Time to take out the trash: Donald Trump’s legacy is vanity, tastelessness, classlessness and men behaving badly
Regardless of the outcome, Trump has already left his mark on the presidency — by damaging our presidential ideals
Topics: basket of deplorables, Donald Trump, Elections 2016, Elections News, News, Politics News
(Credit: AP/Gene J. Puskar)One of the many long term side effects of the Watergate fiasco was the sudden demystification of the American presidency. Not only did this spark the idea that the office can be held by anyone, regardless of expertise or accomplishment, but it also helped to manufacture the ill-conceived notion that presidents should be just like us. From there, cable news kingpins like Roger Ailes and political operatives like Karl Rove sold politicians to voters by packaging them for “the folks” — as “guys we’d like to have a beer with.” We’ve been instructed for too many years that plain-spoken leaders are better than well-educated, well-qualified ones. It’s a shallow, comfort-food selling point that never should’ve existed. Our priority shouldn’t be to elect someone just like you or me. We should demand, if not utterly fight for leaders who are far superior and exponentially more disciplined than we are.
Trump has done serious damage to our presidential ideals.
From the beginning, Donald Trump’s most treacherous feature was never his policy proposals, as limited and superficial as they are. Deporting millions of immigrants, building walls, criminalizing abortion, going to war against Iran over finger gestures — these are colossally bad ideas, worthy of vigorous opposition. But the most egregious of Trump’s downsides has been his personal behavior, both on the stump, in interviews, in debates and on social media.
Trump packaged himself as a candidate with low class and no taste. He’s willfully ignorant while exploiting the lack of education and general ignorance of his most loyal supporters. He deals in superlatives (“I have the best words!”, “We’ll have so much winning!” and “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created!”) rather than specifics, perhaps illustrating how he and his people are incapable of understanding or verbalizing complicated ideas. His absolutely vulgar displays of wealth, including his garish 87th floor penthouse or his private jet — his McMansion with wings — define a man who’s completely disengaged with everyday Americans. Remarkably, despite his conspicuous consumption, his people believe he’s just like them. The fact that he doesn’t mind flaunting his wealth by tastelessly wrapping all of his possessions in gold while shoehorning his last name onto the facade of his buildings shows a man who clearly doesn’t know what it means to be modest, humble or self-deprecating. Trump proves that trashiness comes in many forms and, in this case, his brand of it is illustrated by his defiant lack of decency and his complete rejection of presidential behavior.
This isn’t to suggest that all previous presidential candidates have been morally upstanding. They obviously haven’t. Most of the successful ones, however, have resisted the tendency to humiliate all of us in order to win the votes of half of us, like Trump has. In other words, even the most ethically deplorable would-be presidents have at least carried themselves with a level of noble respectability. We might be thoroughly repulsed by their platforms or their involvement with a scandal or two, but rarely have we been too mortified to call them fellow Americans. Only those of us with supremely low standards of personal behavior, discipline and intellect — those of us who possess a wistful longing for racial pejoratives and segregation, for a time when white men exclusively controlled the world — are capable of boasting about Trump’s character without feeling the queasy sense of embarrassment gurgling to the surface.
The longing for a return to a white male golden age via a “Make America Great Again” slogan isn’t an admirable or commendable posture. Trump, along with the conservative media before him, have worked tirelessly to make it seem that way, but it’s simply not. That is unless we’ve collided with an alternative universe where racial persecution is encouraged. Trump’s argument against political correctness would be more acceptable if it was based upon promoting a free exchange of ideas, rather than it being tacit permission to wear “Trump That Bitch” t-shirts or to circulate #RepealThe19th hashtags. The Trump platform is predicated by an acceptance of old-school, white male dominance and sold by generally pandering to the worst instincts of a specific voting demographic. It’s the Southern Strategy without the dog-whistles.