Trump and our damaged public character

Institutions thrive on adherence to unwritten rules. They depend on people speaking and acting with fairness, respect for others, accountability, transparency, and honesty in a host of ways that cannot be codified. This makes institutions extremely vulnerable, as Gary Dorrien points out in his article on tyranny (“Saving democracy”), for they do not automatically defend themselves when norms are under attack, especially when those attacks come from those inside the institution itself.

An ongoing threat to our democratic institutions is the behavior of the current president, who regularly displays his contempt for the moral norms by which democracies flourish. According to these crucial but largely unwritten rules, a president tries to avoid even the appearance of financial impropriety; he doesn’t use his office to enrich himself and his family. The norms of governance say that a president upholds impartial legal processes; he doesn’t fire the FBI director amid inquiries about his own administration’s conduct, even though he technically has the right to do so. A president doesn’t question the legitimacy of judicial rulings, however much he may disagree with a particular one. A president chooses language that dignifies rather than degrades the office that he holds. These norms are nowhere precisely specified—we recognize them most clearly when they are violated.

“Trump is the spendthrift of our public character,” observes columnist Michael Gerson. He is “squandering an inheritance he does not understand or value.”