Dirty Don’s reputation shot to hell

JIWAS 15 when President Kennedy was shot. I still remember hearing the news in our corner shop in Manchester, where I had been dispatched to buy cigarettes for my mother. I ran all the way home to tell my parents that JFK was on his way to hospital. They turned on our little black-and-white television just in time for what was probably the most shocking newsflash of the second half of the 20th century. “President Kennedy is dead.” When I look back to that time these days, and the four, even five, decades that followed, it’s with an almost wistful memory of what the American presidency seemed to stand for.

I say “seemed to” because despite JFK’s glamorous yet dignified projection of power, we all know now that his private life was a sham and a shambles.

He was a serial love rat, cheating constantly on his beautiful First

Lady, Jackie, and dependent on drugs (which he popped like sweeties to help control his chronic back pain).

But image was everything.And despite the later scandals of Nixon’s Watergate lies and Clinton’s Lewinsky gropes, a certain dignity and authority lingered over the White House. Reagan, whatever you thought of his policies and, in his second term, increasingly bumbling demeanour, did much to restore and possibly even embellish respect for the Oval Office. Just look at it now. Former President Trump – very possibly the next president – may well be behind bars by the time you read this: the judge in his criminal trial – a trial so sordid that some of the more explicit bedroom details have been censored by him – is virtually out of patience with Trump’s contempt-of-court online rants. The Donald is on a final warning. Trump doesn’t even pretend to do dignity.

He’s a ghastly, reality show cliché, puffed up by endless, graceless selfpromotion and absurd ego. They say America always gets the president that it deserves. God knows what the good people of America have done to deserve Trump.