Trumping All Codes of Conduct for Presidential Candidates

Many businesses will go out of their way to have a signed document explicitly stating that if you, as an employee and representative of their company, are caught behaving in any way that is unbecoming of a sound moral character, and can be identified as a representative of said company, your employment can (and most likely will) be terminated.  If you are a cashier at a burger joint, a janitor at a hotel, or a teller at a bank, chances are you know what I’m referring to when I talk about this very specific part of a code of conduct agreement you sign upon employment.

I’ve know people who have been at the receiving end of this strict code of conduct policy, and while all of them readily griped about it, they all begrudgingly accepted it as a standard procedure of how employers taking no chances when it comes to associating with any potential negative publicity.  It is fortunate for us all, however, that we need not surrender to this sort of ethical dictation in our professional lives, for there is one job where such things are of no concern whatsoever; namely, being a presidential candidates.

Donald Trump has mocked people’s physical appearances, berated a handicapped man, asserted that a whole nationality is composed of rapists and murderers, and wants to potentially exclude an entire religious demographic from entering the country.  Imagine if their was footage of the lowly bank teller, or the Burger King cashier saying any of that, while wearing the name tag linking them to their respected places of employment?  I imagine that they would not be employed for too much longer.  Yet, the guy running for president, who–if elected–will be the public representative of you and I to the rest of the world, is judged by a lower set of ethical standards than the guy who takes your order at the drive-thru.  This should be an astounding realization, but it’s not.  Nobody really cares.  Even people who genuinely dislike Trump still treat him with a level of seriousness he has not earned.

Simply put, the man is an asshole, and people can better relate to assholes than straight-arrows.  They forget about the fact that nothing about Donald Trump is actually relatable to them personally.  You weren’t born rich.  You don’t get to walk away happily from one bankruptcy, after another, after another, after another, and still be called “financially savvy”.  You don’t get to insult people on a deeply personal level, and still be seen as anything other than a sour old crank.  You are, in every way imaginable, living in a different reality than Donald Trump.  And, no, by associating with his name–his brand–you will not be granted access to it, either

I’ve heard it said that the appeal stems from our natural disposition to be attracted to Alpha Males.  The problem is that, unlike Trump, Alpha Males don’t cry at every slight and retort that’s directed at them.  I don’t think that there’s a man in recent memory, who has taken the public stage, who exhibits a thinner skin than Donald Trump.  (Not to mention his fear of germs, and paranoia about people “being fair to him” when all he does is behave like a total jackass towards individuals who haven’t even provoked his ire.)

So am I saying that he should be disqualified from the presidency on account of being an incompetent, thin-skinned, pompous, insulting, crybaby, bloated simpleton, wrapped up in a narcissistic package of a special kind of clueless buffoonery?  Actually, no.  He’s a US citizen, who fits the minimum prerequisites to run for office, thus to exclude him from participating in the process would be a breach of his protected civil rights.  What I am saying is that the questions posed to him should address the separate standards he’s been able to enjoy, which someone in a less prestigious position  in society has not.  Or, put more eloquently:  “Why do you get off behaving like an entitled asshole?  And do you think that an entitled asshole is the sort of person we ought to have representing the United States to the world?”

Trump, being a weakling of man who has never come across a negative comment directed at him he could not hysterically bitch about long past its point of expiration, would probably respond predictably to such an aggressive question.  But hopeful the rest of American will break out of the spell, and ask itself how it came to be such a simple, simple man is being considered to ascend into the same league as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.  Despite what many liberals want you to believe, shame has a place in society, and this may very well be one of them.