Donald Trumps Anything-Goes Campaign Sets an...

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POLITICS

NEWS ANALYSIS

Donald Trumps Anything-Goes Campaign

Sets an Alarming Political Precedent
By JONATHAN MARTIN

SEPT. 17, 2016

WASHINGTON When Donald J. Trump descended on the capital Friday, he was

expected to finally concede that the racially tinged falsehood he had gleefully propagated,
that President Obama was born outside of the United States, had in fact been a lie.
But before Mr. Trump got around to what was a grudging and terse admission, which
itself included a falsehood about the provenance of so-called birtherism, he had some
business to tend to.
Nice hotel, said Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, delighting in
his newest property and the opportunity to plug it free on live television. He was holding
his news conference at his new hotel in the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania
Avenue, which, he promised, is going to be something very special.
He seemed untroubled in using an ostensible campaign event just a few blocks from
the White House to openly promote his personal commercial interests 52 days before the
election.
In fact, this past week offered a vivid illustration of how little regard Mr. Trump has
for the long-held expectations of Americas leaders. He is not only breaking the countrys
political norms, he and his campaign aides are now all but mocking them.
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Besides using his campaign as a platform to make money on a new hotel, Mr. Trump
leveled an untrue assertion that Hillary Clinton had been the first to claim Mr. Obama
was born abroad. He also boasted about his health on the show of a daytime television
celebrity while releasing just his testosterone levels and a few other details about his
well-being.
Mr. Trump also continued to flout 40 years of tradition by refusing to release his tax
returns, a decision that his eldest son admitted this week was not based on an audit, as
Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed, but on a desire not to distract from the campaigns
main message.
Beyond his handling of personal information, he also casually accused the chairwoman of
the Federal Reserve of corruption, claimed that the bipartisan national debate commission
was rigged against him, and stated that Mrs. Clinton had not proposed a child care plan.
(She has, and did so a year before he did.)
He also mocked an African-American pastor who had just welcomed him to her
church, and again referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who once said
she had Native American roots, as Pocahontas.
And that was all before Friday night, when Mr. Trump hinted at violence against
Mrs. Clinton by inviting her Secret Service detail to disarm and see what happens to
her.
Routine falsehoods, unfounded claims and inflammatory language have long been
staples of Mr. Trumps anything-goes campaign. But as the polls tighten and November
nears, his behavior, and the implications for the country should he become president, are
alarming veteran political observers and leaving them deeply worried about the
precedent being set, regardless of who wins the White House.
Its frightening, said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from
Minnesota. Our politics, because of him, is descending to the level of a third-world
country. Theres just nothing beneath him. And I dont know why we would think he
would change if he became president. Thats whats really scary.
Stephen Hess, who served in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, could not
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even contemplate the prospect of Mr. Trump as commander in chief.

Its incredibly depressing, Mr. Hess said of Mr. Trump. Hes the most profoundly
ignorant man Ive ever seen at this level in terms of understanding the American
presidency, and, even more troubling, he makes no effort to learn anything.
Mr. Trumps advocates insist that the critics are missing the larger impact of his
candidacy, and how his campaign and presidency could be a force for good. As a New
York Times-CBS poll released last week indicated, voters see him as more likely to
aggressively confront what they see as a rotten political system, even if they recognize
Mr. Trump as a risky choice.
On the things that are really big, he will in some clumsy way force real change,
said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who is an adviser to Mr. Trump.
Washington wont be the same when hes done.
But that is what is so worrisome to many observers of Mr. Trumps rise. His critics
fear that his norm-breaking campaign portends a political future in which candidates pay
no penalty for unabashedly telling untruths, disregarding the publics right to know, and
lobbing racially charged accusations.
I worry that if those of us in politics and the media dont do a lot of soul-searching
after this election, a slightly smarter Trump will succeed in the future, said Jon Favreau,
Mr. Obamas former chief speechwriter. For some politicians and consultants, the
takeaway from this election will be that they can get away with almost anything.
As Martin Nolan, a former editor and reporter at The Boston Globe who has
chronicled politics for over 50 years put it: Truth has a low priority in the misnomer
known as reality TV.

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Rules, Mr. Nolan added, are for losers.

The only salvation this year, argue Mr. Trumps detractors, is that he is a singular
figure in American life, and his would-be successors will not be able to skirt
accountability in the fashion of the celebrity provocateur.
He has inflicted Stockholm syndrome on America, said Stacey Abrams, a
Democrat and the minority leader of the Georgia House. Its not even that were numb
to it, its just that weve always enjoyed the show. Its entertaining to hate him, to like
him and to imagine being him.
But while there may not be another Mr. Trump, he does seem to have thrust the
country into a new era. With American culture increasingly coarse and ever more
obsessed with celebrity, the countrys politics were bound to eventually catch up.
Less than 25 years after Bill Clinton shocked some by unabashedly answering a
question about his underwear preference on television, Mr. Trump purposefully brought
up the size of his penis at a televised debate.
It is not difficult to find Republicans who recoil at how their own nominee has, to
borrow the phrase made famous by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former New York
senator and sociologist, defined deviancy down.
Trump is reflecting a culture that is more crass, more accepting of vulgarity and
more attuned to pop culture, said Matt Lewis, a conservative writer. The bar has been
lowered where going on Dr. Oz is perfectly acceptable and maybe even cutting edge.
Where Republicans differ is over whether the acceptance of Mrs. Clintons
transgressions is just as ominous for the country.
You cant have a republic without virtue and I dont think theres great virtue in
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either of them, said Tom Coburn, the former Oklahoma senator, of Mr. Trump and Mrs.
Clinton.
Still, Mr. Weber, who arrived in Washington as a congressional staff member shortly
after the post-Watergate election of 1974, said Mr. Trumps approach would inflict the
most damage on his own party.
You dont want to say this is the equivalent of Watergate, Mr. Weber said. But at
least that was a discrete crime. In a way, Trump is harder to deal with. And Republicans
didnt feel compelled to defend Watergate: they drove Richard Nixon out of office.
Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news
updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.
A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2016, on page A4 of the New York edition with
the headline: Anything-Goes Campaign an Alarming Precedent.

2016 The New York Times Company

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