Let's face it: Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is pretty boring, in no small part because of the Democratic candidate's stolid determination not to make news.
With Donald Trump, on the other hand, there's so much to talk about! We get theatrics, a steady diet of inflammatory statements, fisticuffs, and direct threats aimed at the reporters. Before he was saddled with a teleprompter, Trump's extemporaneous promises and polemics were mesmerizing and eminently quotable. He said things on a regular basis that would sink another candidate, and his supporters did not bat an eye. Trump's candidacy was, and still can be, such an amazing spectacle that observers sometimes view it as performance art, a cinematic tour de force, or a temper tantrum. The news coverage of Trump has frequently reflected that.
But why are we treating a 70-year-old real estate tycoon and reality TV virtuoso like a petulant 5-year-old child, or a sad clown? Donald Trump is not a lightweight. He has built buildings. He runs a very complicated business empire, and has lots of experience navigating the legal system and negotiating the most favorable terms possible for his various companies. He has ambition, a three-story penthouse, and a lucrative brand built on his name. Former GOP rival Rick Perry is dancing on a reality TV show; Donald Trump fired people on his own show.
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Like him or not, Trump played by the rules of the Republican Party and beat more than a dozen qualified candidates with lots of money behind them. In interviews, Trump has a tendency to go to his safe places — his polls, his wealth, and his winning — jumping from talking about how "the cyber is so big" for the Islamic State to a "big" CNN poll showing "that Trump is winning" a few sentences later, or answering Matt Lauer's patronizing questions about his temperament with a recap of his primary victory over "16 very talented people that I had to go through" and his "record" number of votes. But that's not all on Trump.
Clinton gets questions about policy — real questions, presidential questions. Trump gets asked about David Duke — as if he can pick who supports him — or how high his proposed border wall with Mexico will be, or this softball from Sean Hannity: "[Are] Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama gambling with the lives of these American people by taking [refugees] in, yes or no?"
As President Obama said Tuesday, "You don't grade the presidency on a curve. This is serious business."
But we do grade Trump on a curve. And "much of that curve is just the simple reflection of the embarrassingly low moral and political expectations on Trump," as my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty points out. Donald Trump is a boldface victim of what George W. Bush famously called "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
The news media shares much of the blame for this — how do you treat such an unusual candidate with such a broad and complicated wealth of experience? — but so does the broader electorate. If voters expect Trump to be a less intelligent and poorly prepared candidate, Trump will meet them at that level. "Morning Joe" Scarborough thinks voters will eventually come to agree with the "elites" about Trump's qualifications:
But if the media and political elite wanted to disqualify Trump — which, of course, is not the news media's job — the time to do that was during the GOP primary. Now he's the Republican presidential nominee, almost tied in the polls with Hillary Clinton. We owe it to Trump, and we owe it to ourselves, to treat him as a serious presidential candidate, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails.
Donald Trump is smart — he graduated from Wharton! — and it's important that we collectively allow him to let his formal and informal education shine. This is not a game. The "elites," by definition, are not a majority, and American representative democracy dictates that Trump has a good shot at winning enough electoral votes to be the next president.
Trump may be temperamentally unfit to be president, or more reliant on unelected advisers than any modern president (or maybe any president, ever), but we won't know that if we don't allow Trump to show us his presidential potential before the election. After the election, Trump's qualifications are academic. Now is the time to treat Trump with the dignity and respect that his position warrants, because in this job interview, we owe it to Trump, and to America, to allow Trump to try out for the awesome appointment he's seeking.
