Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Stephanie Clifford seems to set up a dilemma, and as is common with Democratic dilemmas it is a Clinton dilemma. How can I distinguish ol' Bill's dalliance from President Trump's pre-Presidential sexual transgression? Certainly it is true that Clinton took advantage of the power disparity with his affair, and, oddly, Trump just seems to have thrown money around (and not that much of it). On its face that should make Clinton the worse transgressor, and maybe that's how it shakes out by some measure, but I think there is a difference, and the difference is notable. Both Clinton and Trump have large sexual appetites, but we expected more from Clinton. We expected that his intelligence and passion for policy, the things that defined him as a President, would allow him to overcome- or us to overlook-- his other defining quality, and when that didn't happen we felt betrayed. He'd permitted his tragic flaw to become the focus of his Presidency, undermining all of the decent things he'd done, or was trying to do.
Trump is just being Trump. His narcissism and his shallow nature are exactly what anyone who has walked by a newsstand in the last 40 years knew we were going to get, and frankly I don't know that we will ever see the bottom of this barrel. It doesn't matter, really, because his presence in the White House is a powerful suggestion that the US has lost, or is at least losing, the ability to self-govern.
Trump is just being Trump. His narcissism and his shallow nature are exactly what anyone who has walked by a newsstand in the last 40 years knew we were going to get, and frankly I don't know that we will ever see the bottom of this barrel. It doesn't matter, really, because his presence in the White House is a powerful suggestion that the US has lost, or is at least losing, the ability to self-govern.
// posted by Bill @ 11:19 AM 
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