The narcissism trap

EIGHTY-SIX years ago, the young George H.W. Bush was dressed in a black-and-orange uniform sweater, popped into a chauffeur-driven car and sent to Greenwich Country Day School in Connecticut, beginning his formal apprenticeship as a gentleman. The task was taken seriously, records “Destiny and Power”, a gripping new biography of the 41st president by Jon Meacham. So intense was the focus on fair play that school report cards included the category, “Claims More Than His Fair Share of Time and Attention in Class”.

Jump to the present day, and most Republican candidates for the White House would score poorly on such a school report. The party’s 2016 presidential nominating contest is a brag-a-thon, dominated by such Washington-bashing outsiders as the businessman Donald Trump, who delights in telling crowds that he is “really smart” and “really rich”; and the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who says that his surging poll ratings reflect the “power of God”. Small wonder that Mr Meacham concedes that modern Americans may find the elder president Bush—a buttoned-up patrician, proud of his public service—distinctly “quaint”.

In a noisy, frantic election season, most coverage of the biography has highlighted the 41st president’s decision to break years of silence about foreign-policy missteps by his son, the 43rd president, George W. Bush. The elder Bush tells his biographer that his son indulged in sabre-rattling “hot rhetoric” towards such adversaries as Iran and North Korea, to no obvious benefit. The 91-year-old patriarch regrets that his son’s vice-president, Dick Cheney, became “very hard-line”. Donald Rumsfeld, his son’s defence secretary, is accused of a damagingly “iron-ass” world view.

Pundits call the biography a headache for Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and second son of George H.W. Bush, whose Republican presidential bid is flagging. In their telling, the last thing that Jeb Bush needs is a book reminding conservatives about his father, and how he broke his 1988 campaign pledge: “Read my lips, no new taxes”, enraging the right. There is something to this. Though foreign-policy grandees hail the 41st president’s sensitive handling of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and his swift, limited Gulf war to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, he is still distrusted by many in the grassroots (who also chide George W. Bush for expanding the federal government).

With a mood of torch-and-pitchfork fury sweeping the right, few activists think they have any lessons to learn from the Bush clan—certainly not on the subject of gentlemanly manners. The activists are wrong. George H.W.’s horror of boasting—talking up “the Great I Am”, as his mother put it—reflects a code of honour that goes well beyond etiquette.

Mr Bush’s code is distinctly conservative. It is steeped in ideas of self-discipline and duty to others. At 18, that led the future president to sign up as a naval aviator, serving heroically in the Pacific. After the second world war the romance of self-reliance drew him to Texas, and the oil industry. His code should not be romanticised too far: like many blue-bloods, Mr Bush was not raised to shun ambition, just to conceal it. He was capable of cynical calculation, for instance opposing the 1964 civil-rights bill while running for the Senate in Texas. Privilege often helped him, as when family friends invested in his oil business. After his election to Congress his father, Prescott Bush, a former centrist Republican senator, managed to boost him, including with the Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson. LBJ assured Mr Bush that as a cattle-breeder he trusted bloodlines: “We say, ‘Who’s the Daddy?’ We know you’re all right.”

But crucially, privilege also made Mr Bush modest: he knew what he owed to luck. That diffidence extends to religion. On the eve of the Gulf war he realised: “I need to pray, and yet I am not certain my prayers are heard.” And although he could be stiff in public as a politician, his modesty is bound up with empathy for others. Read beyond his comments about Mr Rumsfeld, and his main complaint is that his son’s Pentagon chief lacked the “humility” to see “what the other guy thinks”. In politics and diplomacy, Mr Bush never claimed that his side had a monopoly on wisdom. In his inaugural address as president, he deplored ideologues who question not just opponents’ ideas but their motives.

I’m marvellous—vote for me

The elder Mr Bush was the last president to be so self-effacing. Too many modern politicians, convinced of their rightness and certain that opponents have shabby intentions, have a narcissist streak. Dr Carson, who says he can feel God enabling his presidential run, is an extreme case. Recently he has faced press scrutiny of his life story, as is routine for a front-runner. Several of his favourite tales have proved impossible to verify. Undaunted, Dr Carson says he is under attack because he threatens the “secular progressive movement”. Expressing fury at mainstream journalists, supporters promptly flooded him with donations.

Other Republicans stoke a strain of angry narcissism among voters. In 1995 George H.W. Bush resigned from the National Rifle Association after the gun lobby called federal agents “jack-booted thugs”. Today, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a presidential candidate, tells supporters that their right to bear arms makes them “the ultimate check against governmental tyranny”. Mr Trump, when not boasting about himself, tells older voters that they have paid for their Social Security and medical benefits, so should not tolerate anyone trying to reform those schemes: a fantasy that many lap up.

Conceited politicians infest left and right. But as a party built on individualism and admiration for self-made success, Republicans must take special care not to fall into the narcissism trap. “Nobody likes a braggadocio,” George H.W. Bush’s mother used to say. The level of support for Mr Trump and Dr Carson suggests this is not wholly true. But it remains sound political advice.