One of the surest signs of an authoritarian regime is the ubiquity of its leader. Mussolini’s face was plastered across fascist Italy. In North Korea, pictures of Kim Jong-un have appeared alongside those of his father and grandfather, which are present in every home and public building. The golden statue of Turkmenistan’s leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, perching on a marble cliff in the capital is one of a multitude of portrayals.
Thriving democracies spurn such displays, rightly judging it safer to laud leaders once they are out of power. The first US president, George Washington, refused to appear on currency, believing that redolent of European monarchs. The 47th has no such concerns. The administration wants a $250 bill depicting Donald Trump to commemorate the 250th anniversary of independence, though federal law does not currently allow banknotes to depict living people. His signature will soon appear on $100 bills: a first for a US president.
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Immense banners with Mr Trump’s face went up at the departments of justice, labour and agriculture in Washington last year. He reportedly offered to release federal funds for infrastructure if Dulles airport and Penn station were renamed in his honour, and is on a monument-building spree, including the $1.4bn White House ballroom project. Not everything is going his way: last week, a judge ordered the removal of his name from the Kennedy Center, saying the arts venue could not be renamed without congressional approval.
In authoritarian states, the leader’s name and image are used to bolster legitimacy, perhaps associating him with national identity, or to coerce: omnipresence asserts omnipotence. For Mr Trump, a former reality TV star who has launched products including Trump steaks and Trump University, simple vanity and profitable brand-building may be key. Sycophantic attempts at ingratiation may spur other projects.
Set against the egregious cruelties and destruction of this administration, or the $1.8bn slush fund from which he is retreating, “toponymic narcissism” may seem merely absurd. But it matters as a statement of ambition: the actions of a king. Mr Trump runs a 21st-century feudal court where the ambitious compete for approval, the powerful trade favours, and the lines between political authority and personal interest and profit are blurred to the point of invisibility.
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At their best, grandiose projections of leaders are Ozymandian in their futility, unlikely to outlive their subjects. It’s not clear how successful they are in the short term. One attempt to measure impact in the United Arab Emirates, by Sarah Sunn Bush, Aaron Erlich and others, did not find evidence that images of leaders increased compliance or support. Research on “hard” (crude) propaganda in China, by Haifeng Huang, suggested that it can backfire even if it initially deters dissent: “By eroding the legitimacy of the state and public satisfaction, it may aggravate the regime’s long-term prospects.”
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Americans have already made their views clear. In Pew Center research last month, only 9% said it was acceptable to name government buildings after Mr Trump while he is in office; 50% opposed it. Meanwhile, polling by Quinnipiac suggested that 68% of voters felt he was not focusing enough on the problems facing them. A president who blithely declared that “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” when considering his war with Iran might regret putting his name on banknotes and commissioning lavish construction projects as his voters struggle to pay the bills.
