The Americans used to regard the Kennedys as their very own royal family. Could it be that, in the Clintons, they have found their Borgias? In Trump, their Caligula? It might explain the recent popularity of TV dramas revelling in Renaissance intrigues and Hollywood’s recent spate of Roman films.

Although these productions predate the Clinton and Trump candidacies, they capture the style of two kinds of political machinations into which the Democrat and Republican nominees respectively fit. One is comfortably at home in the dark corridors and basements of the Washington establishment. The other threatens to subject a US republican plutocracy to the whims of a populist strongman. If it weren’t Clinton or Trump, surely someone else would have fitted the mould.

The comparison with the Borgias and Caligula will plug a gap if you’re a media pundit scrabbling for something original to say about the saga of Hillary and Wikileaks. Or the probability of more damning audiotapes of the lewd predatory Trump. But can it be more than a quip?

I’d say yes. If we move beyond the myths, all Europeans, the snoots and the boors, should find something that is grimly instructive.

Let’s deal with the myths, first. Yes, the Borgias were a scheming, conniving family, very dangerous to cross. In this, they resembled their adversaries – the Sforzas, the Medicis, the della Roveres and Farneses.

But recent historical work suggests Lucrezia might have been more sinned against than sinning. The gossip about incest with her brother and father, Pope Alexander VI, may have been the spin of one of her father’s rivals. The old pope probably died of malaria, not from a poison prepared by his son for someone else.

As for Caligula, for much of his four short years as emperor, it was admittedly dangerous to be around him. He was paranoid about everyone but, then again, many people were out to get him. If he really was insane, so was the system that carried out his orders. Recent scholarship suggests, instead, that the charge of insanity was put about by the Roman establishment to take attention away from the system that produced him.

So much for the myths. But why the Borgias and not one of the other families?

True, there is no strong reason to ignore the Farnese pope, Paul III. Like Hillary Clinton, he was nepotistic, casually mixing private relations with official appointments. Like her, he was as brazen about how he broke the rules of celibacy as she of commercial intercourse.

And, like her, he was what we would call a policy wonk. He succeeded a pope, Clement VII, who had shown much promise but turned out a weak leader. Paul III took a genuine interest in proposals to reform abuses in the Church and in the Council of Trent, while his Sublimus Dei solemnly declared the indigenous peoples of the Americas to be human (then a bone of some contention) and thus not to be robbed of their freedom and property. That’s as progressive as Hillary, in our day, will ever be.

Contemporary America isn’t classical Rome. But both, in their own way, are fraught with the tension of being both a republic and an empire

But the comparison with the Borgias illuminates more. There are, first, the accusations (founded and unfounded) levelled against the Clintons, which are strikingly reminiscent of those made about the Borgias: out-of-control private rages, vindictiveness, irrepressible sexual appetites, congenital lying, corrupt self-enrichment, nepotism, betrayal and even murder.

Even when rumours are false, they say something important about your political profile and environment.

Some resemblances are more structural. Like the southern Clintons, the Borgias were initially Spanish outsiders in Rome, and were looked down on. Their nepotism and secretiveness in part arose as a defence mechanism against the hostility directed towards them.

The idea of a Borgia pope probably provoked as much scoffing in the 15th century as it does in ours. But few doubted then that Alexander VII was probably the man best qualified for the job: star graduate of a leading school of law, experienced in diplomacy, intelligent and shrewd, and the most likely to respect the Church’s interests over those of a foreign monarch.

For the Church, the real problem with a Borgia pope is not that he must have been a bad choice. It’s that he was almost certainly the best choice. What kind of institution have you become if you depend on such a man to steer you safely?

Likewise with Hillary Clinton. No one doubts her qualifications or understanding of the issues or the salience of some of her policies. So why are so many people troubled by her likely victory in four weeks? Because of the unvoiced question: what does it say about the US political system that it should depend on a Borgia-like operative to steer it for the next four years?

Separating Trump from the system represented by Clinton might at first seem naïve. Trump has played within it as much as anyone else. The marriages of his children have been no less strategic, as involved in self-interested philanthropy as in the seamier side of establishment life.

But the comparison of Trump with Caligula illuminates other issues. Each man is notorious for his inability to sleep more than three hours at a stretch, Caligula stalking the darkened corridors of his palace imploring the dawn to break, the other tweeting against his enemies at 3am.

In itself that is merely a curiosity. It’s more telling that in both men’s cases it has been used – together with their speaking style (jumbled ideas with little syntax), vanity, and sadistic cutting humour – as evidence that suggests personality disorder and insanity.

In fact, both men’s humour and stunts make perfect sense once you allow that both men wanted to expose the ridiculousness of the political system. Caligula’s promise to make his favourite horse a senator (in the end, it was made a priest) was meant to demonstrate the Senate’s subservience to him. His dressing up as a god was intended to poke fun at the obsequious patricians, just as Trump has toyed with the media and insulted the Republican establishment, one star after another.

The real Caligula was, in some ways, the kind of leader Trump aspires to be. Caligula’s reign began with a lowering of taxes (and the closing of some tax loopholes – for prostitutes and pimps). He successfully secured some of Rome’s borders. Most importantly, he began to assert a strongman’s power in a system that was still nominally a republic. He remained popular till his assassination.

Contemporary America isn’t classical Rome. But both, in their own way, are fraught with the tension of being both a republic and an empire, of having an elected leader who, once elected, is vested with a sacral charismatic quality.

Having Donald Trump as president threatens to make the tension unbearable. He claims that the current system is unworkable. He behaves like a strongman in a democracy and he has popular backing for that stance. While the Constitution should prevent a strongman from taking over the US, he could still accelerate the process by which power has been transferred to the President in recent years.

Once more, the real question to ask is: how dysfunctional must a system be for Trump to seem the plausible solution?

Is the choice between the Borgias and Caligula a purely American dilemma? Just look around you.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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