I am not a fan of our current president. Rather than the demeanor of a thoughtful person, the defining trait I repeatedly see confirmed by him is his tactic of outright calling anyone who opposes him by a derogatory name.
The man is inarticulate. He has the mouth of an uneducated bully. He just called the porn star Stormy Daniels “Horseface.” Our society may not place Ms. Daniels at the top of its list of professions. However, I have not heard Ms. Daniels calling him derogatory names.
In the one TV interview I ever saw of Ms. Daniels, she handled herself with a great deal of style. I do not want to get here into the issue of porn. One does not have to agree with her choice of profession to note her ability to articulately state her case regarding her alleged affair with the Donald.
I don’t want this commentary to focus on Daniels and Donald. The point I wish to make about Mr. Trump is that he is intellectually a small man. If any traits are important to qualify one for the presidency, they are intelligence and articulacy.
Being able to accurately choose one’s words to express one’s thoughts, rather than bullyingly attacking one’s opponents, is the sign of a mind that has developed a respect for all people and their thoughts.
Mr. Trump has of late begun to moderate several of his media outbursts. He has developed a more moderate script he follows – to a degree. But his explosions of rancorous rage and his obvious sense of self-importance and superiority still continuously leak out in his blurted remarks and Tweets.
He has a small mind. In my opinion he is a small man. Our nation remains stridently divided by a left and right political extremes. If it needs anything, it needs a president who has control of her or his mind, and exhibits respect for others.
It needs a president who, by example, can exhibit moderation in her or his relations with opponents. America needs to foster a new respect in the world. To do that it needs a person who can return a marked degree of civility to the presidency.
I believe the 2020 political battle is about this need. It has not been articulated in public media; however, it is to my way of thinking what is needed to coax America out of a national small mindedness that it has itself developed over the past decade or two.
The world is a rambunctious place. Millions of opinions impact us all daily as the human race tries to grasp the meaning of its existence and reconcile the many differences among the many nations and races and beliefs.
I suggest that our next president be either a gentlewoman or a gentleman, by which I mean one who proves her or his intelligence by exhibiting restrained emotions, and – instead – providing a degree of rationality to our increasingly emotion-burdened, and quite irrational, national temperament.
In short, is it not time we Americans grew up? Not a bad idea, I think.
