The Patriot Post® · Character Assassination, on Steroids

I’ll bet that nine out of every 10 Americans have strongly held personal views about Donald Trump, the man — his capability, his motives, his integrity, his moral compass. And I’ll bet, as well, that those cast-iron views, positive or negative, are founded wholly on characterizations concocted by entities with a compelling political stake in Trump’s success or failure, and then spoon-fed to the American public.

In everyday life, we build our social, business, and personal relationships carefully, gravitating to those with whom we share similar views and ethics. When we observe others’ behavior that is outside our own standards, we tend to keep those people at arm’s length.

And for the imperfect human beings among us (that’s everyone), we generally tend to tolerate our friends’ and partners’ foibles and enjoy all the good parts of those relationships.

But not so with politicians, and particularly our elected leaders. For them (with the rare exception of any we happen to know in person), we tend to accept at face value the persona assigned by media or political messengers. In time, we adopt their judgments as our own.

There’s nothing new about political operatives floating reasons to dislike their opponents. But I don’t believe there has ever been a more extreme case in American political history than the tidal wave of character assassination targeting the man who is our current president. As asserted by the Left, Trump is, in composite: Hitler / Nazi / fascist / king / authoritarian dictator / heartless / narcissist / psychopath / xenophobe / racist / the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War, all wrapped into one truly horrible human being.

The above is not exaggeration; you will find numerous examples of those explicit characterizations from supposedly credible political and media Trump critics. And to add insult to injury, a few are now tossing in claims that he is morally bankrupt, a rapist, and a pedophile. It would be hard to conjure up a more evil person.

Each item on the long litany of asserted Trump flaws can be rebutted objectively (although it would require a much longer column than this one). Among them, Trump’s supposed moral failings are perhaps the most unfair, wildly speculative, largely unfounded, and particularly dangerous.

Cole Tomas Allen, Trump’s most recent would-be assassin, referred in his manifesto to the compelling need to reject a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor.” And come to think of it, wasn’t the would-be assassin of Justice Brett Kavanaugh also inspired by specious, wholly uncorroborated claims of sexual misbehavior by Kavanaugh in his high school years? Once smeared, always smeared.

The hard reality is that we always think we know our leaders — we accept whichever carefully constructed persona our side has assigned to them, and we reject the persona their side serves up. And we usually get it wrong.

As one example, years ago I wrote a column challenging the widely accepted caricature of George W. Bush as an intellectual lightweight and of his presidential opponent, Al Gore, as a cerebral genius. We know now that the media got those characterizations exactly backward.

And for another, how about the widely revered John F. Kennedy? We all loved the energetic, youthful president, his dazzling first lady, and their photogenic youngsters. But only much later did we learn that the storybook Camelot version of their personal lives was a well-constructed facade. Jack Kennedy was a serial philanderer, regularly bedding young women in the White House, with the help of the ever-protective staff.

In retrospect, I guess we could also call JFK “morally bankrupt.” But the public chose to ignore Kennedy’s personal life in favor of sound policies.

Kennedy made grievous mistakes as well, in particular tiptoeing into the brewing mess of Vietnam. There were signs that he was ready to pull us back from that brink, but after his assassination in 1963, our Vietnam engagement morphed into a nearly 20-year nightmare claiming more than 58,000 American lives and fueling partisan rancor in our nation that persists even now.

The Kennedy history demonstrates once again that our presidents are imperfect human beings, wrestling with the toughest job on the planet. Like many, I still revere the memory of Jack Kennedy — and I wish we could find a way to treat Donald Trump with the same level of objective fairness.

Clearly, we Americans should be able to recognize the commonsense reality about the rampant, politically driven Trump hatred. If the laundry list of anti-Trump rhetoric were true, he would be the worst president in American history. In fact, he’s been remarkably effective.

But he’s also a flawed, imperfect human being, and in many respects his own worst enemy:

• By nature, Trump is brash, blustering, abrasive, and often unnecessarily insulting.
• He’s impulsive, and he relies on his own instincts. That’s often the case among successful business leaders. Trump is one. Moreover, I’d argue that his instincts are usually solid in that they align with what I — and many on the Right — believe. (You may disagree — that’s fine).
• He’s absolutely fearless, politically and personally. Absolute fearlessness can be dangerous, but it can also be the key to achieving seemingly impossible goals (such as neutering the Iranian terrorist threat).
• And insofar as his supposed moral bankruptcy, we have no basis to judge Trump’s — or anyone else’s — inner moral compass. And more importantly, as was the case with Jack Kennedy, it has little to do with the job we elected him to do.

Trump, like Kennedy, Bush, and so many before them, faces challenges that we can barely imagine. We count on them to make decisions for which they cannot guarantee success, and we hold them accountable, often unfairly, when those actions don’t deliver the hoped-for results.

Rather than counting our president’s flaws or judging his style or his words, we should watch his actions, offer alternatives instead of criticism, and when he acts on our behalf, we must give him — and our nation — unbridled support.