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Maureen Dowd
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington.
In the midst of the furor over Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and his manipulative attempts to cover it up and figure out if he should lie about it or come clean, liberals began advancing the argument that the private character of a president should be differentiated from his public character.
Look at F.D.R., J.F.K. and L.B.J., they said. Lots of presidents betrayed their wives and deceived the electorate about their personal lives. But that should not distract from their public character, what they achieved and how they helped people while in office.
Donald Trump’s private life is marked by a cascade of sordid episodes. But so is his public life. Trump simply has no character.
When I asked a scholar what Shakespearean figure Trump most resembles, he replied that Trump is not complex enough to be one. You have to have a character to have a tragic flaw that mars your character.
And that raises the question: How did the America of George Washington never telling a lie, the America of Honest Abe, the America of the Greatest Generation, the America of Gary Cooper facing down a murderous gang alone in “High Noon” — how did this America, our America, become a place where a man with no character has an even chance of being re-elected president?
Once, character and reputation were prized in our leaders. “Character is like a tree, and reputation is like a shadow,” Lincoln said. When Claude Rains’s graft is discovered in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” he becomes suicidal out of shame.
Republican politicians bending to Trump’s will don’t know what shame is. And Trump, brazenly projecting every bad thing that he does onto his rivals, and boldly hawking sneakers, Bibles and cologne like a late-night cable huckster, has no shame.
Trump has exploited the widespread disillusionment that has curdled into cynicism about a ruling class rife with hypocrisy, self-aggrandizement and bad judgment.
Americans have felt let down again and again since the ’60s, with wars we shouldn’t have been in, occupations we shouldn’t have had, the bank scandals that were allowed to happen, trade agreements that hollowed out........