The current denizen of the White House is the most exceptional President in our country’s history. To be clear, I am using the primary definition of the word (unusual), not the secondary definition (unusually good). http://www.dictionary.com/browse/exceptional President Trump is uniquely devoid of political experience. He is unconcerned with being consistent, which might not be the worst thing. See Ralph Waldo Emerson, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” See also, Oscar Wilde, who said that “consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” President Trump was the star of a reality TV show, a presidential first. (Please let it be a last.)
President Trump is certainly the first president to play a feature role in a professional wrestling event. Here is a clip of Donald Trump beating and then shaving Vince McMahon. http://www.wwe.com/videos/playlists/donald-trump-greatest-wwe-moments [1] And, of course, President Trump makes extensive use of Twitter. Given that the 272-word Gettysburg Address is one of the greatest speeches in American history, I believe Abraham Lincoln would have used Twitter extremely effectively.[2]
I could likely go on all day and half of the night. Instead, I will briefly explain that three recent events that we consider exceptional are not.
First event[3] is that President Trump appears unusually thin-skinned, especially for one so prolific at insulting others.[4] “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it” comes to mind. But he is hardly our first President who prickled when insulted. In Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution, author Charles Rappleye writes that the first President “was particularly susceptible to the barbs directed his way.” According to Rappleye, “political attacks pierced straight to that dark core of [Washington’s] spirit which gave an air of gravitas to everything he did.”
This description unintentionally highlights a sharp contrast between our first and our current president. The former had gravitas from leading the army during the brutal War of Independence, which included risking the hangman’s noose for treason. Among the greatest challenges faced by Donald Trump was getting by on a $450,000 per month allowance as a condition for renewing his loans in the early 1990s. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/26/business/quick-who-d-have-trouble-living-on-450000-a-month.html President Trump’s gravitas appears more fabricated than earned.[5]
The second event is that Washington and Trump indisputably have one thing in common: each was depicted or described as headless by a political “commentator.” Kathy Griffin recently and infamously held up a fake decapitated head of Donald Trump. If you want to see it, here is the link. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40108959 Less well known is a broadside by Philip Freneau, which was written during the French Revolution and described the death of Washington and Supreme Court Justice James Wilson by guillotine. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-15-02-0125 [6] Even though Freneau worked as a translating clerk for the Department of State, he did not lose his job. His patron, Thomas Jefferson, at the time Washington’s Secretary of State, protected him.[7]
The third event is that there is broad consensus that the Russian government meddled in our most recent presidential election. The efficacy of that meddling remains unknown and may never be known – there is no control group – but there is little doubt that the Russians wanted to assist Donald Trump.
Intervention by a foreign government on behalf of a presidential candidate happened at least one other time in our country. Revolutionary France favored Republican Thomas Jefferson, who has ardently pro-France[8] to the pro-English Federalist John Adams. Despite considerable efforts, France was unable to help Jefferson win, though he did become his staunch rival’s Vice President. Although their opinions of each other softened through the years, at the time Adams and Jefferson were as friendly to one another as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are now. Imagine if she were his Vice-president.
If our President is exceptional, so is our country. Below are a few examples. I’m sure there are many more.
Countries that have not officially adopted the metric system: Liberia, Myanmar, United States.
Countries that measure temperature according to the Fahrenheit scale: Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Palau, United States.
Countries that use the “MM/DD/YYYY” date format: Belize, Micronesia, United States.
Countries that had not adopted the Paris Accords: Nicaragua, Syria, United States.
Countries whose paper currency is all the same size and without distinguishing tactile features: United States.[9]
American Exceptionalism: not what you expecting.[10]
[1] A tribute to President Trump’s imagination is his embrace of the doctored WWE video, which shows him body slamming CNN. I found it hilarious, if not particularly presidential. http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/02/video-trump-body-slams-cnn-in-wwe-tweet/
[2] You can follow notesfromnokomis on Twitter @notefromnokomis. I just noticed that when I set it up in May 2015, I forgot an “s”. Rats. Now that I’m up to four followers, I should start tweeting more than once every 2.2 years.
[3] I would have preferred to use numbers, but doing that caused all sorts of unwanted formatting issues in Word Press.
[4] Rabbit holes everywhere. “Prolific” is used with various prepositions: 48% “in”, 10% “of”, 8% “with”, 6% “for”, 5% “at”, 4% “on”, 3% “during”, 2% “as”, and 1% each “from”, “throughout”, “since”, “over”, “inside”, “across”, “around”, “among” and “after”. The numbers do not add up to 100%. Don’t sue me, sue the source: https://lingohelp.me/preposition-after-adjective/prolific-in-of-with-for-at/.
[5] To be fair, Washington was not without affectations. For instance, he wore his army uniform to meetings of the Continental Congress prior to being named commander of the army to remind people of his military experience.
[6] I searched online, futilely, for a copy of the entire The Funeral Dirge of George Washington and James Wilson, King and Judge.
[7] Jefferson’s relationship with Freneau is rather well known. He gave Freneau a job as a translator, though Freneau’s French was less fluent than Jefferson’s, to provide an income so that Freneau could publish the rabidly anti-Federalist National Gazette. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-20-02-0374-0001
[8] Jefferson’s love for France led to the introduction of that most American of foods: the French fry. http://theplate.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/08/are-french-fries-truly-french/ For that, I will always be most grateful.
[9] I’m not suggesting that we should adopt the metric system or the Paris Accords. I’m merely pointing out that by not doing so, we are unusual.
[10] According to Wikipedia, “American exceptionalism is one of three related ideas. The first is that the history of the United States is inherently different from that of other nations.[2] In this view, American exceptionalism stems from the American Revolution, becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called “the first new nation”[3] and developing the uniquely American ideology of “Americanism“, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy, and laissez-faire economics. This ideology itself is often referred to as “American exceptionalism.”[4] Second is the idea that the U.S. has a unique mission to transform the world. Abraham Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg address (1863), that Americans have a duty to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Third is the sense that the United States’ history and mission gives it a superiority over other nations.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism