Trump and the return of Great Man theory

The US President vindicates an unfashionable view of how history works.

- Janan Ganesh

President Donald Trump's ability to warp the world around him, even inadvertently is hard to replicate, says the writer. PHOTO: REUTERS

(REUTERS)

One line stands out after all these years from Alan Bennett’s play, The History Boys. “If Halifax had had better teeth,” says a too-clever-by-half student, “we might have lost the war.”

What does he mean? That Lord Halifax, a less bellicose alternative to Churchill as the incoming UK prime minister in 1940, was at the dentist when the job opened up. In another timeline, therefore, Britain under his leadership made a miserable peace with the Axis.

If this sounds silly, it is meant to. Bennett wants you to tut at the kid’s glibness, and at the idea that individuals can swing history like this. Larger forces - the habitual overreach of dictators, the rise of the US - explain the war's outcome.

What a stylish disposal of the Great Man theory. And what a shame that it now strikes me as itself a little glib.

As intellectually disreputable as this is to confess, I have been won over to Great Man-ism of late, and Donald Trump is the reason.

The trigger for this conversion? Watching free trade, support for which used to be so commonsensical as to be unspoken, fight for its life. This is disproportionately one man’s doing.