Buttering up the Boss of America

Donald Trump loves flattery, but those of us who aren't so inclined have other tools at our disposal

That’s a lot of butter, folks — but there’s more to it than just an odd piece of art. (New York State Fair photo)

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Butter is on the minds of some folks Upstate these days not because butter prices have reached near-record highs — with too little of that going to the dairy farmers, by the way — but because this week marked the unveiling of the 56^th annual New York State Fair butter sculpture. This year’s creation is an 800-pound work of dairy art depicting a cow in the basket of a hot-air balloon, an image inspired by The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the novel published 125 years ago by L. Frank Baum, who lived in the central New York village of Chittenango.

But the entire bulk of the unsalted and savory sculpture — equivalent to 3,200 sticks of butter, enough to cover 76,800 pancakes, we’re told — is nothing compared to what was larded out as fairgoers lined up to see it: the spectacle of European leaders who, one by one, buttered up Donald Trump at the White House. Their objective was to keep Trump from favoring Vladimir Putin in a plan to end the war in Ukraine; their tactic was to envelop the American president in flattery, which experience has revealed to be the surest way to influence American policy in the Trump era.

So Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, opened the flattery-fest with what NBC News counted as 11 “thank yous” in four and a half minutes, followed by the gift of a golf club that he said had come from a wounded soldier. Others in the leadership league followed Zelensky’s craftily complimentary lead.

“Something has changed, thanks to you,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told Trump.

“I really want to thank you for your leadership,” the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, chimed in. The heads of the governments of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Finland and the European Commission each took their turn, and each expressed gratitude to Trump for his initiative.

It was, The Guardian said, “the Great European Charm Offensive,” and it seems to have worked, at least temporarily: Trump wound up not insisting, as the Europeans had feared he would, that Zelensky accept Putin’s demand that Ukraine yield more land to Russia than the invaders have already seized, and he promised unspecified American security back-up for Ukraine.

Maybe Trump was made less grouchy by the fact that Zelensky wore a sort of suit to this meeting, rather than the simple shirt he wore to his disastrous February meeting that ended with him getting thrown out of the Oval Office. Or maybe it was simply what he was feeling: the leaders of what Trump’s childhood schoolbooks called “the Old World,” flocking to Trump’s newly gilded palace, the White House, surely seeming to be supplicants to the world’s most powerful man.

“Donald is always desperate for flattery. They seemed to have somehow minimally coordinated that,” David Cay Johnston, a Trump biographer, told a British podcast as the meeting broke up.

Buttering up Trump: That’s a skill world leaders seemingly are working to master with the determination of a pickleball plebe. Wealthy Arab monarchs have gone further toward perfecting the art, swelling the flattery with gifts — notably the Emir of Qatar’s lavish present of a Boeing 747. The president of Senegal, with no jet to offer, last month hyped Trump’s golf game, noting that the sport “requires concentration and precision, qualities that also make for a great leader.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed up at the White House with a copy of a letter he said he had sent to the Nobel committee nominating Trump for the Peace Prize. That idea drew enthusiast support from the visiting presidents of Gabon and Mauritania, prompting Trump to smile and say, “This is great. We could do this all day long.”

And those who want to sway this president seem determined to do just that. Confrontation hasn’t worked effectively in dealing with Trump, Jon Alterman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Politico, “and so there seems to be a competition to see how effectively they can flatter him.”

There are historical factors that brought us to this point, in which we find ourselves often flabbergasted to be led by a politician so insecure and egocentric as to demand such flamboyant flattery. Recognizing how we got here, and what alternatives exist, might give us a chance to shape a different future for our politics.

For now, though, in the effort to influence American policy — a realm where sensible diplomacy, tough rhetoric or thoughtful reason once held sway — the important skill during the 47^th presidency is knowing how to butter up the boss. He just loves it.

Linguists used to believe that the phrase “buttering up” came from an ancient Indian religious ritual, in which people would throw butter balls at religious statues as a means of gaining the favor of the gods. It’s a delightful notion that is now, sadly, viewed as etymological myth.

That is, I wish it were true, just because it’s so amusing to consider a contemporary version: Imagine crowds of folks tossing little butterballs at Donald Trump, sort of like that federal worker in Washington last week who hurled a foot-long Subway sandwich at a Border Patrol agent. (Note for the record: I am not advocating this sort of civil disobedience, nor any assault on a public official, particularly if there might be one who is emotionally troubled, morbidly obese and seemingly suffering from age-related mental decline.)

Now etymologists think “buttering” emerged as a synonym for flattery because butter is slippery, and thus an apt metaphor for a smooth if deceitful way to win another person’s favor. A 17^th century religious text warns of people who “oil their tongues and… butter their lips, so that by their smooth, soft speeches, they may the more insinuate themselves into men’s minds.”

But the Oxford English Dictionary cites the first use of “buttering up” in an 1819 verse by Thomas Moore, the era’s preeminent Irish poet and songwriter. Moore might not have considered it a pejorative notion, though: In the complex political and social landscape of Ireland and England at the time, writers and artists depended for their livelihoods on powerful and wealthy figures. Moore moved in those aristocratic circles and often dedicated his works to patrons. There’s no evidence of anything other than genuine appreciation in those attributions, though jealous rivals might have considered such “buttering up” to be cynical or opportunistic.

Maybe, likewise, those of us who view Donald Trump’s presidency as one disaster after another — an assault on so much of what has made America good for so long — are being judgmental about those who profess admiration for the president, many of whom apparently begin their praise, eyes glistening, with the word, “Sir, “ as in, typically, “Sir, what you have done is greater than anything in the history of America.” Maybe they’re sincere.

Or maybe they’re not (assuming those stories are true), and Trump knows it but doesn’t care. People usually can tell the difference, you know, between honest appreciation and manipulative puffery. Researchers at Tohoku University in Japan used MRIs to measure brain activity when people were confronted with the two different approaches to positive feedback, and discovered that “praise reliability correlated with posterior cingulate cortex activity” — meaning that the reward center of our brain is stimulated differently when we’re not being wooed by sycophants.

Interestingly, though, the study noted that “a high praise-seeking tendency” — somebody who really wants that rush from an attaboy — correlates with lower stimulation of the reward center during sincere praise. Why would people who really want praise not especially welcome the good stuff? Maybe, the researchers suggested, it was a result of “suppression of negative feedback to maintain self-esteem.” That is, people with low self-esteem can’t tolerate criticism, and they don’t get as much benefit from praise, either.

So they crave more praise and react with harsh hostility to any criticism. Does this sound like anybody who dominates your news feed?

Many mental health professionals have suggested that Trump’s belligerence and manifest grandiosity are classic symptoms of low self-esteem; 70,000 mental health professionals signed a petition during his first term warning that he seemed to display narcissistic personality disorder. His niece Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, wrote in 2020 that young Donald grew up with no role models for vulnerability and empathy, which informs how he relates to others today.

What he has absorbed, though, is the value of performance in politics, and being the center of attention. His worst tendencies draw the attention of social media — which a new report finds is now the leading source of news for Americans, surpassing television, newspapers, radio and digital sites. The politicians who might restrain him see that, too, and find that there’s progress to be made in buttering up Donald Trump.

Given an acquiescent Supreme Court and an indifferent Congress, there is little reward, then, for those who would give the president realistic feedback. And with eight in 10 Americans agreeing that the nation is deeply polarized on key values, those who might wish for even a moderate check on the president’s behavior have no place to go.

It's enough to prompt a patriotic American to wonder if we ought to just shrug and give up, and maybe head out for a late-summer getaway. Perhaps a visit to a great state fair would be a good idea, where you might take in the remarkable sight of an 800-pound butter sculpture inspired by a place where an authoritarian ruler was eventually unmasked, and an evil force undone — yes, the Land of Oz.

After all, the greatest message of L. Frank Baum’s book, and the musical and movie that have given it immortality, is that we each have within us the power to achieve our desires and overcome challenges. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion had the brains, the heart and the courage they needed; Dorothy was all along wearing the magic slippers that could get her home. Each sought safety in approaching the Wizard of Oz, who demanded obeisance; together, though, they belatedly embraced their own capacity, with the recognition that power often comes from a journey of self-discovery.

Baum was a political activist in the years before he wrote the book, but he never made precisely clear what sort of allegory he intended to create. What we can safely infer, though, is that the story speaks of the potential of ordinary folks to triumph in alienated times and places — like, for many of us, today’s America.

Those of us disinclined to join in buttering up the Wizard of Mar-a-Lago might consider, then, the power we actually have: to speak, write, organize and vote; to step in where our government is leaving gaps in care; to not give up in frustration or fear.

No flattery needed here; just honesty, and some hard work.

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ENDNOTE

THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about our common ground, this great country. As we together navigate these challenging times, I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send me a message with ideas you’d like to see us address. I love to hear from readers.

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