I racked my brain and could not think of anybody even close.
trump, as we all know, failed often and spectacularly as a businessman, piling up a string of bankruptcies. Even bankrupting casinos somehow, which are designed to be moneymaking machines. Hardly any bank would lend to him. But he still manages to keep up a thin, faltering facade of being a successful businessman.
Then, he’s handed ‘The Apprentice’, a TV show carefully crafted to play on the fiction of his shrewd businessman persona.
His name recognition from the show arguably is the largest contributing factor to winning the presidency-- 4 years of which an objective analysis cannot come to any conclusion but failure. HIs malice was only exceeded by his incompetency. Other than appointing a lot of Federal judges and a few bits of conservative legislation, which wasn’t trumps doing anyway, his presidency is a string of either doing nothing, or abject failure. The blue wave in 2018 which was clearly a backlash to trump, and lost Repubs the House. The massive failure to fight Covid. Losing the presidency in 2020. Then Repubs losing the Senate which clearly was a result of trump interfering in the Georgia runoff. The riot, again clearly all trump.
And yet, he still has his rabid following, and is fracturing and further destroying the Repub party.
So, has anybody else’s life been anywhere near such a celebration of failure as trump?
L. Ron Hubbard, perhaps? I don’t want to go through his whole bio, but for him, the consequences of being a hack writer, incompetent naval officer, embezzler, quack psychologist, shitty husband and father, all seemed to flow into personal and financial success for the man.
Yeah, L. Ron Hubbard’s a good contender. I don’t know a lot of detail about his life, but from what I do know he was a pretty odious person.
Although, one can argue that Scientology, his quasi-religious cult, has been a big success, however insane and damaging to people its beliefs are. So is he really a successful failure, the way trump keeps failing at everything, yet keeps getting celebrated for it?
Maybe my question should have been ‘has there ever been a con man so successful and yet with so little to back it up as trump’?
I think Trump is more successful than Hubbard. He created a larger cult in a much shorter period of time. To be fair, social media didn’t exist in Hubbard’s day, fortunately!
I am not sure if Scientology is successful at anything non-cult related except real estate, which ironically is one of Trump’s supposed strength, and suing people, also a Trump strength. I guess also messing with the IRS, but that’s not quite the same thing as running the country. (Dianetics was a very successful health fad for a while, but I’ve never read any suggestion that it was anything more than quack medicine.)
Charles [The II] suffered ill health throughout his life; from the moment he became king at the age of four in 1665, the succession was a prominent consideration in European politics. The historian John Langdon-Davies summarised this as follows: “Of no man is it more true to say that in his beginning was his end; from the day of his birth, they were waiting for his death”.[1]
On the more capable side, but luckier that one of the happy Roman emperors, there is Charles the 5th, that had other ruling relatives die to make him one of the most powerful emperors in history. Only to fall apart later.
The Peter Principle involves a person getting promoted until they end up in a position they are unqualified for, then they stay there because they can no longer get promoted now that they no longer merit advancement.
It does not account for a person who becomes successful through confidence schemes and fraud. Being able to bamboozle your way into power (as opposed to earning it through actual competence) has no limit aside from your ability to trick people (and chutzpah), and the gullibility of your marks. Really, the Peter Principle no longer becomes relevant.
I think that you’d be hard pressed to find a combination of pinnacle of power and absolute incompetency. He ended up president of one of the historically most powerful nations on earth.
Has any figure in human history ‘failed forward’ as much as Trump?
Sure, Reagan - The disasters he caused combined with those that just happened on his watch have had greater lasting impact than Trump can even imagine:
Reagan set the model for an imperial President
Regan replaced Republican policy with an icon.
Reagan created his own self funded military force in Central America
Reagan gave voice to the ill defined concept of Conservatism
Reagan spawned Limbaugh
Reagan’s administration is among the most corrupt in US history
Reagan contributed directly to the marine barracks disaster
Reagan mismanaged wagging the dog in Grenada
Reagonomics is the icon for failed policy
Reagan intentionally made appointments to fail
Reagan gave religious nut cases positions of responsibility - ie HUD, Interior
Reagan marks the downturn of the US middle class
Reagan’s amnesty gave hope to generations of immigrants
Reagan created the pattern that Trump stumbled onto.
Now I’m imagining Trump sliding into a person’s house through their front door and raiding their refrigerator while babbling about fake news and election fraud and China Viruses.
Don’t get me wrong, Reagan was a piece of shit, but a lot of what you describe are right wing successes. There was a competency to his evil that Trump lacks (thank Og).
@Crane may have been using a different definition of “failing forward” than the OP. But the OP may have been using a non-standard definition of “failing forward” in the first place. The explanations I’ve found online suggest that “failing forward” involves personal growth and learning from one’s failures (which involves a certain amount of humility and accepting one’s limitations—which does not sound very Trumpian to me).
Yeah, here, I’m taking it to mean an idiot loser able to go very far despite being an idiot loser. It helps that the GOP has been de-educating the white working class for generations and convincing them that competent government is a bad thing.
Yes, I did not know ‘failing forward’ was an established expression that meant growing and learning from one’s mistakes, and clearly I definitely did not mean that when referring to trump. I meant “not only given second chances, given opportunities to gain further wealth and power, despite constant repeated failures.”
Not sure about “failing forward” but I’ve always seen “failing upward” used to mean an abject failure of a person who nonetheless achieves personal or professional success despite their best (worst) efforts.