Donald Trump is an awful president. But, Frank Bruni writes, in these perverse times, his sheer awfulness works to his advantage:
That’s Trump’s edge over everybody. That’s his gift. He can do no wrong because he’s all wrong. He never really shocks because he’s a perpetual shock.
When someone frolics at the nadir for as long as he has, there’s nowhere to go but sideways.
Trump has always been an habitual bottom feeder, establishing his brand at the nadir of human experience:
It was clear that he had amassed his fortune through convenient bankruptcies, unsavoury alliances and stiffed creditors.
His racial demagogy had been well established in his insistence that Barack Obama was an illegitimate president born outside the United States.
And his misogyny? Megyn Kelly was able to ask that famous question at the first 2016 Republican primary debate — the one with a litany of his gross physical put-downs of women — because they had all been chronicled, recorded, transcribed. There was no running from his boorishness. Boorishness was his brand.
And that boorishness appeals to cynical voters. There is only one way to deal with him -- stop concentrating on the boorishness and focus on the corruption:
The way out isn’t clear, but a few necessary adjustments are. We in the media should do less “horseface” and more ballooning deficits, dysfunctional federal agencies, disgraceful cabinet members and reckless judicial appointments. Too often the substantial sinks beneath the saucier stuff, yet another factor that favors the president and lets him off the hook.
The real issue is what Trump is doing to his country -- and to the rest of the world.
