Tackling the phrase, ‘I alone can do it’

A truly indispensable man never declares, “Only I can do this.” Donald Trump’s idol, Winston Churchill, might have written that he believed himself charged with a special destiny to save “London and the Empire,” yet even with the Great Prime Minister’s iron will and determination, facing off against the bombs of the Nazi blitz, he never uttered such a phrase of extreme ego.

Instead, in his speeches, Churchill drew upon the indispensable strength of the British people. He even said humbly in his famed “never surrender” speech, after pledging to fight on the beaches and the landing grounds, “even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

Trump is not the first to boast, “I alone can do it.” History books are replete with examples of such men, as they are with the chronicles of their failures. Making such a statement is a bit like having to say, “I’m intelligent.” If you have to speak it to prove it, you probably aren’t.

Great men, such as President Trump’s oft-quoted hero Abraham Lincoln, instead assemble (as Doris Kearns Goodwin put it) “Teams of Rivals.” Leaders gather the smartest and most ambitious statesmen and put them to work to solve the impossible. Genius inspires them to further heights. Those are indispensable presidents.

Does Donald Trump qualify? Well, the talented have long since left his Administration in disgust. When he declares, “I alone can do it,” no outpouring of MAGA cheers at a Tulsa rally are enough to stamp a seal of veracity upon his boast. There’s nobody left of consequence to back up his declaration.

As we tragically saw last week, all that remains of Trump’s pledge that he alone can “drain the swamp” is the silence of the dead. For as a wise man once said, the only place you can truly be on top of your fellow man is a graveyard.

This article originally published in the August 3, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.