It was a distant, though fervent, hope. When Donald Trump became the 45th president, I, along with so many Americans, harbored an aspiration that he would feel the weight of the office he had taken, find what Lincoln would have called the “better angels” in his nature, and put the office — and implicitly the needs of the nation — above himself.
But as Memorial Day approaches, with its echoes of service, humility and tradition, I know that my hopes have been dashed.
When President Trump mouths platitudes on Monday about our service members paying the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, it will be hard for me not to recall how he belittled Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for spending six torturous years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “He’s not a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said.
I knew, of course, who the Electoral College had tapped when the 2016 presidential election went unexpectedly Trump’s way: a crowing, preening narcissist whose scorched-earth path to the White House was blazed with incivility, bullying and an overt lack of grace. But this, after all, was the highest office of the greatest nation in the world. It was reasonable to expect those who reach it to find the best in themselves, to evolve into the role as they recognize the awesome responsibilities of the job, to put “we” over “me.”
But it was not to be. An article in the New York Times this month on the ailing McCain included a quote from Bob Kerrey, former Democratic senator from Nebraska and Medal of Honor recipient for his service in Vietnam, who, referring to Trump’s lack of devotion to the greater good, said chillingly, “[Trump] may be the opposite of every president we’ve ever had.” It may have been an understatement.
To be sure, Trump is not the first egotist to gravitate toward politics. As the acerbic Alice Roosevelt Longworth once said of her father, Theodore Roosevelt, he “wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.” Yet, like most of his presidential peers, Roosevelt saw the role of president as bigger than himself. He used the power of the presidency for the greater good, leveraging the “bully pulpit” toward a path of progressivism by championing reform for those whose stations in life were far below the rarified privilege in which he had spent his life.
Intent in emulating his distant cousin, Franklin Roosevelt kept in touch with suffering Americans by dispatching his wife, Eleanor, into the far-flung corners of the nation to gauge the plight of those struggling through the Great Depression, which she eagerly reported back to her husband.
More recently, Barack Obama requested and received 10 letters from constituents every day of his presidency, often those that “pointed to what an idiot” he was. The “LADs,” as they were called, were a way of reminding him why he was at the nation’s helm. When he traveled, his staff invited letter-writers in that region to meet the president and express their views firsthand. Ronald Reagan also asked for samples of his mail and, on more than one occasion, quietly replied with modest checks written to those in need. George W. Bush placed the police badge of a New York police officer who died on 9/11 in his suit pocket every day for the balance of his presidency as a “reminder of lives that ended, and a task that does not end.”
Far from doing the greatest good for the greatest number, Trump has proven to be constitutionally incapable of putting anything above himself, or of thinking in any meaningful way about those he serves, especially those in the greatest need. The forgotten man to whom he owes his 2016 election triumph and promised would be “forgotten no more” in his 2017 inaugural address, was dropped almost as soon thereafter. Trump lamented to a group of rabid supporters in Missouri that his proposed tax bill would “cost me a fortune.” But he boasted to a group of wealthy friends at Mar-a-Lago afterward, “I just made you a lot richer.”
Among other measures, the bill preserved loopholes for golf course owners such as Trump, which the Obama administration estimated would yield over $600 million over 10 years. The middle class got a paltry $2 to $40 extra in their paychecks bi-weekly — enough, as House Speaker Paul Ryan said of one of his constituents, to buy a $60 per year Costco membership, but hardly a game-changer for those who can’t see a better tomorrow for themselves or their children.
One could see it coming, as Trump portended his administration’s first inauspicious hours, using Day One not to send out a message that he was getting down to work for the American people but to crassly — and erroneously — contest the “record” crowd at his inauguration. Then, two days later, he stood in front of the CIA’s Memorial Wall honoring the 117 fallen CIA officers, not to laud their sacrifice as other presidents have done but to brag that “probably almost everybody in this room voted for me.” Then, less than two weeks later, at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, Trump asked the assembled clergy to pray not for those Americans in need or for the health and prosperity of our nation but for Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose stewardship of Trump’s reality game show, “The Apprentice,” Trump called a ratings “disaster.”
Since then, Trump’s Twitter feed, a disturbing reflection of his running consciousness, manifests a steady drumbeat of self-obsession. He’s often whining about the scrutiny and slights that are an inherent part of the job, while blaming his presidential predecessors or others if something goes wrong. So much for Harry Truman’s presidential dictum, “The buck stops here.” The closest Trump has come to being in touch with America’s common man or woman was a call he made in late March to congratulate multimillionaire Roseanne Barr on the smash debut of her resurrected 1990s hit sitcom, “Roseanne,” about a struggling middle-class family in which Barr plays an unapologetic Trump supporter.
Like most of Trump’s predecessors, Lyndon Johnson, no slouch when it came to ego, was humbled by the “awesome burden” of the office he held. “You must never forget that fellow out in Omaha or Indianapolis or Denver,” he reminded an aide as they sat in the Oval Office. “He has a wife going into the hospital for a cancer operation, a daughter he’s trying to put through school, a boy on his way to [the] Vietnam [War], car payment to meet, insurance premiums due, a mortgage hanging over his head, and a mother needing to go into a nursing home … All my troubles put together aren’t as big for a president as that little fellow’s troubles are for him. We have to remember that here in this house, no man who sits here can ever afford to think of himself.”
Not so for the first billionaire to hold the office, the 45th president, who can apparently afford to do just that. To borrow a word that he has conspicuously conscripted: Sad. Sad for Donald Trump, sad for the presidency, and even sadder for our country.
