Do we like him or loathe him?
Does their style resonate with us?
Lincoln had a better sense of humor than did Stephen Douglas. Nixon’s “five o’clock shadow” was visible in his televised debates opposite the movie-star-handsome JFK. . . Even if we like a president’s policies, we may still dislike his demeanor, his personality, his rhetoric. Trump is mean. Trump is nasty. Trump is disrespectful. Trump is a boor. Trump’s hair is orange! Trump’s character is far from what is normally considered “presidential.” . . . All of that is true. And noticeable. And off-putting, for millions of Americans.
But fifteen or fifty years from now, will Americans care whether Trump was nasty or nice? Or will his presidency be judged based on more objective measurements: how well the economy did, how many unemployed people searched but couldn’t find jobs, how many Americans died in foreign wars, how many people lived on the streets, how many didn’t get the medical care they needed, how well our educational system truly educated America’s children and young adults?
The ugly events of Jan. 6 are unlikely to make much of a lasting difference, even if the American people were all to agree on what that day meant. And we don’t agree on its meaning or significance or on Trump’s level of culpability for what transpired that day. But whatever it really was and whatever it truly meant, no one wants to see that scenario repeated.