In the back-and-forth of comments on this recent thread you may have noticed a repeat of an old argument that centers on the character and style of Donald Trump. I don’t have to recap; you know the drill.
The commenters here aren’t a unitary bunch on that score, but there’s a general trend. I’d say that the majority of people here are practical middle-roaders on the Trump style question. In other words, a great many people here didn’t support him in the primaries, reluctantly supported him in the election only because Hillary was seen as worse, and yet are supporters now because of his accomplishments in the policy sense as well as the appointment of conservative judges. They have also seen him as fighting back hard against constant and unfair attacks for things he has not actually done (as well as sometimes against fair attacks for things he has done), and many of the attacks have been far more vile than anything he has said.
What’s more, the current opposition on the Democratic side makes Hillary Clinton look like Barry Goldwater.
But what of this “style” thing? It’s still, somehow, one of the main objections to Trump, and some supporters understand and to a certain extent share that objection; they simply think it’s small compared to all his pluses. Does the style problem involve his language, his more juvenile attacks (many of them during the primaries, targeting his Republican rivals)? His infidelities and marital history? What is it, really?
I’ll leave it to you to flesh that out. For me, though – and probably the main reason I’m writing this post – I have observed that often in life you can’t pick and choose and keep the good traits and leave the bad. The reason is that those good and bad traits are usually linked.
Just to take one example, you might hear a woman say, “I want to find a man who’s strong-minded and yet does what I tell him.” (Actually, you won’t ordinarily hear a woman say that in so many words, but women often say something that boils down to that.) Sorry, those things tend to be mutually exclusive. Or, you might hear a man say some equivalent of, “I want to find a woman who is intelligent and thinks for herself but doesn’t ever argue or disagree with me.” It’s not that such a thing is literally impossible to find. But those traits just don’t tend to go together.
Politics had become poisonous before Trump came on the scene. It’s a cliché to say so, but he’s a reaction rather than a cause. Does his presence ratchet things up? I believe it does. But I also believe that was happening anyway. All you really have to do is recall the invective directed at the relatively mild George W. Bush, and you can see what I mean.
The main reason Trump is hated is not his style. It is what he has done and what he promises to do. That the package “Donald Trump” also contains a style most people – including many of his supporters – find abrasive and harsh is a fact. But Trump’s style is inextricably linked, I believe, with his ability to be bold in his judicial appointments, his foreign policy, and his criticism of a press that had become a Pravda-like Democratic organ long before he came on the scene.
I can imagine a Republican candidate who might have done all of that and yet retained a smooth and relatively polite and erudite style, and yet would also have managed to defeat Hillary Clinton (that last bit is all-important, because without that it would be moot). And although such a combination of traits in one person isn’t literally impossible, it is so unlikely that I don’t think it’s realistic to have expected such a person to have come along at just the right juncture in 2016. It would be like waiting for Godot.
[ADDENDUM: That perfect candidate would have to have a keen intelligence, articulate speech, impeccable character, spotless record, winning and likeable and magnetic personality, the strength of character to stand up to terrible mud-slinging unperturbed, and also be able to fight dirty enough to win against the dirtiest of fighters. Only a few extremely unusual historical figures have that combination of traits, and no politician alive today has them.
A gentleman (or gentlewoman) on the right probably would not survive this particular political climate, and that fact way predated Trump. In fact, at this point, a gentleman or gentlewoman on the left doesn’t seem to have much chance of surviving either.]
