Kennedy Feared Embarrassing the Presidency. Does Trump? |
John F. Kennedy understood something that Donald Trump still has not learned.
Before agreeing to let filmmaker Robert Drew’s camera crew follow him for what became Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, Kennedy reportedly set down a condition: “If you embarrass the presidency, you’re out. If I do something that would embarrass the presidency, don’t let me do it.”
That sentence should be taught in every civics class in America.
It does not mean Kennedy was perfect. No president is. It does not mean that politics was ever as noble as we sometimes imagine it to have been. But it does show that Kennedy understood the presidency was larger than the man occupying the Oval Office. There was such a thing as embarrassing the presidency. There was such a thing as conduct unworthy of the office.
That brings us, unfortunately, to President Trump.
According to a report cited by The Times of Israel, Trump recently exploded at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a call about Lebanon and Hezbollah. The reported language was vulgar, personal and demeaning. Netanyahu’s office denied the worst parts of the account, while acknowledging that the call was tense. Fair enough. We should be cautious about treating every anonymously sourced report as courtroom evidence.
But the broader problem cannot be denied.
Trump has a habit of treating disagreement as betrayal, diplomacy as domination and allies as subordinates who owe him public gratitude. That is not strength. It is not statesmanship. And when the ally in question is Israel,........