Judging Character

My late mother expressed a visceral dislike for trump from the moment he appeared on the political scene.

That surprised me because she rarely expressed opinions about politicians one way or the other. In truth, she never cared much about politics at all.

But there was something about trump that struck her as different. She felt strongly about him.

Mom was reclusive in her later years. She wrote fiction, maintained a blog, and largely kept to herself. She didn't socialize much.

Except on Facebook.

Facebook was almost tailor-made for her. It allowed her to stay connected with friends and family without having to see them in person. And that's where the trouble started.

She found herself in more than one heated argument over trump.

One day I asked her what it was about him that got her so worked up.

"He's a narcissist," she said.

"Aren't all politicians narcissists?" I replied.

"Maybe," she said. "We're all a bit narcissistic. But not like trump. He's a lying, destructive narcissist."

My mother instinctively recognized something that many political analysts, journalists, and voters either missed or chose to ignore. She saw a man with a bottomless need for attention and validation—someone who would say whatever was necessary to get it and who seemed incapable of caring about the damage left behind.

At the core of that kind of personality is an emotional black hole that eventually consumes everything around it. And as with a black hole, proximity is unsurvivable. As political strategist Rick Wilson famously titled his 2018 book, Everything Trump Touches Dies.

What strikes me now is how clearly my mother saw it from day one. I often find myself wondering how so many others failed to recognize what seemed so obvious to her.

Perhaps they saw it and decided it didn't matter. As long as trump appeared willing to give them what they wanted, character became a secondary consideration.

But that's the mistake.

Ultimately, character is not secondary. It is everything.

Which brings me to the Iran MOU.

Trump-supporting Jews around the world, and Israelis in particular, are suddenly confronting the same reality my mother recognized years ago.

Until recently, trump consistently polled as the most popular political figure in Israel, by far. Now, after the Iran MOU, many supporters feel betrayed because he failed to deliver what they believed he had promised.

People often support politicians the way children love a parent: completely and unquestioningly, until they stop getting what they want. Then affection instantly turns to anger.

It is a deeply immature way of engaging with politics, and not just poltics, most relationships as well.

If a politician promises people what they want to hear, many will overlook almost everything else. Trump understood that better than most. He built support by telling different audiences exactly what they wanted to hear.

The problem is that promises mean very little to someone without character. Commitments are tools. Principles are either non-existant or negotiable. Truth is whatever is useful in the moment.

What many Israelis may now be learning is what my mother understood from the beginning: politics ultimately comes down to character.

No politician gives people everything they want. Democracies do not work that way.

But character always matters because it tells you what remains when circumstances change and compromises become necessary. You may not always agree with a politician of character. You may not always get what you want from them. But at least you know where they stand and where their limits are.

My mother saw that trump lacked that foundation from the very beginning.

She wasn't a political analyst. She wasn't a journalist. She wasn't a political activist.

She was simply a good judge of character.

And as Heraclitus observed more than two thousand years ago, character is destiny.