Is politics about personality? On Trump's "masculinity"

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to opinion article by Susan Faludi, “Trump’s thoroughly modern masculinity,” October 29, 2020:

The biggest problem with Trump's poses and posturing is not their machismo but the triumph of style over substance. This problem has longed haunted American politics. It is depoliticizing, as it places marketing above thinking and psychology above politics.

And when Trump's detractors are as concerned as his supporters about his personality, the underlying anti-democratic assumption remains unchallenged. One of the things Biden can be faulted for in this context is the efforts his campaign has made to market him as a leader with a certain ethos, which is essentially that of both hero and paternalistic protector. We can ponder what kind of father or mother type we want to rule us, or try to think in more mature and less personal terms.

The predominance of marketing in presidential campaigns is a major factor in the well-advanced destruction of the political character of social life in a media democracy where images replace ideas. Fulfilling childish fantasies is for dictators.

A politician with more democratic values would, like Bernie Sanders, be much more identified with a set of policy positions. That is salutary not only because then voters will focus more on the issues that matter, but also because such candidacies implicitly argue a shift back from image maintenance and theatricality as the rhetoric of power, towards concern with what is to be done rather than how people want to be or appear. And to the political as thinking instead of just winning.