“A Very Stable Genius”: A Review
“A Very Stable Genius,” written by Washington Post journalists Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, is a powerful, deeply researched and a very readable account of the President Trump from his inauguration up to but not including his impeachment. It’s to the writers’ credit, as well as their colleagues and the Post management, that they could find time, space and encouragement, given all the incoming from the White House, as well as the tantalizing and distracting bits and pieces from Twitter and the rest of social media. The possible rabbit holes were obvious and abundant.
And the rabbit holes remain. Today Twitter is all over how neatly Trump fits the Cluster A Personality Disorder characterized, according to the Mayo Clinic, by eccentric thinking or behavior, pervasive mistrust, unjustified suspicion, hesitancy to confide, angry response to perceived slights, tendency to hold grudges, and magical thinking. At this rate, we will have the luxury of choosing our pathology and poison. And pathology can be contagious.
I had been thinking of late about how to give proper attention to this fine book when the outside noise is so loud and at times infectious. Perhaps my punishment was a dream in which President Trump entered stage left. In the dream narrative, there were eleven open political positions that would have interactions with the Vatican. I was a candidate. It would not have been unusual for me to dream about the Vatican. I often write about religious subjects, including a recent novel, “Chanting the Feminine Down,” about women priests.
In the dream I hear Trump saying to a group that “McCullagh would get his, but not this.” I sensed sarcasm in his voice and perhaps a veiled threat. On waking, I laughed as I recorded the dream in my journal, sensing that I might have been watching too much cable television. But I knew from my twenty-five years studying psychology that psychological states can be contagious and all of us contaminated to one degree or the other.
I sensed this when reading “A Very Stable Genius,” not in any clinical sense, but by hearing the subdued, understated voices that take the reader through very familiar territory, already poured over by some of the best in the business. The title “A Very Stable Genius” is a clue and an indication that the phrase Trump uttered with bombast and conviction is intended here to be ironic and an indication of the tone the book exudes.
The book might cover familiar territory but it does so with balance and insight that I haven’t seen before. Perhaps this development is inevitable as so many early books on Trump were overtly political and full of sound and fury. The authors of this stable genius book had the time to get under the overheated prose and perhaps retell a story in a calmer, saner manner. In that spirit the sourcing of the material is absolutely astounding and a tribute to the author’s connections and craft.
In the book’s Prologue the authors remind us of Trump’s August 21, 2016, acceptance speech at the Republican Convention. Unlike his predecessors, Trump did not speak of shared values; he spoke of “I.”
“I am your voice. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” He promised to upend the Washington establishment and bring chaos to the neighborhood. He has accomplished much of that.
Much of this book turns on the conflict between Trump’s ego, solipsism and paranoia and the demands of office. These character traits first came into full view when America learned details about the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The conventional view stated that Trump’s steadfast refusal to accept the FBI’s view that Russia was the culprit was due to his vanity and refusal to let anything taint his election victory. “A Very Stable Genius” offers a fresh take on these events and how much of a role Russia did play and continues to play in this administration. The shadow is longer and darker than I imagined.
The book also offers new details on exactly how much obstruction Trump and his team were involved in regarding Russia and related subjects. The obstruction was in plain sight. Rucker and Leonnig deal at great length with the Mueller investigation and, again, provide new and interesting insights. I think it was conventional wisdom that Mueller, war hero and Justice Department veteran, would come to the rescue with guns at least at the ready. Mueller, of course, was operating under department rules that decreed a sitting president couldn’t be indicted. Mueller is described as being very decent but somewhat weak and a little confused. There is a passing reference to Mueller’s hands shaking in one meeting with Trump’s lawyers but the authors didn’t appear to find any evidence to corroborate the presence of a serious health problem. There was much public chatter about Mueller’s somewhat tepid performance before Congress.
The authors suggest that Mueller could have made more specific recommendations that Congress further investigate Trump’s obstruction. Mueller did not and left open the opportunity for Attorney General William Barr to present the Mueller finding in a way advantageous to Trump who was able to declare that there was no collusion, no obstruction. Perhaps this was the beginning of end of effective oversight of Trump. The book cites this as an important turning point.
As Shakespeare wrote in “The Tempest,” “What’s past is prologue.” The authors of “A Very Stable Genius” chart the growth of Trump’s mendaciousness across all segments of government. It should come as no surprise that after being “cleared” by Mueller and the U.S. Senate in the impeachment trial Trump would go after the Justice department by pushing Barr to intervene in Roger Stone’s sentencing. As if in chorus, thousands of former DOJ employees and former judges are lending their voices to the outrage. Perhaps this will provide a necessary balance of power. One wonders. Trump has gone on a pardoning spree, including in his target list people who seem a lot like him.
The country has traveled a long, choppy and sinuous course in the last three years. I’ve read no better account of this journey than “A Very Stable Genius,” a testimony to good journalism and a rigorous search for the truth.
This reads like a non-fiction novel. And that’s a compliment.
