Last year, PewResearch conducted a study in which 91% of Americans said it was essential for those in high political offices to be both honest and ethical. Trustworthiness and morality was the top attribute out of nine asked about in the survey, and it scored equally high for both Democrats and Republicans. Of course, this sort of unanimity is striking given the current administration.
The evidence weighs pretty heavily in favor that President Trump lies. A lot. Check out any number of Snopes articles (a fact-checking website) or compare his PolitiFact profile versus the previous president or another Republican contender. Given that and some pretty tasteless comments, it should be pretty clear that Donald Trump is not a “good guy.”
Yet even so, a majority of Republicans aren’t too concerned or even say he is more trustworthy than previous presidents. Why is this? It could simply boil down to partisan politics. Trump is by no means the only president to evoke wildly different attitudes from either side of the aisle. (Though his case is possibly the most extreme.) This would mean that people simply don’t believe that he is a liar or morally corrupt; they give the benefit of the doubt to someone on their team. This dismissal of facts has lofty consequences for societal health to be discussed another time.
An alternative, however, is that people believe that Trump is a liar; they simply don’t care. This then would be an explicit case of double-standards. It would mean that people believe and acknowledge that a nation needs ethical leaders, but consciously or subconsciously excuse non-ethical ones if they are serving their interests. The especially biblically literate might follow it up with an appeal to Cyrus or something like that.
I’m glad that the vast majority of the country can agree that political leaders ought to be honest and ethical. Let there be no doubt that societies benefit from upright rulers: the youth are given a moral role model and the nation can rest easy knowing their leader is fixed on doing good. But we cannot settle for acknowledging the importance of ethical leaders and then turn our back on that truth when it best suits us. There are moral politicians who will represent your beliefs, and if there aren’t, maybe you should consider abandoning those beliefs.
Thank you for posting this!
It seems that, while the parties agree on ethics, they disagree on Trump’s ethics. At this point in time, we have yet to see how this plays out. For example, you posted a picture of Nixon at the top. That is appropriate. At the time Watergate was being revealed, Nixon had a very high popularity rating. After Watergate, Nixon is now regarded with one of the lowest popularity ratings among previous presidents. Based on that example, we don’t know how Trump’s presidency will play out. It’s possible (and I believe) that the legacy of Trump’s presidency will be as low as (or even lower) than Nixon’s presidential legacy. Time will tell.
Just to provoke thought: is an honest/ethical leader superior to a leader that does good, at least in the eyes of the beholder? Only in the brief history of modern/American democracy have the masses had the luxury of expecting their leaders to share the same moral code with them. Most leaders have had a more Machiavellian tint. Separately, if I cynically believe that all politicians are liars or power-hungry, why should I not wish for one that at least follows my policy positions more often than the alternative. My honest opinion: a good portion of Trump’s support comes from individuals that despise him but see him serving their interests in the short-run (e.g., corporate income tax cuts or conservative judges). The proposed opposition that you are espousing is similar to mine in that those that care about the conservative brand or morals rubbing off on kids should think past the next four years. Perhaps losing in the short run will have a higher expected rate of return in the long-run.
Always with the David Brooks article. (It’s a good read, but both of these people are idiots.)
I think that’s a fair dilemma/question to ask. It’s what leads to the question in my post and that you answer with your honest opinion: is the discrepancy described because people are blind to his sins or because of a double standard (which arises out of a desire to serve their political goals, as you and Brooks said).
(As a side note, I read just this week that superimposing Machiavellian intentions to leaders is itself a post-Machiavelli phenomenon–that is, we tend to read it into a lot of historical leaders when it wasn’t there.)
Also, this article speaks to the issue: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/opinion/trump-voters.html