Defending Our Embattled Leaders

General Patton's Inspiring Lessons for Trump, Others

“Old Blood and Guts,” General George S. Patton, U.S. Army

As other GOP presidential candidates assemble their campaigns and outside PACs bristling with wealth prepare to unload their cargoes on the frontrunner, President Donald Trump, they must stare down a remarkable fact:  Trump stands alone, a colossus in the Republican field.  CNN political analyst Harry Enten concedes Trump is in a historically commanding position.  He notes:

Trump is polling, on average, north of 50% in national polls of likely GOP primary voters. His nearest potential challenger – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to launch a campaign – is earning a little north of 20% of the Republican primary vote on average. No other potential Republican candidate is in double digits.

What’s more, such a massive lead at this stage in the campaign bodes very well for Trump.  In modern times, every candidate with such high poll standings in a nonincumbent race “won their party’s nominations, and none of those races were particularly close.”

Likewise, Kari Lake, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Arizona who also was denied victory in a bitterly close contest, dominates the early polling for the Republican nomination in the U.S. Senate race in 2024.

Why do these candidates retain so much loyalty from the GOP base despite losing their elections?  It helps that most Republican voters believe they won their races and were unfairly denied entrance to the offices they sought.  Yet there is something more at work.

Americans often stand up for independent, bold, courageous leaders who are attacked precisely because they display those vital qualities. Perhaps the most interesting example of this aspect of the American character can be seen in someone Trump admires:  General George Patton, the U.S. general most feared by the Nazis in World War II. 

Thanks in part to the film Patton, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture (back when that award meant something), Patton’s story remains familiar today.  The brilliant, eccentric, hard-charging general who attacked mercilessly, wrote poetry and believed in reincarnation enchanted those who cheered him during World War II, and later those who learned his life story from the film.  Patton was among the oldest of the great generals of World War II.  Yet “Old Blood and Guts” connected viscerally with the young men who, in his hands, became the forces most feared and respected by German commanders.

The Loyalty of an Independent People

During the invasion of Sicily, Patton famously slapped two U.S. Army soldiers who complained of battle fatigue.  An old-fashioned disciplinarian, Patton interpreted their diagnosis as simple cowardice (in the movie the two slapping incidents are combined into one for simplicity’s sake).  The episodes, once they became public, were controversial.  Eventually, Patton was constrained to stand before and apologize publicly to his troops.

Many of Patton’s soldiers thought the high command had overreacted in meting out this humbling punishment.  The troops took matters into their own hands.

As recounted by Patton biographer Carlo d’Este, an eyewitness recalled:

. . . General Patton started to give what we knew was to be his apology.  But he never got past the first word, which was ‘Men!’  And at that point the whole regiment erupted.  It sounded like a football game—a touchdown had been scored because the helmets (steel pots) started flying through the air, coming down all over . . . Then he had the bugler sound ‘Attention’ again but nothing happened.  Just all these cheers.  So, finally General Patton was standing there and he was shaking his head and you could see the big tears streaming down his face and he said, or words to this effect, ‘The hell with it,’ and he walked off the platform. . . . everybody stood at attention and saluted to the right and General Patton stood up in his command car and saluted, crying. . . . He was our hero.  We were on his side.  We knew the problem.  We knew what he had done and why he had done it. . . . He never came back.

These men under arms understood that their great commander, who stood on the verge of leading them into the heart of Nazi Germany, should not abase himself in such a manner.  They recognized the need to rally around a wounded leader who was irreplaceable.

A nation that reared such soldiers possesses both a uniquely independent spirit and a type of collective street smarts.  We know to reject personal attacks on effective leaders fighting the machine because, in many cases, those attacks are launched precisely because their leadership is effective.  The core, unshakable support that remains for Trump, in particular, reflects a deep and abiding respect for what Trump has done and the unique threat he still poses to the Left.