“And any man who must say “I am King, is no true king at all…” – George R.R. Martin, A Storm Of Swords.

“When somebody’s the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be.” – Donald Trump, April 13, 2020

“The worst is over…” – Andrew Cuomo, April 13, 2020. “I believe we can start on the path to normalcy.”

“Just because there is a national emergency, doesn’t make you king…” April 13, 2020. Andrew Cuomo.

 

For me, and for anyone who loves democracy and believes that government exists to do good, yesterday was my personal Bastille Day.

It was a day that will live in history as the day the would-be Emperor began his tragic downfall, and that marked the beginning of the end of the ideology we know as Trumpism.

The coronavirus has changed me, freed the closeted political writer and media critic to come out of his self-imposed exile for a while and speak my mind. So far, so good. But yesterday was the most significant and most hopeful day of this crisis for me.

“The worst is over,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, and he was correct in more ways than one.

I can’t predict the fate of our President, but I can see with my own eyes that he has lost any semblance of credibility. Without that, he cannot lead us out of this crisis, nor do I believe, can he survive politically.

This astonishing collapse far transcends Donald Trump.

It isn’t that Trumpism and its many followers will go away – this is a marathon, not a sprint, just like the other virus.  And politics are never that clean or pure. But the President’s argument for re-election is collapsing, and his moral authority to lead has been shattered.

On March 13, Peter Wehner, Contributing writer at the Atlantic Magazine, and a lifelong Republican wrote one of the most thoughtful and prescient articles about the coronavirus and its  effect on the President.

“It took until the second half of Trump’s first term, but the crisis has arrived in the form of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the coronavirus has overwhelmed Donald Trump.”

That was it; it was apparent from the beginning. The crisis was so much bigger than the leader.

Democracy and civility lovers are battered and shell-shocked after four years of this man; they don’t even dare to hope too much. They are like groundhogs peeking out of their holes. Time to come out.

I was celebrating yesterday, it will mark the boundary between then, and now, I believe our nightmare is beginning to crumble and will be replaced by something else, something better.

When the dust settles, we will still be a divided nation, and partisanship will again paralyze our Congress, and lies and hate and conspiracy theories will travel on this new highway of division, our social media.

But our historical belief in government as a force for good – the foundation of our democracy –  is winning a mighty and desperately needed victory. Everything has a purpose; everything is a gift.

The coronavirus has raised a new generation of leaders, the Governors;  Democrat, and Republican,  men and women who put politics aside, saved many lives, and have begun to work together to bring the country back to life.

I can’t speak for you, but I needed to see that.

It’s all happening at statehouses and city halls across the country. The White House has become a failing reality show, past it’s prime, angry, desperate, and disheartening,  left behind by powerful new realities the President and his pals don’t seem able to grasp.

While 20,000 people have just died, you don’t spend taxpayers’ money to produce a movie talking about what an incredible leader you are. You might want to mention the dead at least once. They also sacrificed.

Yesterday was also the day the elaborate rain dance between the President and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo came to an irrefutable end.

Just as the President was preparing excitedly to be the hero that brought us back to normalcy, Governor Cuomo took off his mask and chopped the President’s legs off.

It was vintage Trump – hints of something “big” to come, warnings to the governors in an obnoxious and patronizing tweet to “get ready” for his big decision coming soon about when to re-open the country.

The governors, whose approval ratings now double Trump’s,  snubbed the King right before his dramatic decision and in front of his subjects, usually, a dangerous thing to do. But yesterday, it seemed smart as Hell.

You get the sense the Governor knows how to do this.

Cuomo is not playing nice anymore.

Sitting up in his Albany lair like a cat waiting for the fat and sluggish mouse to come out of his hole, Cuomo was busy. He simply announced a meeting of the Northeast governors to figure out when to re-open.

These two lions are out of their cages now, and the Governor is giving this would-be King a brilliant daily whupping. Yesterday, the King came undone right before us. No one in either political party has been able to outmaneuver Trump like this and beat him at his own very successful game.

The President went on a rant right out of the Hamlet press conference that looked more like a breakdown than a leader rallying or worrying about his people in crisis. This morning, Governor Cuomo gave him another beating, this time offering an eloquent lecture on state’s rights and the Constitution.

Think about it: Cuomo, an establishment, machine Democrat, lecturing a Republican, far right President about states rights and the Constitution? What on earth is Donald  Trump thinking? Every day, the governors look stronger and better.

As usual, the people in their hour of need were never mentioned or comforted in Trump’s video (Cuomo mentions them every day); the press conference was all about how much “total” power the King had, and how no one could lead but him, and what a great job he had done.

His allergy to taking responsibility had flared up again.

The tragic flaw of the protagonist like President Trump is a personal quality or characteristic that influences the King to make choices that ultimately cause a tragedy. In Poetics, Aristotle used the term hamartia to refer to the innate quality in a leader that leads towards his or her downfall.

In this case, the tragedy came first, the downfall as a result of it. And yes, it is hubris.

The Greeks turned out to be the greatest pundits of all; the protagonist is almost always done in by hubris – hamartia came to life on the stage of the White House Press Room Monday night.

Governor Cuomo reminded us that Old School New York politicians – the polis – have some moves. Cuomo, who has been doing an elaborate and fragile waltz with the President for weeks to get his ventilators and masks, has changed the dynamic.

Trump now has a foe much more popular than he is, and so far at least, much smarter.

Despite his denials, Andrew Cuomo is now the anti-Trump, the de facto leader of the Resistance. Joe Biden is a ghost. I have no idea how far Cuomo is willing to take it. But he is sure acting like someone who likes to lead.

I have no insights into what the Democratic Party is thinking. However, if anyone in there is still alive and awake, they will find a way to get Andrew Cuomo somehow involved in the November election.

Donald Trump has staggered America and much of the world with his angry and divisive rise to power. The anti-government President has become big government’s best argument.

Last night, he made it clear that his primary constituent is himself; his self-serving propaganda video was not about the coronavirus, but about him, it evoked Stalin’s Great Leader, not the selfless George Washington.

What I saw – what all of us saw – was not what he intended us to see.

The Greeks believed their tragedies brought out the best and worst of human nature and reflected both. There was an inevitability about them. Truth and honor always triumphed in the end.

Wrote one scholar, “The protagonist in a Greek tragedy was expected to experience a reversal of fortune and a downfall, usually due to his reach for a lofty goal being thwarted by his hubris, or excessive pride.

The protagonist to watch now is Cuomo; Trump has just been elbowed aside.

It is the governors – led by Cuomo – who are upending the current political reality, just as Donald Trump did in 2016. He has been scrupulously politic about avoiding open conflict with President Trump – until yesterday.

Once again, Cuomo has seized the high ground. Once again, he sticks to the facts. He is a skilled politician. He protects the vulnerable. He praises the heroes. He loves his mother and brother.

Once again, he has shown empathy and humanity that the President just seems unable to feel or display. He might have asked his staff to prepare a video about the heroism shown by police, paramedics, nurses, and doctors.

For me, the President is a tragedy in many ways.

The saddest thing about him for me is the excellent opportunity he had to change the country, examine the global economy, stop the endless wars.  Millions of Americans felt betrayed and left behind and turned to him for salvation. They have been betrayed again destined to be even angrier.

I don’t believe the President is all about bluster and greed, even though he does everything within his power to make us think so. He was elected to disrupt a broken system, and he has done what he was elected to do. But much more than he was elected to do, and crapped on more than half the country in the process, and without reason.

Power does corrupt, and the absolute power he seeks is dangerous.

His exciting challenge to conventional politics has been sacrificed to an ego so massive, it seems to be a disorder. This is the downfall the Greeks predicted in their plays about mad Kings and emperors. His insane tweeting is a symptom of his monomania, he is showing us the limits of social media as a political tool.

Because of all that, he has cheated the country and his long-suffering supporters, desperate for change. The coronavirus has revealed him, as they have revealed many of us. The limits of his competence are no longer an argument.

That is another tragedy, repeated again and again. The idea is not to defeat Trump; the idea is to bring our democracy back and restore government to its rightful place as our protector of last resort and beacon for freedom and compassion to the world. Simply put, he is shooting himself in the foot.

By his erratic,  dishonest, and monomaniacal behavior, he keeps elevating politicians like Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsome and Mike DeWine to fame, popularity, and power.

In my lifetime, I have never seen a powerful and charismatic politician set himself on fire in this way.

The coronavirus Pandemic was perhaps his best chance to lead and unite the country – I turned to him many times to guide me through this fright at the beginning. He failed every single time.  He lied to me, over and over again. It can’t be all about him and the Stock Market.

Yesterday, in his almost frightening press conference,  he was aggressive, enraged, defensive, disturbing, out of control. In middle school, every bully I saw eventually got knocked down by another bully.

Watching these unglued press conferences, I am reminded of them.

The President is not only unable to lead; he eagerly dumped all responsibility on a band of ambitious,  experienced younger governors from both parties who shamed and humiliated him and took his power away.

And he lied almost every single day to his people in the most critical days of the onrushing virus. He lied to me.

The President will learn in the next few days that he doesn’t have total control over our lives and our government. He gave that away.

As to the frightened and discouraged lovers of democracy, and masses of people yearning to be free again: Heads up.

This is no time to despair, but to hope and love and practice compassion.

To love the refugees and immigrants again; to talk to one another again;  to help the poor and needy again; to celebrate the potential of government to help and protect us again; to keep the billionaires at bay again.

To insist our leaders tell us the truth, and lead the country back to a more moral way. To welcome the refugees and care for them.

I hope we can raise ourselves to look up and see the light and fight for it and justice and freedom once more.

I think we need to wake up too, us lovers of democracy,  and be hopeful and strong.

Yesterday things changed.