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Contra Jonah II
On Dec. 27, Jonah Goldberg wrote a column at NR about President Donald Trump entitled Character is Destiny. I and many others responded to his piece when I wrote on Ricochet, Contra Jonah. My post generated 410 comments, more than any other post that I have written on Ricochet. I expected that Jonah would respond to his many critics. He chose a piece by Roger Kimball at American Greatness, Jonah Goldberg and Cardinal Newman, for his sample opponent. Jonah’s response piece is on NR, Obscuring the Issue of Trump’s Character. Below is a paragraph that occurs towards the end of Jonah’s piece.
Last, I should at least acknowledge that I have allowed Roger to move the goalposts. My argument was that Trump’s presidency will end poorly because character is destiny. Even if one were to credit Roger’s new, fairly Alinskyite definition of good character — the ends justify the means and therefore good character is defined by how well one achieves those ends — it wouldn’t nullify my point. Trump’s inability to hold onto cabinet secretaries of quality; his determination to shrink his political coalition; his refusal to do the minimum due diligence to understand and thereby explain his policy preferences; his incapacity to let insults, real or perceived, go unanswered; his relentless prevarication and insurmountable narcissism; his insistence on denigrating allies; his penchant for conspiracy theories and his unwavering pettiness: All of these things are reflections of his character, too. And they will have consequences for Trump, the GOP, the conservative movement, and the country. Roger can ignore or minimize these all he likes, but it will not persuade anyone who isn’t already a believer.
This summation paragraph gives us the heart of Jonah’s point of view, a list of the “crimes” that Jonah insists make Trump’s character unacceptable as President of the United States, and a final condemnation leaving no room for reevaluation.
- Trump’s inability to hold onto cabinet secretaries of quality
- Trump’s determination to shrink his political coalition
- Trump’s refusal to do the minimum due diligence to understand and thereby explain his policy preferences
- Trump’s incapacity to let insults, real or perceived, go unanswered
- Trump’s relentless prevarication and insurmountable narcissism
- Trump’s insistence on denigrating allies
- Trump’s penchant for conspiracy theories
- Trump’s unwavering pettiness
As Jonah says of Kimball:
Roger can ignore or minimize these all he likes, but it will not persuade anyone who isn’t already a believer.
First, I will attempt to address all of these one by one. Then, I hope I can shed some extra light on this whole debate.
(1) Trump’s inability to hold onto cabinet secretaries of quality
As I have mentioned before, it is fantastically unlikely that HRC would have put Nikki Haley at the UN Ambassador spot. Nor if HRC had put her there to allow her to directly challenge North Korea nor Iran nor demand that UN bias against Israel end. As it is fantastically unlikely that HRC would have put Mad Dog Mattis at Secretary of Defense. Nor if HRC put him there would she neither would have allowed Mattis to beat ISIS nor hit Syria nor reinforce the Baltics and Poland.
Trump didn’t run on this but that is what we got. I was thrilled by it. However, those who had been relentlessly attacking him didn’t for one minute lighten the drumbeat of their attack. We don’t know what motivated Trump in the first place because he didn’t consult us (luckily). He didn’t consult us when he fired these people either. This complaint is largely a garbled Republican Party foreign policy looking a gift horse in the mouth.
(2) Trump’s determination to shrink his political coalition
Trump was given by Gd a very thin political coalition that was just enough to win. Nobody in the Republican Party thought he could. The fantasy that by floating into the middle you can expand your coalition was disproven many times. Trump did poll higher with the black vote and Hispanic vote than others. The midterm loss had nothing to do with Trump. The upper echelon of the party had concentrated all of its effort on winning Senate seats, which it did. Unfortunately, it ignored the grassroots while doing this. The combination of no ground game and not confronting the growing threat of vote harvesting (the new Democratic machine ward healers) cost the Republicans the House. Trump can’t do everything. Too much of the rest of the party did nothing but complain about Trump. Jonah is doing exactly that here.
(3) Trump’s refusal to do the minimum due diligence to understand and thereby explain his policy preferences
This is an illusory problem that exists only for pundits like Jonah. Trump’s voters neither expected nor cared about wonkish policy statements. They knew viscerally that they had been dumped on by the elites and all they wanted was for someone to assure them that it would be different. Trump was very capable of sending this message. He has also been capable of delivering a good portion of that difference. This problem is not in Trump; this problem is in Jonah.
(4) Trump’s incapacity to let insults, real or perceived, go unanswered
The White House Press corps of 50 does not have a single registered Republican on it. Hollywood is so biased that conservatives have been blacklisted for years. Academia that used to have a small contingent of conservative professors of eminent reputation has been subject to a Stalin-like purge. If the conservatives are still there, they are afraid to speak. In this environment, Trump innovated an offense against the incredible relentlessly biased attack on him. He ignored them and then smacked them with a tweet whenever he felt he needed to. Just taking it and saying nothing would have allowed this coalition of media bias to perform the Goebbels “big lie” and go unchallenged. However crude his tweeting, it broke up the Pravda-on-the-Hudson gang’s whole act.
(5) Trump’s relentless prevarication and insurmountable narcissism
Trump’s voters aren’t used to high diplomatic demeanor nor sophisticated or sophistic discourse. They want it plain so they can feel the message too. That Trump understood this and was content to always convey on the level that his audience could understand wasn’t narcissism but the reverse, immense self-control. In fact, it is narcissism to believe that a major politician can deliver a speech only for the political, intellectual elite. Again the problem isn’t in Trump; the problem is in Jonah.
(6) Trump’s insistence on denigrating allies
My father had a saying, “With a friend like that you don’t need an enemy.” Some so-called allies are undercutting you at every opportunity. Trump learned the hard way in the business world that these people can wreck your deal. His instincts in this are not only not deplorable but they have an uncanny way of being spot on.
(7) Trump’s penchant for conspiracy theories
Jonah has confused many of Trump’s supporters for Trump. Obviously, Trump’s experience in the business world made him a rather hard-headed assessor of the guy across the table from him. I don’t think Trump spends much time worrying about conspiracy theories. As the present news media is possessed by a need to manufacture false motives and difficulties in his administration, again the problem doesn’t seem to be in Trump but in those who must find a way to stop him.
(8) Trump’s unwavering pettiness
If you look closely at this list I think you will agree with me that Jonah has demonstrated his own unwavering pettiness. Trump meanwhile has produced 3+ percent growth, 3+ percent real wage growth, an American credible presence in foreign policy around the world so much so that haters of American power have begged him not to withdraw from one of his commitments, the end of Obamacare, the end of the Paris Accords, the end of the Iran Deal, the nomination and confirmation of truly conservative justices for the courts. In fact, Trump seems to be unwavering in his concern for the most significant things on his plate. It is Jonah’s list that appears petty even trivial in comparison.
Now as for those who are “not already believers,” I think that such people (as I might actually be classified as one of them) reading my rebuttal will be convinced. Those that aren’t should check their own biases.
Having adequately rebutted Jonah’s major concerns, I would like now to discuss a subject that I’m quite sure has not been discussed. That subject is the difference between Morality and Ethics. I will present Immanuel Kant’s conception of this rather than the Aristotelian Virtue Ethics version which is so prevalent. I think it will shed some light on the present discussion which has been rendering more heat than light in its present form.
Kant presents two separate formulas for Morality and Ethics. Duties of Virtue are for Morality and Duties of Right are for Ethics. Duties of Virtue are strictly concerned with an individual’s internal self-governance. They are created by an imperative that is concerned with Ends. Humanity should never be treated as a means but always as an end in itself. This includes the humanity of one’s own person. Duties of Right are strictly concerned with the governance of behavior in relation to others external to oneself. They are created by an imperative that is concerned with Right. It is Right (only in this way and no other) to coerce a coercer in such a way as to maximize the Freedom of all. Although there is Private Right without the existence of a government this Private Right is considered only provisional. Someone else can easily trample your Right. Thus, the second form of Right is Public Right. Here the formation of a government is justified solely to ensure Private Right. If the government does this then Private Right is considered conclusive. (There are more fundamentals but this will do for the purposes of this discussion)
Again, Morality is concerned solely with internal self-governance and Ethics is concerned solely with external relations between actors in the world to the extent of constructing a government to ensure their Right. If you have followed this argument (complete acceptance of this argument would require you to become a Kantian. I don’t expect that.) then you can see its relevance. We might be very critical of Trump when we are considering his personal behavior and at the same time find his capacity to coerce coercers to maximize the Freedom of all quite good. Thus on the scale of Virtue, he is lacking but on the scale of Right, he is awesome.
Let’s take the issue of sexual behavior as it will come up repeatedly anyway. Let’s compare Trump’s behavior and Clinton’s behavior not in relation to Morality but in relation to Right. Trump as a private citizen procured what amounts to a sophisticated prostitute for a one night stand. Clinton as President of the United States, in the Oval Office, had sex with an intern under his command for the extended period of a relationship. The naive intern has finally admitted that Clinton took complete advantage of her and severely damaged her life. The sophisticated prostitute has profited immensely from the relationship (as was her profession’s goal). At this point, the prostitute may have been harmed by her ambulance chasing lawyer but not Trump. In any event, the importance to Right is that this misbehavior took place outside of Trump’s role in government. Clinton’s misbehavior took place specifically while he was performing his role in government with someone who was employed by the government who was under his control.
Clinton’s behavior suggests malfeasance in his ability to govern while Trump’s does not. In fact, Jack Kennedy’s behavior while in office which probably contributed to the suicide of Marilyn Monroe is far more problematic in terms of governance (Ethics, Right) than Trump’s with Stormy. Stormy may have found it strange to be paid to keep quiet about sex when she was used to being paid to have her sexual life presented in theaters across the nation but I don’t think this constitutes abuse. Clinton was highly abusive and there can be no argument about this. This does not excuse Trump for sins against Virtue. However, it is relevant to society’s response. The case against Clinton was serious. The case against Trump is absurd. Clinton’s abuse of another’s Right should be met with coercing a coercer in such a way as to maximize the Freedom of all. Trump’s abuse of his own Virtue can only be met by repentance and that would be between himself and Gd.
Perhaps this Kantian analysis will help some of us sort out their feeling about current issues. However, I suspect that some of us are so deeply invested in their position that they don’t want any sorting out. When they project their closed mindset outward they are convinced that “it will not persuade anyone who isn’t already a believer.” I don’t agree.
Published in General
I like it because there’s Kant and Aristotle.
Aug,
One guy who’s mind is in the game is worth a 1,000 who don’t have a clue.
Regards,
Jim
Which is not to say I’m following everything. I haven’t had time. Maybe I’ll give it another look in a moment while riding the East Rail Line.
Aug,
Take your time. This one gives you a lot to chew on.
Regards,
Jim
I usually just zoom in on the Groundwork for a Mph of Morals. Which texts are you drawing this from?
At any rate, assuming I follow, I think I agree with at least one key point. Namely, a guy who is scum is not for that reason a problem for political/governmental purposes.
That will certainly help. However, you may need to go to the Metaphysics of Morals itself and that will be a long read. It is very interesting. You will start out at acquisition in a state of nature. Then you will proceed through Private Right and contract law etc.. Then you will evaluate Public Right. Then you will move up to National Right (this is always misperceived as it only pertains to foreign policy) and finally, at the very end, you will get to Cosmopolitan Right. Along the way, there is lots of other stuff. The first few chapters will give you a basic feel for Right. Your reading of the Groundwork already gives you much of the Virtue side. You get a bonus for acquiring the Metaphysics of Morals as the full Doctrine of Virtue is laid out in the latter part of the book.
If you’ve got some questions I’ll answer them here or private email me.
Regards,
Jim
You ever heard of Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist? His office is right next to mine. I imagine you two getting along famously.
Aug,
I thought you had the guy who said, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” It is more complicated than just Virtue because Right is the only concept that can sort things out. For instance, if you are Karl Marx and you destroy the Private Right of everyone on earth to create your perfect superstate, you are not supported by Cosmopolitan Right. Public Right must affirm Private Right. National Right must affirm Public Right. Cosmopolitan Right must affirm National Right. The end result would make Karl Marx’s superstate a giant Cosmopolitan Wrong! (I guess I didn’t mention that the opposite of Right is Wrong.)
Regards,
Jim
Aug,
Why don’t you give him a gift membership on Ricochet? I just did that for a Rabbi who has written many books. I thought he’d be a natural. He hasn’t got a chance to use it yet but I’m hoping. I just checked out Dr. Palmquist online. An amazing resume.
Regards,
Jim
If I understand this correctly, there’s a difference between political morality and personal morality that people like Jonah conflate badly.
For example, Romney is personally moral but , in my opinion, politically immoral – which is misrepresenting yourself, posturing, disloyalty, letting constituents down, etc.
Where Trump may be personally immoral, he seems to be a veritable saint politically.
Judging a candidate, we often use personal morality as a leading indicator, but it’s gone too far. This is especially true with conservatives and Republicans. Just because someone is personally moral doesn’t mean he won’t sell you down the river politically. This is a lesson I’ve learned repeatedly, and it becomes even more clear in retrospect ( see McCain, Romney Boehner, Ryan)
As we have seen so far with Trump, this flawed man is turning out to be quite a stand-up guy in politics.
This standard of selecting and electing representatives and leaders is especially relied on by conservatives, many of whom want a kind of morality theater in the White House as proxy for their own vain satisfaction. Politics becomes a kind of virtue-signal for them personally.
It’s the conservative Achilles heel for the right as well. If the press can uncover dirt on the candidate and drop it in a timely fashion he loses all his support and the Democrat – perhaps a rather immoral man himself, wins.
The reason the attacks on Trumps morality fails is solely because that issue has been removed from voters table in his case. The left keeps trying to use the old playbook trying to shame conservatives about Trump and they can’t believe it’s not working. Conservatives like Jonah are appalled and flail away using all their skills trying to bring us back to the old standards.
It doesn’t help us when Romney is heroically a family man when his political vanity keeps him from fighting for his constituents and he loses. We’re stuck with Obama messing with our lives and he’s skiing in Utah being ever-so-faithful to his wife.
Great overall rebuttal. One nit: in (5), you appear to conflate narcissism with elitism. They are related in that Trump appears to be narcissist in his dealings with elitists around him, but his self-regard in those cases is entirely justified. In relating to the rest of us, he doesn’t come across as a narcissist. At least, not to me.
Morning Jim,
Following Franco’s thought that private and public morality are different, the list of our presidents whose private morality was marked with extra marital affairs covers most of the last century, with 3 or 4 having affairs while in office, and JFK having one of his paramours a teenager. That so many of our presidents were philanderers makes me doubt the premise “that character is destiny”, or that the president’s character is a large force in shaping the public character of the nation. One might suggest that the personas of FDR and Churchill were beneficial in WWll, however maybe those personas were less valuable after the war, as seen with Churchill’s ouster as PM. If the character of our presidents is so important for their and the nation’s success then we should be able to demonstrate this or maybe even measure this.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but is anyone here saying character doesn’t matter?
We’re just saying that other things, like policy, matter, and don’t always line up with character. And sometimes there’s a choice to be made between actions/inactions leading to either a bad or a worse combination of character and policy.
Am I reading us all wrong here?
Morning Saint Aug,
I am very close to saying that I can’t sort out how private morality vs public morality vs statesmanship effect the success of a presidency or the shapes the character of the nation. If this were clear than we should be able to see clear differences between those presidencies of Carter or Bush whose private and public character were better than say Clinton. I think one could argue that the presidencies of Carter and Bush were failures and that Clinton’s presidency was not a failure. So how might we measure the effect a presidency has on the nation, right track wrong track poll, crime, marriage rates, income, is the government dealing with the most difficult future problems, is civic virtue increasing. And since I can’t sort out the relationship between presidential character and presidential success, I am saying it may matter but it is not a useful way to analyze candidates, or president, or their success.
Good morning on your end! I don’t want to disagree, not only because it’s not morning in my time zone but also because I rather want to agree.
Still, if I sat down with a nice cup of tea and a pen and started listing reasons I’d like to think GW’s presidency was great and Bill Clinton’s was a flop, I could probably write a few things down.
One thing Trump defenders (or maybe just Klavan) over at Daily Wire are good at is pointing out how significant were the problems with Clinton’s presidency stemming from his character problems.
If the judge of character rests on cheating on one’s wife, then I’d like to hear how Ike was really of good character. He had an affair and yet people like Jonah still like Ike, right?
Great men, who have done great things, have often had more than one woman at a time. It goes together. I am not excusing it. The idea, though, that cheating on one’s wife means you are destined to fail because “character is destiny” is simply as untrue a statement as it is possible to make.
Imagine what we might have done in the last two years if people like Jonah had rallied to the President the way they all did to Bush. I remember those days, and the right supported Bush big time, even when he was not all that conservative. The very people bashing Trump supporters for being tribal are as tribal as one can be.
No, I am definitely not saying that! Indeed, I think public morality and private morality SHOULD be the same but I am “transactional” and have been trying to work it all out in my head for a while. On that, Jonah et al continue to be thought-provoking to me. I try to consider where humility plays in it all as well.
They should be the same, but sometimes they don’t line up, right? Is there a difference? I’m not following it.
This in kinda sorta where I’m at as far as the thought process going on but I can’t say I’ve reached the point I believe character isn’t useful to analyze politicians.
Mornng again Saint Aug,
Yes, the Bush and Clinton presidencies are not easy to clearly contrast, in that neither are clear successes or failures. Even in presidencies which are generally regarded as successful, one sees failure, of Reagan ( a favorite to many of us) Steven Hayward rightly observes, “Reagan was more successful in rolling back the Soviet empire than he was in rolling back the domestic government empire chiefly because the latter is a harder problem.” However even though both the Bush and Clinton presidencies had mixed successes and failures, the difference in character between the two could harldly be more clear. If we note that even in failure Bush was displaying a character that we all rather admire and that Clinton even when he was succeeding was not acting out of conviction or character but for political gain, then the contrast in their characters with little noticeable difference in the success of their presidencies or in shaping the national character should make us question analysis of presidencies based on character. Concerning the Bush presidency, when leaders think that complex issues are not so complex and that with the right leadership they can be managed they are acting in a foolish manner ie. Iraq, and if a leader is confused about what the real hazards to his country are, then he can not be considered successful, our debt and his contribution to it are much more of a hazard to our future than Islamic terrorism.
It is at all times necessary to compare Trump with the alternative HRC. Trumps Presidency may be taking on some water but if HRC had been elected we would have all drowned by now. It’s high time the Goldbergs of the world recognized reality.
I believe Bryan is getting to the gut of this. People judge DJT for a lack of morality and a coarseness of behavior. Yet, as the OP states, who has he harmed? His children seem to love and support him, even more so than Reagan’s kids. I have no idea how Melania has personalized her husband’s sexual “transgressions” but she certainly is a confidant, capable, and intelligent woman who doesn’t need any help from anyone in this forum, nor even the great Jonah himself to undergird her self esteem. As for me, personally, I can’t think of any other politician, for whom I have voted in my entire life, that has actually held true in office to their campaign promises more than Trump. People can complain all they want about his use of language or his past life experiences that they deem immoral (or perhaps they are jealous), but those dalliances all occurred previous to his Presidency and have no effect on the 20 hour workday that he seems to produce regularly. Nancy Pelosi, our very moral Catholic Speaker, dismissed the newly seated Congress yesterday after having worked a mere four hours. I didn’t vote for Trump so that he might guide my soul to eternity. Just run the damn country man.
With respect, this seems silly.
We all know what good character is even if we never read Aristotle or Kant. We don’t have to weave ourselves into pretzels to pretend that Bill Clinton is bad and Donald Trump is good. Neither one is a good man. I wouldn’t want to be their neighbor, their friend, or trust them to walk my dog.
You can dislike Clinton’s policies and like Trump’s(some of them anyway) without pretending there is a good character bar that either of them can clear.
Agreed. However, I think the point is that we can’t have it both ways and that our pre-Trump assessments rather clearly indicate that personal morality does not equal destiny in terms of public success. Many of the founding fathers owned slaves. Many powerful men have had side pieces (aka mistresses), including Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Ike, etc. All politicians have massive egos bordering on narcissism. Petty? Mudslinging isn’t new to Trump by a long shot.
People like Washington or Lincoln are rare exceptions in terms of personal character coinciding with public character and public success. Now that we have Trump, we can’t suddenly view infidelity and narcissism as fatal flaws – these have been the condition of high level politicians forever. Yet we rightly regard many personally flawed individuals as successful and even good public servants.
On the other hand, people will tend to disagree. I’ve known coarse men (like Trump) who are also good men. I’ve known conscientious men who can be terrible people. Compassionate and bigoted; inclusive and selfish; friendly and loose with truth; honest but lazy. No one measures up – not even most of the “great men” of history. Not even our mentors or family. Not even me. I’ve come to view character differently than I did back in the 90’s. People are complicated mixed bags.
Strange how many people have praised this post as a good rebuttal to Jonah. In my opinion the eight points basically missed Jonah’s point they were trying to rebut.
One of my favorite quotes by Mozart in Amadeus: “Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.”
Goldberg has repeatedly pointed out that HRC is terrible.
I’m pretty sure he’s never denied that she is worse. But maybe he doesn’t point it out often enough.