Any one of these characteristics would be
disqualifying; together, they make Mr. Trump a peril. We recognize that
this is not the usual moment to make such a statement. In an ordinary
election year, we would acknowledge the Republican nominee, move on to
the Democratic convention and spend the following months, like other
voters, evaluating the candidates’ performance in debates, on the stump
and in position papers. This year we will follow the campaign as always,
offering honest views on all the candidates. But we cannot salute the
Republican nominee or pretend that we might endorse him this fall. A
Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world.
Why
are we so sure? Start with experience. It has been 64 years since a
major party nominated anyone for president who did not have electoral
experience. That experiment turned out pretty well — but Mr. Trump, to
put it mildly, is no Dwight David Eisenhower. Leading the Allied
campaign to liberate Europe from the Nazis required strategic and
political skills of the first order, and Eisenhower — though he liked to
emphasize his common touch as he faced the intellectual Democrat Adlai
Stevenson — was shrewd, diligent, humble and thoughtful.
In contrast, there is nothing on Mr. Trump’s
résumé to suggest he could function successfully in Washington. He was
staked in the family business by a well-to-do father and has pursued a
career marked by some real estate successes, some failures and repeated episodes of saving his own hide while harming people who trusted him. Given his continuing refusal to release his tax returns,
breaking with a long bipartisan tradition, it is only reasonable to
assume there are aspects of his record even more discreditable than what
we know.
The lack of experience might be overcome if Mr. Trump saw it as a handicap worth overcoming. But he displays no curiosity, reads no books
and appears to believe he needs no advice. In fact, what makes
Mr. Trump so unusual is his combination of extreme neediness and
unbridled arrogance. He is desperate for affirmation but contemptuous of
other views. He also is contemptuous of fact. Throughout the campaign,
he has unspooled one lie after another — that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated after 9/11, that his tax-cut plan would not worsen the deficit, that he opposed the Iraq War
before it started — and when confronted with contrary evidence, he
simply repeats the lie. It is impossible to know whether he convinces
himself of his own untruths or knows that he is wrong and does not care.
It is also difficult to know which trait would be more frightening in a
commander in chief.
Given his ignorance,
it is perhaps not surprising that Mr. Trump offers no coherence when it
comes to policy. In years past, he supported immigration reform, gun control and legal abortion; as candidate, he became a hard-line opponent of all three. Even in the course of the campaign, he has flip-flopped on issues such as whether Muslims should be banned from entering the United States and whether women who have abortions should be punished . Worse than the flip-flops is the absence of any substance in his agenda. Existing trade deals are “stupid,” but Mr. Trump does not say how they could be improved. The Islamic State must be destroyed, but the candidate offers no strategy for doing so. Eleven million undocumented immigrants must be deported, but Mr. Trump does not tell us how he would accomplish this legally or practically. (Continues)
