“Bring with you, then, as the principal thing, ignorance; secondly recklessness, and thereto effrontery and shamelessness. Modesty, respectability, self-restraint, and blushes may be left at home, for they are useless and somewhat of a hindrance to the matter in hand … If you commit a solecism or a barbarism, let shamelessness be your only remedy.”
Of course, in an era when people usually did not live as long as they do today, Lucian could not have imagined that one could plan to maintain narrative consistency for 50 years. But nor can such a narrative be sustained forever. And the end of confidence in Trump’s narrative is likely to be associated with a recession.
During a recession, people pull back and reassess their views. Consumers spend less, avoiding purchases that can be postponed: a new car, home renovations, and expensive vacations. Businesses spend less on new factories and equipment, and put off hiring. They don’t have to explain their ultimate reasons for doing this. Their gut feelings and emotions can be enough.
So far, with his flashy lifestyle, Trump has been a resounding inspiration to many consumers and investors. The US economy has been exceptionally “strong,” extending the recovery from the Great Recession that bottomed out just as Barack Obama took over the US presidency in 2009. The subsequent US expansion is the longest on record, going back to the 1850s. Ultimately, a strong narrative is the reason for the US economy’s strength.
But motivational speakers often end up repelling the very people they once inspired. Witness the reactions of students at Trump University, the fraud-based school its namesake founded in 2005, which shut down by multiple lawsuits a half-decade later. Or consider the sudden political demise of US Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954, after he carried his anti-communist rhetoric too far.
There is too much randomness in Trump’s management of the presidency to make persuasive predictions. He will surely try to stick to his public narrative, which has worked so well for so long. But a severe recession may be his undoing. And even before economic catastrophe strikes, the public may begin paying more attention to his aberrations – and to contagious new counternarratives that crowd out his own.
Robert J. Shiller, a 2013 Nobel laureate in economics, is professor of economics at Yale University and the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Index of US house prices. He is the author of Irrational Exuberance, the third edition of which was published in January 2015, and, most recently, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, co-authored with George Akerlof.