fantasies of rescue. Absurdity is not necessarily a weakness here. It can become part of the appeal. The rambling performance, the repetition, the shamelessness – they all feed a culture that prizes identification over substance. That is why asking whether the system can restrain a visibly unstable strongman, while necessary, still does not go far enough. The same system has repeatedly elevated these figures, then wrapped them in myths of authority. Trump emerged from a political culture that has spent years mistaking decline for wisdom. In that sense, Trump appears less as an exception than as the ageing patriarch of a decaying order, still holding all the cards and determined to impose his legacy on the future.
Dr Georgios Samaras
King’s College London