Trump, Truss and the age of vaulting ambition

Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States of America will be a moment of supreme vindication for him. After being convicted in the New York courts and fighting a ferocious election campaign, during which his opponent declared that “we’re not going back”, well, here we are.

January 20 will also represent a triumph of ambition. Whether Trump’s deepest ambition is to lead his nation or simply to stay out of jail is not necessarily clear, but he has made his quest to return to power everyone’s business, essentially since he left the White House in 2021.

Trump’s electoral success – troubling for some, thrilling for others – forces us to consider the question of ambition anew. What explains this unrelenting drive, this ruthless determination to attack and pulverise his opponents? How does a 78-year-old man maintain this level of commitment to a political struggle when he’d obviously really rather be doing financial deals or playing golf?

Shakespeare can, as so often, offer us a possible explanation. Few have understood or portrayed ambition as powerfully as the great dramatist did. He knew that, in the worst cases, immoral ambition can prove fatal.

This, of course, is the central theme of his play Macbeth, which inspired my latest book. In it I consider different aspects of ambition, both good and bad, each introduced by selected lines from the play which touch upon them.

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As early as act one, Lady Macbeth wonders whether her husband has got “the right stuff” to get to the very top:

“…Thou woulds’t be great;

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it.”

She fears that Macbeth lacks a certain killer instinct. He eventually proves her wrong, but (spoiler alert) with deadly consequences for them both. The troubling thought is that Lady Macbeth probably has half a point when she describes intense, obsessive commitment – “illness”, in her terms – as a vital ingredient for success. We all know of powerful figures whose “insane” drive, as with Trump, has taken them far.

Many people – especially, perhaps, British people – struggle with ambition, not being sure what the correct level or intensity of ambition is right for them. The judgment call we need to be able to make in our own lives is recognising what is really important to us, and knowing when we have achieved enough. It is not so much a case of being “careful what you wish for”. Rather, we need to be thoughtful about what we wish for.

The case of Liz Truss

A British political figure who would have benefited from brushing up her Shakespeare is Liz Truss. The former Conservative cabinet minister and (very briefly) prime minister might have recognised that reckless ambition for the top job could lead to disaster. In her case it seems that sheer force of will and ambition were not matched by ability and judgment. This was a dangerous imbalance.

Such is her (continuing) belief that she has been badly wronged by critics and opponents that she has instructed lawyers to send the prime minister, Keir Starmer, a cease and desist letter, requiring him to stop accusing Truss of crashing the economy. The letter says that these statements from Starmer are “false and defamatory”.

Unfortunately, given that she sacked the top civil servant at the Treasury and did not (in a departure from usual convention) seek an assessment of her budget plans from the Office for Budget Responsibility, any claim of innocence regarding the economic turmoil of October 2022 and the subsequent market reaction would not be terribly convincing.

It is hard to be certain what Truss’s motives are. Does she genuinely believe she has been wronged, and is the innocent victim of the mysterious “deep state”? Or is she merely trying to curry favour with the online Trumpian world, using one of the president-elect’s favourite tactics (ridiculous but distracting legal action) to keep her name in the news? Either way, her ambition still burns brightly and without any apparent sense of shame.

Perhaps Truss is a (very) extreme example of what my colleague, Professor Laura Empson, calls “insecure overachievers” – professionals who strive to achieve more but sometimes at considerable cost to themselves and others. Leaders need to be alert to this phenomenon (although some bosses will be insecure overachievers themselves). Good leaders avoid creating a culture where “insecure overachievement” is demanded as a universal behavioural norm.

Ambitious for the right sort of ambition

“When ambition ends, happiness begins,” said Thomas Merton, a 20th century Catholic monk. That may seem like an extreme view. Without healthy ambition nothing good can happen. Businesses cannot improve, and society will not function better. It is the harmful excesses of behaviour which we need to avoid.

We can and we should aim to achieve more. Our natural gifts and hard-won abilities should be displayed. As Michelangelo is supposed to have said: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”

We look at the extremely ambitious, sometimes with admiration, and sometimes with horror. But the best sort of ambition seems to involve working for the common good, and is not about the selfish pursuit of individual glory. As far as Trump is concerned, well, we have seen this movie before. He divides audiences, to put it mildly. Forgive me if I don’t see him as a positive role model.

Stefan Stern does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.