The Unconvincing Mr. Trump.
We’re told to pay attention to what Donald Trump does, not what he says. That’s the formula for a failed presidency.
Words trip off Donald Trump’s tongue the way Jerry Ford used to trip coming down the stairs of Air Force One. We’d tune our picture-tube TV to Saturday Night Live and watch Chevy Chase mimic the pratfalls of the thirty-eighth president. Everybody had a good laugh. We liked Jerry Ford better for the glimpse of his humanity. We got on with our lives.
So why was it funny then when it’s frightening now, to find ourselves treating the Leader of the Free World as a joke?
Is it that the old physical comedy felt less threatening because it was so dumb? After all, no one got hurt in a Three Stooges Pie Fight.
Is it that our society has gotten meaner?
I think it’s that words are a bigger deal than most people understand. Even in this age of the emoji, words matter. Full disclosure: I’ve spent a career as a writer at an ad agency. Maybe it’s just my curse to have an ear tuned to language and its ability to persuade. Or in this case, not persuade.
There was a time when rhetoric sat at the top of the pantheon of cvilized arts. In the days when Cicero held forth at the Roman Forum, mastering…
