Decency in one’s personal conduct is a low bar to clear. One dictionary definition: "behavior that conforms to accepted standards of morality or respectability." It’s also behavior so fundamental to daily social interaction that it is often prefaced with the adjective “common.” Basic human stuff. Most people would agree that "common decency," implying some degree of courtesy and respect toward others, is oil that makes the gears of everyday life work.
Common decency, at the very least, is what Americans should expect of any president, and it's not a big ask. After all, decency is what we expect in ordinary interactions with any old anybody -- what we expect in the behavior of our neighbors or fellow workers or a grocery-store clerk or everyman on the street. Or ourselves, for that matter.
Conversely, President Trump seems to take great pleasure in making indecency the coin of the realm. Lie, vilify, abuse, boast, mock, insult, belittle, disrespect – mainstays of the Trumpian handbook for living life indecently in the public arena.
The source of much of Trump’s loathsome antics is rooted in the unrestrained ego of a self-proclaimed “high IQ” braggart. Apparently, when you consider yourself superior to any human being ever to have walked the planet (remember, Trump has likened himself to Jesus and superhuman superheroes), you feel justified in treating all others as woefully inferior. Although not reserved for the media, this inflated sense of superiority rises to its zenith in Trump’s denigration of reporters, whom he has called, among other things, "stupid," "nasty," "ugly," "obnoxious," “demented,” “deranged,” or "piggy." Not stopping there, he has repeatedly labeled political opponents as "scum," sleazebags," "low-IQ," and "stupid." And of course, anyone whom he dislikes or with whom he disagrees is a lunatic.
This is the childish bunkum of an elementary-school bully, not the utterances of the great man he imagines himself to be. Alarmingly, even entire countries (“shithole countries” in Trumpian terms) are targets of Trump’s abuse. When Minnesota was prominently in the news this past winter, Trump repeatedly disparaged Somali-born American citizens as "garbage" and disparaged their native country as "filthy, dirty, disgusting, riddled with crime." It is a mystery as to how he might know this; there is no record of Trump having ever visited Somalia.
With this kind of blithely derogatory attitude toward other countries, it is no wonder that Trump is held in such low regard abroad. He deludes himself in insisting that his self-championed toughness has earned the U.S. wide respect around the world; polls show that his disrespectful (indecent) regard for foreign nations – Canada, Denmark, South Korea, etc. -- has earned him an almost 80 percent disapproval rating internationally, with the percentage even more dismal among the U.S.’s European allies.
Trump's sycophantic apologists, who are expected not just to abide his indecency but to legitimize it, declare Trump to be a man simply telling it like it is rather than playing phoney political games. Well no. Trump's persistent insults are tasteless indecency, and Americans deserve better than that from their president.
Repetition can be numbing, so after Trump calls a reporter stupid or ugly for the third or fourth or hundredth time, the indecent impact is diminished. It shouldn't be. Trump's predecessors -- Clinton, Bush, Obama, and those going back into previous centuries -- often disliked their treatment in the press, but they knew that a president should still act like a president, with appropriate decorum. When then-President George W. Bush was caught on a hot mic a few years ago labeling, sotto voce, a New York Times reporter a "major-league a--hole," it was considered scandalous that a president could be so ungraciously crude, so unpresidential. Trump regurgitates such insults out loud all the time -- gleefully, pompously, and indecently.
You can agree or disagree with Trump's political positions, but the constant denigration, dishonesty, and haughtiness have no place in presidential conduct and discourse. During the 1954 hearings in which Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy sought to root out Communists in the government and military, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to muck it up with McCarthy (and his counsel, Roy Cohn, who later became Trump’s early mentor), declaring that to get in a scrappy dogfight with the senator was beneath the “dignity” of the office of the presidency. Dignity, however, is not a word in the Trumpian vocabulary. It seems that the American public and the media have become so inured to Trump's incessant insult, bombast, and mendacity that it is now acceptable for a president to behave this way. It isn't, it never was, and it never should be.
Speaking of the Army-McCarthy hearings, it is probably worth resurrecting the famous rhetorical question of John Welch, the attorney representing the army, who, after the repeated badgering, accusation, and intimidation of witnesses by McCarthy (egged on by Cohn), asked: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” The same question should be asked of President Trump.
This is not about Trump’s politics. Instead, it’s about personal behavior, about decent behavior, about decency in interacting with others. Restoring a sense of decency to the presidency would be a great idea, but it would be little more than a half step. The president of the United States should aspire, as did Eisenhower, to a much higher standard: dignity. It’s what Americans should expect in their leader, and what they deserve.
Oliver lives in Warren.
