Donald Trump brings a warehouseful of faults with him, and one that many people find particularly distasteful is his habit of lying. When accused of sexual misconduct by a range of women, he says they’re making it up. He tells the British media that Theresa May didn’t take his advice about how to do a successful Brexit, and that his very good friend Boris Johnson would make a really good prime minister. Then next day he declares that Theresa May is doing an excellent job, couldn’t be better, top woman, blah blah blah. If you contradict yourself, you’re either very confused or a liar. I know which my money is on.
Some people would contend that Trump, unlike most politicians, does what he says he’ll do. But in fact he doesn’t. Has he “locked up” Hillary Clinton? Has he made the Mexican government pay for his famous wall? Uh-uh.
But be careful: Trump isn’t a total original. Some things he does, no other American president has done: constant tweeting, name-calling of political rivals (‘Lyin’ Ted Cruz’, ‘Crooked Hillary Clinton’), suggesting the solution to school shootings is more guns in schools. But some of his less wholesome habits are not unique.
His sexual activities – or boasts about same – aren’t unique among American presidents. Dwight Eisenhower had an affair with his secretary and driver Kay Summersby; Warren G Harding had a steamy romance with the wife of his good friend and another with Nan Britton, a campaign worker thirty years his junior; Woodrow Wilson had a jolly time with one Kay Peck. And the list goes on – JFK, LBJ, George H Bush, Bill Clinton, even George Washington. Trump is just the latest in a long line of presidents who couldn’t keep their pants on.
“But his lies!” you say. “His ‘alternative facts’. His constant denial of reality and his brazen lack of concern when his lies are shown up.”
Yes, that’s true. There’s an arrogance about Trump’s lies which make you want to hit him with a shovel, should one be handy. But they shouldn’t make you forget. Lying – it’s what most politicians do.
Don’t you remember the joke about knowing that George Bush was lying because you could see his lips move? And how Bill Clinton turned to the cameras and told the American people “I did not have sexual relations with that young woman [Monica Lewinski)”? Or the wall of lies that hid FDR’s ill-health for much of his time in the White House? On this side of the Atlantic we had Thatcher telling us that the 1981 hunger strikes were “the final sting of a dying wasp.” And you’ll remember John Major’s impassioned “It would turn my stomach” to meet with the IRA, even as his minions were busily doing just that.
I could go on and so could you. So maybe we should just accept that in some respects, Trump is the rule rather than the exception. Yes, his misogyny and his lies and his racism make us want to weep. But it’s the strutting, preening way that he does them that really is revolting. He is to politics what Christiano Ronaldo is to football : very effective at what he does, but you still find yourself praying that God would send a thunderbolt and give us all a break.
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