Trump continues to show a lack of style, basic manners and common decency

In the heated 2008 presidential election, a supporter of the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain, told him that she couldn’t trust Barack Obama. The woman called Obama “an Arab” at the height of a conspiracy movement that claimed the Democrat was not a natural-born American citizen and therefore ineligible for the presidency.

“No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about,” McCain said to applause.

That’s called grace. It’s something many Republicans once had.

Before McCain, there was President George H.W. Bush. In 1993, he left a handwritten note in the Resolute Desk in the White House for his successor, Bill Clinton.

“When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago,” Bush’s note said. “I know you will feel that, too.”

“I’m not a very good one to give advice,” the note continued, capturing Bush’s genuine strain of humility. “Don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course,” he wrote, and ended by saying, “Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.”

Contrast such basic good manners and decency with Donald J. Trump’s reaction to the release of Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and others unjustly imprisoned by Vladimir Putin.

“Are we also paying them cash? Are they giving us cash (Please withdraw that question, because I’m sure the answer is NO)?” he said. “Just curious because we never make good deals, at anything, but especially hostage swaps. Our ‘negotiators’ are always an embarrassment to us!” he added in his social media post.

No congratulations. No best wishes.

Graceless? Trump is the embodiment of gracelessness.

Of course, his absurd attack on Kamala Harris about whether she was Black or Indian was another recent example. His racist boorishness, apparently aimed at eroding her support in Black communities while stoking white resentments at the gains minorities have made, may have played well with a few supporters.

But for many folks, it confirmed the same sort of oafishness he demonstrated with his birtherism claims about Obama.

Need other examples of his callous buffoonery? Recall his mockery of a disabled journalist, New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, in late 2015. Of course, there was his incessant nicknaming of opponents, which continues today.

His incitement of a mob to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was perhaps the most dangerous – and deadly – case of his asinine behavior. Recall that the mob called for the assassination by hanging of Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, whom he had pressured to invalidate the election results.    

Then, consider Trump’s absence at the January 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden. The move broke with over 150 years of tradition, showed scant respect for the office and made a mockery of the peaceful transition of power.

And give some thought to the opposite, the reactions of Biden and Harris to the attempted assassination of Trump. Harris labeled it “heinous, horrible and cowardly.”

For his part, Biden called Trump personally after the shooting. “I told him how concerned I was and wanted to make sure I knew how he was actually doing,” Biden told NBC’s Lester Holt. “He sounded good. He said he was fine, and he thanked me for calling…. I told him he was literally in the prayers of Jill and me, and his whole family was weathering this.”

Would Trump have done the same were the situation reversed? Hard to imagine that from a man who doesn’t appear to know the meaning of even basic manners, much less the graciousness that once was a hallmark of many of his party’s leaders in years past.

Will we again get back to such common decency? It seems likely that the only way that will happen is if Trump and his party are soundly trounced in the upcoming election, the numerous prosecutions of him move forward and the toxin that is Trumpism is purged from the GOP.

All that, of course, is a tall order. But, for anyone with a sense of basic manners, it would seem to be within reach.