Plutocratic Populism
“It is impossible to make sense of our current politics without wrestling with this central contradiction of the past twenty-five years of Republican governance.” This quote identifies the central paradox in understanding our current political situation as addressed in a recent paper by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The “contradiction” in the quote refers to (1) the biggest complaint about taxes among ordinary Republicans has consistently been that the rich and corporations do not pay their fair share vs. (2) the intent of governing Republicans to ensure that these groups increasingly pay less taxes.
Our current political scene generates a great many topics that seek to explain our polity of today.… Read the rest
A Follower-Centric Approach to Trump’s Election
To the extent that leadership scholars examine Trump as a leader, followers play a significant role in studying Trump and leadership. This post continues that theme. Carsten, Bligh, Kohles, and Wing-Yan Lau analyze how Trump’s rhetoric may have attracted followers with certain characteristics.
Trump’s rhetoric and behavior leading up to his election bewildered many people. Dictionary.com added the phrase “fake news” into its lexicon for the first time largely based on Trump’s usage of that term. Some see in Trump’s election the full-blown advent of the “post-truth era.” Truth blurs into falsity and vice-versa in this era. Emotions and one’s personal beliefs become more important than hard facts.… Read the rest
Communication Style in the Republican Primaries
Several posts on this blog discuss the topic of leadership, Trump, and rhetoric. I will add to this set of posts an article by three Canadian psychologists. Ahmadian et al. discuss Trump’s communication style. The article is based on research that compares Trump with his main opponents in the Republican primaries. The authors wrote the article prior to Trump’s general election win. They examined 27 speeches each of which involved 30 minutes or more of continuous speech not prompted by a question. The speeches averaged about 38.5 minutes. All the speeches were early speeches (each candidate’s announcement speech and two other early speeches).… Read the rest
Trump’s Personality Pattern and Its Implications for Leadership
A paper published one month before the 2016 presidential election described the “political personality” of Donald Trump. Aubrey Immelman had previously developed similar papers on Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and many other national and foreign leaders. I thought it would be interesting to see how well the paper on Trump fared three-plus years into his presidency.
Immelman prepared the paper using publicly available materials to develop a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria. Theodore Millon (1928-2014) was a renowned American psychologist who studied personality.
Briefly, Millon identifies 10 scales. A personality pattern consists of multiple scales.… Read the rest
“Small Governmentism” and Evangelical Support for Trump
Ie extent and duration of white evangelical Protestant (WEP) support for Trump continues to mystify many. An earlier post summarized John Fea’s (who himself is a WEP) explanation for this support. Marcia Pally provides a somewhat different explanation. She starts her paper by noting dimensions of WEP support for Trump as found in a PRRI survey. Among WEPs, 81% of males and 71% of females voted for Trump in the presidential election as did 68% of those with a college education and 78% of those without a college degree. Since his election, WEP support for Trump has never dropped below 65%.… Read the rest
Empathy, the Coronavirus, and Political Polarization
The recent controversy over when or whether to restart the economy considering the coronavirus epidemic prompted me to examine the role of empathy in political polarization. Trump apparently prompted by arguments made by some business and investor interests publicly articulated his view that social or physical distancing, with some exceptions, should end by Easter to restart the American economy. Public health officials and related scientists suggest that such a move could endanger the health of many Americans, making the epidemic much worse.
These differing viewpoints often reflect the political polarization in our country. Republicans, with some exceptions, tend to support the restart view, especially as developed via the Fox news network.… Read the rest
Political polarization, the pandemic, and mask-wearing (1A)
This is the first post dealing with political polarization within the COVID-19 pandemic. This post focuses on the influence of right-wing populism and the fight against mask-wearing. The next post in this series fleshes out many of the themes and contexts developed in this post.
Why do many if not most Trumpists/Republicans refuse to wear masks remains for me one of the imponderable facets of the coronavirus pandemic. Wearing masks not only protects others from being infected but also, according to recent research, probably helps the wearer as well. Wearing masks in nearly costless and a minor convenience but remains a significant action that reduces the rate of infection.… Read the rest
Political Polarization and COVID-19 Avoidance (1B)
The first post in this series on political polarization and the COVID-19 pandemic. It focused on the reactions of right-wing populism toward public health guidelines that recommended various ways to combat the spread of the coronavirus. I then noted that I thought the research did not pay enough attention to the communication and information ecology played in explaining the behavior of right-wing populists. Since that post, several very recent papers deal with issues related to the first paper. I highlight three papers that flesh out the analysis contained in the first post.
What masks social conservatism’s reluctance to adhere to pandemic guidelines?
… Read the restCaring Leadership 3A
This is the first of several posts on caring leaders. It follows the previous post that centered on caring management. The literature on caring leaders seems more limited than the even relatively small literature on caring management. At the same time, the literature on caring leaders seems broader, less focused than that of caring management.
I have divided the post into two parts. Part A deals with caring leadership as expressed by Yiannis Gabriel. Part B covers my attempt to use Gabriel’s paper to determine how Trump’s followers may view him as a caring leader.
Care and leaders
To an extent, the issue of a caring leader connects with the issue of a moral leader.… Read the rest
Trump as a Caring Leader? (3B)
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted me to delve deeper into care ethics. I wanted to understand the extent to which our society was a caring society and if we as a nation could become a more caring country. Consequently, I started this series of blog posts. More basic, I started this blog to help me determine how and why Donald Trump was elected president. Also, I wanted to understand how he would perform as a leader, how he would govern our country. I now turn to this point by asking how Gabriel’s paper may be applicable to Trump.
It is impossible for me to see Trump as a caring leader.… Read the rest
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