or if you prefer the actual title of his column for Friday’s Washington Post, There is a shriveled emptiness where Trump’s soul once resided.
Gerson begins by quoting from T. S. Eliot, then goes into Trump’s horrid Tuesday equating those protesting in Charlottesville with the racists etc. who provoked the troubles in that city. Trump’s attempt at moral equivalence, despite his attempt to deny that was what he was doing.
Gerson is blunt, in the following three paragraphs:
This might be defensible — if you leave out the 400 years of oppression, segregation, violence and cruelty that black people have experienced in North America. If you leave out a bloody Civil War started by slave interests to defend an economic system based on theft of labor and the lash. If you leave out the millions shot, gassed and incinerated under the Nazi flag, their wedding rings and gold fillings carefully collected by their killers. If you leave out every grave of every American who fought and died to defeat fascism and militarism.
So moral equivalence is an option — for those who are willfully blind to history and have a shriveled emptiness where their soul once resided.
This is now, sadly, an accurate description of the United States’ 45th president, who felt compelled to reveal his true convictions. Such compulsion has the virtue of honesty. It has the drawback (from Trump’s perspective) of leaving his defenders without excuse.
There is more, including the idea of Bannon resigning. For Gerson that is insufficient. He wonders why anyone not named Bannon would want to stay.
Gerson served in a White House. He understands the honor attendant in such a position, and also the notion of loyalty to the President one serves. But he would argue now is different:
And it is not possible for a Cabinet officer or White House staffer to comfort himself or herself that “at least the president’s heart is good.” That is something I did not doubt when serving George W. Bush. Now Trump has opened his own chest for all to see. And the cavity is horrifyingly empty.
Which leads to Gerson’s powerful conclusion:
Every additional day of standing next to Trump — physically and metaphorically — destroys reputation and diminishes moral standing. The rationalizations are no longer credible. But resignation, in contrast, would be a contribution to the common good — showing that principled leadership in service to the Constitution is still possible, even in the age of Trump. When loyalty requires corruption, it is time to leave.
Indeed.