Mike CernovichVerified account

He theorized that men judge other men - and find their places in masculine hierarchies - based on their possession of these virtues. These are amoral - what makes one "good at being a man" is distinguished from being a "good man."

A parallel can be drawn to successful politicians. What makes politicians successful is not their decency or politeness - but their courage, mastery, and honor. Trump does pretty well on all three.

Courage is what you think it is - boldness in the face of adversity, the willingness to brawl. "Game-ness," in fight speak. Trump is a brawler. He demonstrated his courage in this respect in the GOP primary debates, which is why he smashed people.

Mastery - it's not enough to have courage, you actually have to be good enough at your craft to BEAT people. Trump's mastery of the cut-and-thrust of presidential debates, persuasion, branding, marketing - those made him appealing too.

Donovan used honor in a narrower sense than you might anticipate - it loosely translates to "in-group loyalty," as the context for all these virtues is the ethos of the gang. Trump had an advantage on every GOP politician by aligning himself HARD with the base.

Now, that's not to say he's been great on these metrics over the past year. He lacks mastery of staffing and running a large organization. And the Presidency has been punishing that failure. At times, he's waffled on key promises to the base, but he's generally done ok.

But let's look at those earlier Presidents again - using the tactical virtues. Bush lacked courage. He was no brawler. He let the left run over him. He lacked mastery. He was a mediocre communicator and ran a terrible foreign policy.

He lacked honor - his signature legislative accomplishment was what, Medicare part D? Same with Carter. Clearly a weak man, supplicated in the face of our enemies, not an effective leader.