James Holmes
The new president seems to implicitly grasp two core lessons from Machiavelli’s writing: the difficulty of fundamental change, and the need to strike quickly against his enemies.
Donald Trump is not Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini. Instead, he is Niccolò Machiavelli! Or at any rate, were he among the living today, the Florentine philosopher-statesman would instantly grasp the newly-installed chief executive’s methods.
In popular lore, “Machiavelli” is an amoral, mustache-twirling purveyor of ends-justifies-the-means statecraft. That’s a caricature. The real Machiavelli was an on-again, off-again official in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence. He penned such treatises as The Prince, The Art of War, and my favorite, his Discourses on Titus Livy’s History of Rome, to help princes and leaders of republics navigate the politics of Renaissance Italy. That was no easy feat. To describe Italy in the age of Machiavelli as a hardscrabble neighborhood understates the matter to a comical degree.
Surviving and thriving in Florence demanded a bare-knuckles approach to statecraft. That’s what Machiavelli prescribed. Along the way, he produced counsel commanding lasting if not eternal value for students and practitioners of statecraft. And his advice was surprisingly humane for the times and circumstances. He aimed to help political leaders consolidate their rule and, in so doing, make life secure and bearable for the populace they governed.
Per Machiavelli, rather than comport himself like a villain, a wise prince should “seek to make the people friendly to himself,” helping them live content. Same goes for the overseers of a republic. So much for the caricature.
Change And Its Enemies
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