Whether you admire President Obama or abhor him, his Tuesday night farewell address was classy. Not just for what he said but for what he must have wanted to say but didn’t. Oh how I wish I could write the same of Donald Trump.
But I can’t. Which is why, two nights earlier, I couldn’t sleep. Not because acclaimed actress Meryl Streep had stomped on Trump at the Golden Globes. I share her disdain for The Donald, although it does bug me that people popular in the world of entertainment use their pulpit to pontificate on the world of politics.
What kept me awake was the probability that because our petulant president-elect is so predictable, he would respond in the same petty, polarizing way he always does when someone pushes his buttons. Maybe thatap why I can’t take my eyes off the guy. Not because he’s so entertaining, but because he’s so embarrassing … and doesn’t seem to care.
So several times that night, I slid out of bed and lit up my iPad, searching for Trump’s anti-Streep tweets. But they never came. All I could find was a report that Trump told an interviewer he was “not surprised” that he had been attacked by “liberal movie people.” And that he denied again that the spastic gyrations he exhibited during his presidential campaign, which Streep slammed, were meant to mock a reporter he didn’t like who has a congenital joint disease.
I thought, Wow, instead of going for the throat, Trump exercises some restraint. Maybe, finally, he honors his own pledge about being “president of all Americans.” Our president-elect, finally, deports himself with dignity.
But it wasn’t meant to be. Before sunrise, like an arsonist who can’t stay away from the flames, Trump let loose on Twitter.
“One of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood” is how he started in on 19-time Oscar nominee Streep. Then the flames grew: “Hillary flunky who lost big.” (Staggeringly, Trump still claims an “historic landslide,” expediently overlooking the annoying reality that almost three-million more Americans voted for Clinton than for him, and that his electoral vote total was below the average of all winners in the last ten elections.)
Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway also fed the fire. She told FoxNews that Streep was “inciting people’s worst instincts.” If so, Streep learned from a master: Donald Trump. And if Conway speaks for him, her next denunciation was a little scary: “The election is over. She lost.”
Does this mean we shouldn’t criticize Donald Trump? Heaven knows, Trump and his fellow travelers spent eight endless years criticizing, and berating, and obstructing Barack Obama.
Trump likes to trash-talk. He did it during the campaign with “Lyin’ Ted” and “Little Marco” and “Low Energy Jeb.” He’s still doing it now, most recently referring to the Democrat leader of the United States Senate as “head clown.” This is Trump’s idea of presidential?
Meryl Streep’s an actress; what Trump does to her doesn’t affect the rest of us. But how is Trump’s trash-talk going to go down when he wants at least the cooperation if not the consent of Congressional Democrats? How’s it going to work when he trash-talks the leader of China, or Germany? It might make him feel better, but does he really believe that calling names and discouraging dissent can move this nation forward?
Most of what Donald Trump proposes as president runs against my grain, but the issue isn’t what Trump does. Itap how Trump acts. I’ve covered some presidents I liked and some I didn’t. But no matter where they took the country, they acted (with the exception of Bill Clinton) with dignity. Personal dignity. Presidential dignity.
So far, Trump doesn’t. And if a year-and-a-half of exposure so far is any guide, he won’t. No class. So sad.
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen is an author, public speaker, and former foreign correspondent for ABC News.
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