The character that matters

And this brings me to another thing that has struck me about much anti-Trump rhetoric: its astringent but unidirectional moralism. By “unidirectional” I mean directed exclusively at Donald Trump when there are many other suitable objects of moral obloquy parading about. Just yesterday, Bill Kristol, primus inter pares of the NeverTrump fraternity, provided a good example of the sort of moralism I have in mind. “Trump,” Kristol wrote on Twitter, “is in fact losing to the left and destroying a decent and elevated conservatism as he does so.”

What is this “decent and elevated conservatism” of which Kristol speaks? It is, of course, the conservatism that he and his friends represent—the conservatism Michael Anton anatomized in his remarkable essay, a conservatism, alas, that may have the right opinion about morality but is too feckless actually to choose it.

The reason I am happy to say that Donald Trump, despite his imperfections, is a man of good character is that he has again and again shown himself to be willing to storm the cockpit of our corrupt, sclerotic, and increasingly unaccountable governmental apparatus. He has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and by implication (and it was part of his genius to make this connection) on behalf of people everywhere. He understands that his job is to put America first, but that by so doing he benefits everyone with whom we deal. Those things, I think, are marks of good character.