The great Jay Nordlinger once told of accompanying President George W. Bush on a meander through a crowd. Perhaps it was a parade route, now that I think about it. Whatever the case, the environment was such that the two men could chat a bit as Bush waved and smiled to this person and that. Bush eventually waved at a person who flipped him off in return. Nordlinger recalled that Bush leaned over and quipped “not a fan.”
And that was the end of it. I’m certain President Bush never thought about it again.
Compare and contrast our current president publicly calling a party with whom he has a disagreement “horseface.”
The ins and outs and rights and wrongs of the relationship—whatever it was, is, and will be—between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels are completely irrelevant, as are any views on whether Trump’s policies have been largely positive, largely negative, or a mixed bag.
The bottom line is that the President of the United States should be far, far beyond hurling grade-school playground insults as a matter of course. I want a President of the United States whose public behavior is consistently and appropriately emulable by children.
Apparently, Trump supporters who can acknowledge the above—reasonable people who can be fine with a lot of his policies and think he’s doing a good job, but just wish he wasn’t such a juvenile jackass—are few and far between indeed.
That “little” thing says something truly terrible about the state of our society.
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