Respect and candor

I don’t know where to start. How about with respect for the office of the presidency of the United States of America? Or for that matter, respect for the notion that any job of significant import deserves a concomitant level of competency from its claimant?

After mere competency, let’s examine the worth of character: Merriam Webster defines it as “the aggregate of moral qualities by which a person is judged apart from intelligence, competence, or special talents.” Include the term “grace,” and we get “disposition to, or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency.” These traits hearken back to two icons of the Republican Party: Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.

Now think in the same breath … of Donald Trump!

Here is a man I believe has displayed a level of low character heretofore unseen by anyone running for president, an utter lack of prerequisite knowledge for the job, an ego the size of the Titanic, and the temperament of an adolescent bully.

Ladies and gentlemen: this year’s Republican nominee for president of the United States.

As one considers these concepts of high human strivance, it is beyond my scope of understanding how any clear-thinking voter, modestly possessed of said qualities, could possibly support Donald Trump for the “highest” office in the world. And how is it that when Hillary Clinton tells it like it is in referring to half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” she is chastised for her candor?

DANE BUXBAUM Little Rock