There is an oft repeated saying about the office of the United States Presidency. There are variations on the wording, but it generally goes as follows:
“If you can’t respect the man, you must at least respect the office.”
Although most Presidents are divisive, this statement has never been more needed than with the current one, Donald J. Trump.
As a non-religious Libertarian-leaning Republican whom has grown more socially liberal in recent years, I find myself in a bit of a quandary with both Trump and my party of record. And while there are many things about both institutions that bug me, it took an offhand comment from a late night radio host to crystalize one of the main issues I have with Trump himself.
I was recently listening to Andy Furman and Brian Noe on the way home after a busy weekend night at the restaurant. The topic of the moment was Trump insulting LeBron James’ intelligence after James said in an interview for CNN that the President was using sports to divide the public. Rather than engaging James on the topic or ignoring the remarks, Trump chose the ad hominem approach, insulting intelligence of both James and his interviewer, anchor Don Lemon.
Noe made the comment the same comment above about respecting the office of the Presidency, and then added this: “That goes for Donald Trump, too.”
That really hit home for me.
A lot of my disgust for the man and how he goes about his business isn’t really about politics. Many of his stances have at least a little agreement with what I believe in, although rarely to the extremes he (and the Republican Party) tends to take them. And politics, at least ideally, can be discussed as differing viewpoints (especially if you can do what few bother to now and remove your self-identity from the equation).
Trump, whether through tapping into an element of a white nationalist base, or radicalizing a previously irrelevant lower class of whites in dying Steel Belt towns, or perhaps even allegedly encouraging a foreign power to meddle in the nation’s politics, is, for better or worse, the President of the United States.
And someone needs to send him the memo, so maybe he can start acting like it.
The Presidency is a position which represents to the world what America is. Even if that comes down to just perception, it is still an impression that matters. If our President is representing the same strength of ideology and willingness to stand for high qualities which past Presidents have, this assures our allies and gives them a sense of security. It puts fear and caution in the hearts of our enemies.
If you see a man acting like a spoiled child in public, do you believe he is someone you can count on or trust? Is he someone you would fear or not be willing to confront?
Of course not. And that is how the world views America right now. America is the spoiled man-child.
And unfortunately for them, since it’s America, he happens to be holding a global version of an assault rifle (fittingly). He wields more economic and military power than any man in history.
At this point, I will count us lucky if we get through Trump’s Presidency without the start of World War III.
Instead of recognizing that the Presidency is an existing office to which he needs to elevate his own behavior to match, Trump treats it as his God-given right and believes the standards of the office lie instead within him. And sadly his standards for behavior—his nastiness, lying, misogyny, racism, petulance, intemperance, entitlement, narcissism, bias and self-serving actions—are well below the values the office and this country have always espoused.
Trump has well-established himself as a disgusting human being. I challenge anyone to make a case for him being a good and moral and ethical man.
It is one of the more mind boggling things I witness on a day to day basis. As a Republican myself, I know many who voted for and still stand for Trump. And I don’t get it. I know these people. They have values and standards. They’re very good people, to the core.
And yet they see this same behavior from their President and they continue to support him. Is it fear of what the other side will do if they wrest control of the government away from the GOP? Is it fatigue with their perception that the career politicians who held the office before Trump wouldn’t ever seem to “do” anything, whereas he seems willingly to boldly do whatever he feels like, regardless of the cost? Or is it, as I said above, simply a matter of self-identity and “my side has to win?”
I would like to think that in 2020, the people of this country will do the right thing and remove him from office, sending out notice that they will refuse to allow someone like him to continue to run amuck on the United States’ image and value system.
But I have my doubts. The current climate of identity politics combined with Trump himself feeding into the division have only widened the gap between the two sides. Both seem entrenched in their positions, not moving since 2016, so much as I can see. This combined with our history of re-electing incumbents suggests to me that removing Trump from office will be no easy task, even as a historically terrible President.
I can only hope we—and the world—can survive another six-plus years of this.