Leader or tyrant?

    It seems to me that Donald Trump was more of a tyrant than a president. But I also see how people can see things in a different light.

 How do you see Oedipus, the guy Sophocles wrote about?

The Romans called the play Oedipus Rex, the king.

The Greeks called it Oedipus Tyrranus, the tyrant.

Oedipus was legit by Roman standards, which tended toward bare knuckles. But the Greeks noticed that Oedipus was terrified of losing his authority as ruler, suggesting he knew that it was not his by right. That obsessive fear of losing power was one of the telltale signs of a tyrant.

That was the way people saw things in the Athenian democracy 2,500 years ago. 

Paul Woodruff, whose mind is suited for the subtleties of Greek thinkers like Plato and Sophocles, lists some of the distinctions between leaders and tyrants in his book The Ajax Dilemma. Here are a few:

• A leader aims and works for the common good of the community. A tyrant is in it for himself.

• A leader leads by commanding respect. A tyrant rules by instilling fear — bullying.

• A leader creates a community of mutual respect. With a tyrant, it’s always about the tyrant. Everyone else is run down.

• A leader cultivates trust, trying to create an environment where everyone is united by it. A tyrant destroys trust. He creates a climate of suspicion, conspiracy and fear.

Here’s Woodruff, summing up what the Greeks knew in their bones:

Leadership is the form of power that is compatible with freedom. Tyranny destroys freedom … 

It might seem to you, as it does to me, that all this fits Trump like a tailor-made suit. Trump, of course, would reply as he always does: Everything, including Woodruff’s book, is about Trump and everything critical of Trump is unfair.

But Woodruff’s book was obviously not about Trump. It was in print five years before Trump was elected.

The book is about justice and leadership. And it happens to include a remarkable section on ways that some people who claim to be leaders aren’t leaders at all.

• Paul Woodruff, The Ajax Dilemma: Justice, Fairness and Rewards; Oxford University Press, 2011.