Not content to accept that he overdid it in his response to Khizr Khan, the father of a US soldier who died in Iraq who spoke at the DNC last week, Donald Trump continued to bark instead of dialing things back. The liberal press is making hay of this latest unforced error, while the partisans on the Right have cranked up the spin machine in a multi-pronged attack on Khan himself, on the Democrats and on the liberal press itself.
Meanwhile, the rest of us sit in disbelief as the prospects for the next few years look bleaker and bleaker. There’s nothing redeeming in the idea of a CLUMP presidency, and each passing day, each new revelation about both of them makes the entire prospect more nightmarish. We are told that the press is doing its best to whitewash Clinton and tar and feather Trump, and while that’s certainly true in both instances, it’s become almost irrelevant thanks to Trump’s continuing, well, Trump-like behavior.
Trump has drawn a huge amount of support by being open, forthright and (I cringe in saying this but it’s true) honest in what he says. He’s a refreshing change in many ways from the coldly calculated and carefully measured politicians we normally experience. That change is especially stark in comparison to Clinton, who radiates the warmth and genuineness of a lizard person.
That honesty and openness is not, however, a sufficient quality. If it showed us a man of integrity and clear thought, with great leadership skills and ideas that inspire, it would be an enormous asset, and he’d cake-walk into the White House. Instead, it has shown us a man who is all id, who doesn’t know how to manage his reactions to provocation, whose first instinct when hit is to hit back, and whose second and third instincts trump (pun intended, obviously) measured or tempered responses.
These are great characteristics if you’re a firebrand talking head on some national news network, or if you’re a partisan party pit bull, but they’re lousy and frightening characteristics if you’re President. How would President Trump handle the trash talk that every President faces, from the opposition party, from the press, from professional agitators, and from hostile foreign nations? Given the astounding power that the President wields (power made even greater by GWB’s and Obama’s executive overreach), the prospect of a President driven by id is horrifying.
The awareness of that prospect seems to be expanding in the electorate. Polls in the last few days have swung sharply in Clinton’s favor. Some of that is certainly a “bounce” from the convention (Trump had made similar gains after the Republican National Convention), but it’s hard not to conclude that the Khan kerfuffle, which Trump himself turned into a conflagration, is taking its toll. Political chatter that I’ve heard reinforces this conclusion, with some Trump loyalists wavering on or abandoning their support. It’s a long way to the election, and a whole lot can (and probably will) happen that will trump (yes, again) current events, but even if Trump turns things around and lands in the White House, what we’ve seen so far is mortifying.
Trump’s fans have long promised the rest of us that, once in office, he’ll be good for the country. He’ll do the right things, he’ll stand tough against the nation’s rivals and enemies, he’ll restore this nation’s standing, and he’ll be presidential. With every passing day, with every new bit of information gleaned from Trump’s behavior, all these promises migrate further and further away from reality and into the realms of projection and wishful thinking. We’ve experienced the latter with most political candidates, who typically fail to deliver the hopes and dreams they offered us. With Trump, though, it is fear and dread that most informs our visions of his presidency, a presidency that, based on the mountain of evidence at our feet, will be one driven by the id of a man with bad instincts and a petty personality.
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Two points: (1) Trump *is* completely out of control; (2) just because Trump is out of control doesn’t mean that the press is giving him a fair shake (they’re not by a long stretch). Any non-Democrat would be tarred and feathered in a similar manner.