Character is a funny thing. It's one of those things we used to bundle a lot of qualities, but it's also one of those things we find relatively hard to define.
One might recall that Pride and Prejudice is essentially an extended meditation on a pun revolving around that word.
Character, Jane Austen suggested, can ultimately be identify, read, and understood as well as characters making up a novel, or more particularly, a letter.
The subject of the pun was Mr. Darcy, whose character was hard for Elizabeth to discern until his character was related as written characters, the language with which she was familiar.
The problem for Donald J Trump is that he has never been Mr. Darcy.
When we debate whether or not character matters in the performance of executive functions, we tend to discuss it in a mix of concrete and abstract considerations.
This makes sense on the right, where historically we have been concerned with morality of princesses, Kings, presidents, and prime ministers, because we perceive the private lives impact public judgement.
During the 2016 election, and thereafter, debate raged and continues to rage along relatively familiar lines: those who held to the traditional view argued against those who took a utilitarian view.
This is a perfectly fine debate to have, and I am sympathetic to those who point out that the lecherous, adulterous, cheating, amoral grifter is the better alternative to being ground under.
I do not agree, at least sinful, but I am sympathetic.
However, I would respectfully submit that there is an element to this that is underappreciated when discussing whether Character matters in governance.
And here, I am relying on the same pun that Miss Austen did two centuries ago and more.
Character is not merely how one acts when no one else is looking. It is also how people perceive you will act, when they are looking and when they are not.
President Trump, his wives notwithstanding, is obviously very loyal to his family, more or less.
But by most accounts, and certainly by his public behavior, he tends to treat everyone else as at best situationally useful.
If one is loyal to Mr. Trump, he is loyal either out of misplaced affection, family bonds, ideological interest, or self-interest. It is not out of a sense of reciprocal loyalty.
This quality of mr. Trump does not lend itself to effective executive action, which in government relies on a series of unstated assumptions and loyalties to function.
Put in the crudest possible terms, loyalty keeps you around, and makes you open to taking a fall for someone else.
It is very hard to operate in a heavily trust-based environment when no one really trusts you.
Whether or not president Trump does indeed command only highly situational loyalty or whether his private character is so much better than his public character, the verdict from some of his closest confidants suggests that an absence of Character matters.
At least in full. Oh speech to text I hate you.
