But this explanation is too limited. The Ahmadinejad fantasy cannot be reduced to the personalities of two leaders or the influence of a few advisers. It points to a deeper problem in the policy worlds of Washington and Tel Aviv: a wider regime-change imagination that repeatedly mistakes elite substitution for political transformation.
Iran is too often approached through a leader-centred lens. Policymakers and think tanks search for usable insiders, disgruntled former officials, elite splits, and possible defectors, while paying far less attention to the institutions, class coalitions, and social struggles that actually structure power. The problem is not merely that bad advice reaches powerful leaders. It is that much of the advice is produced within a flawed conceptual framework.
Mmm… let me think on that a bit…
Well, that is the basis for Great Man Theory, more or less. And Trump is a sort of ass-backwards believer in Great Man Theory (ass-backwards because he starts from the narcissistic delusion that he’s the Great Man).
On the other hand though, I’ve noted before that political power, when you pull back a bit and look at it objectively, is largely illusory. It’s not necessarily that Trump or any other President has any notable intrinsic power, but that the office of PotUS is seen to have power, which is seen to be in the possession of whoever’s warming the chair in the Oval Office at the moment.
Without the trappings of office, Trump is just a gross, stinky old pederast who likely wouldn’t survive a day in the real world without at the least getting his flabby ass kicked.
That said, there is certainly, as Trump has vividly illustrated, a potentially very significant difference between the amount of power one or another politician might wield, even operating under the same auspices with more or less the same designated powers. And that’s certainly a personal difference.
But then in that context, it must be noted that an awful lot of Trump’s power exists only to the degree that the Congress and the Supreme Court are not exercising theirs, or when they are exercising it, more often than not in his favor (or more precisely, in the favor of the wealthy interests who are backing him).
It’s also worth noting that my view on that is that they’re not so much supporting Trump specifically as they are the establishment of an insurmountably powerful executive, since that will give them essentially “one-stop-shopping” for influence.
I’d have to say that yes, there is something to what you’re saying. But that’s not all of it because it’s more precisely the combination of the office and the person holding it. But viewing the office as a constant - this person in this office vs. this other person in the same office for instance, then yes - they would seem to be placing an awful lot of stock in individuals.
And in the course of that, I thought of another aspect of all of this too - one that infests political systems broadly. For many, and more all the time, winning control of an office is an end in itself. Even if they have plans beyond simply gaining control of the office, they appear to often be nebulous at best.
Or more specifically, as an example:
For whatever that’s worth…