Wish a President Well Who Doesn’t Wish You Well
Why?
Here are a dozen reasons.
Opinion
Columnist
·
Oct. 5, 2020
“Any mans death diminishes me,” wrote John Donne, “because I am involved in
Mankinde.” With that thought, let us all wish Donald Trump a full and speedy
recovery from his bout of Covid-19.
We wish him well because, even, or
especially, in our hyperpolitical age, some things must be beyond politics.
When everything is political, nothing is sacred — starting with human life.
It’s a point the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century understood well.
We wish him well because the sudden
death of any president is a traumatic national event that will inevitably
animate every crackpot in the country. If the term “grassy knoll” still means
something in America, just imagine the reaction in the QAnon world if Trump’s
condition were to abruptly deteriorate after his stay at Walter Reed.
We wish him well because of Mike Pence.
We wish him well
because, even as he tweets “Don’t be afraid of Covid,” he could still serve as
a living witness to the fact that if you stick a lot of maskless people close
together you are likely to spread the virus, as it has to more than a dozen people, and counting, in his circle.
Courage, says Aristotle, is the mean between rashness and cowardice. Trump may
still be rash, but his followers don’t need to be.
We wish him well because doing
otherwise would bring us down to his level — the victory he has always sought;
the victory that, among both his fervent loyalists and angriest critics, he has
largely gained. The goal of the Trump project is the diminishment of moral
expectations and the debasement of public norms. For his enemies to wish him
dead would be his ultimate vindication.
We wish him well because the country
requires a political referendum, not a literal post-mortem, on this presidency.
Trump’s illness is an incident of nature, but his brand of politics is a force
in the world of ideas. If he loses re-election (at least if he loses by a wide
margin), then right-wing populism loses also, in the U.S. and across the world.
If he wins, then those of us who are his opponents will have to take stock of
the ways in which we have hurt our own cause. That includes the way in which
our personal distaste for the man and our condescension, overt or implicit, to
his voters have made us even more distasteful to ordinary Americans than he is.
We wish him well because if, God
forbid, the president were to die this month, he would go down undefeated, a
martyr to the tens of millions of Americans who’ve treated him as a savior.
Trump’s death would guarantee a long life for Trumpism, with his children as
its principal beneficiaries.
We wish him well because Trump’s
opponents — Democrats and NeverTrumpers alike — need a clean political victory.
If Trump survives but is forced to endure a difficult recovery, it could put
the hideousness of last week’s debate behind him, mute the criticism of his
performance and soften his image in the eyes of wavering voters. The longer he
lingers, the better his chances may be, at least politically.
We wish him well
because if illness keeps him sidelined and he winds up losing the election, he
will surely blame the disease for the loss. This could well be untrue (see
above), but it won’t stop his supporters from believing it. Again, Trump the
man needs to live — and lose — because it’s the only way the Trump cult might
die.
We wish him well because it is too rich
for words to see his chronic apologists in the media suddenly become appalled
and dismayed by the bad manners of those who have gloated over Trump’s
diagnosis. Who are these latter-day Captain Renaults, “shocked, shocked” to discover the incivilities of
American discourse? And where were they, other than cheering from the sidelines
or murmuring evasions about the president’s “style,” when it was the president
insulting and defaming his critics?
We wish him well because we are better
than he is. We are better than the man who mocked Hunter
Biden for his substance-abuse issues. We are better than the man who called
NeverTrumpers “human scum.” We are better than the man who wants to put his
political opponents in jail. We are better than the man who publicly humiliates
his own advisers. We are better than the man who demeaned the gold-star parents of a fallen
soldier. We are better than the man who pantomimed the physical disabilities of
a reporter. We are better than the man who stiffs his
suppliers and swindles his “students.” We are better than the man who uses his
celebrity to grope. We are better than the man who took a bone-spur draft deferment so that he could live to denigrate the
courage of prisoners of war. We are better than the man who race-baited and
conspiracy-theorized his way into political relevance.
We wish him well because it’s the right
thing to do. It’s more than reason enough.