JOHN BRUMMETT: But he didn't say it ...

Donald Trump explains that he does not engage in unsubstantiated attacks.

But he elaborates to say that others engage in unsubstantiated attacks and that some of those attacks make really interesting points that look kind of fishy to him, such as the theory that Vince Foster was murdered by or for the Clintons, which he's not saying, himself, but which others are saying.

He stresses that he has no intention of saying such things except to repeat them necessarily in the context of relating that others have been saying them and presumably will continue to do so.

His hands are tied. Sleaze-mongering is incumbent upon him as a prospective world leader.

Once a rumor or conspiracy theory is out there, a candidate for president of the United States bears the responsibility to repeat it and acknowledge that great truism: Just because something comes from a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it couldn't possibly be so.

You see.

Or not.


This is not new behavior for Trump.

He wasn't saying Barack Obama was a Kenyan, only that people were saying it. He wasn't saying that Ted Cruz's father helped Lee Harvey Oswald assassinate John F. Kennedy, only that others were saying it. He wasn't saying that Democrats murdered Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, only that others were saying that the pillow over Scalia's head--which had been rumored, you know--didn't put itself there.

Vince Foster had a depressed side. It distressed him that Wall Street Journal editorials lied. He so despaired about the flawed state of the world as revealed to him at the highest level--as deputy White House counsel for his friends Bill and Hillary--that, in the summer of 1993, he drove to a park and shot himself.

That's all. That's the sum of what happened. It's what two investigative authorities declared.

What the American people ought to take more responsibly, no matter how angry they get about politics as usual, is whether a man who repeats and exploits nutty sleaze possesses the decency--yes, that's the word--to warrant their serious consideration for president.

Do they value their country and its presidency more than that?

Yes, Bill Clinton's sexual behavior toward women, before becoming president and then as president, as alleged and confirmed, was indecent as well. I called for him to resign when he got caught flat-out lying about the dalliance with the intern.

But one indecency does not justify another.

Bill's tomcat history is no reason to attack the wife he cheated on, unless Trump can prove, which he can't, that Hillary Clinton enabled her husband's tomcatting and then threatened her husband's sexual conquests unless they kept quiet.

I personally can't force myself to take great offense at the online video the Trump campaign released last week. It played recordings of Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey as they accused Clinton of sexual assault. Then it closed with a horrid sound of one of Hillary's more obnoxious cackles.

I confess that I simply find it difficult to recoil indignantly against clumsy efforts to ridicule Clinton for his serial philandering and phoniness.

My political analysis, though, is that the spot is irrelevant and gratuitous and won't--and shouldn't--do Trump any good, but maybe harm.

The American voters decided as early as 1999 that, whatever Clinton's behavior and whatever Hillary's attitude and role, they were sick of hearing about it.

I suspect that holds true still, and, in fact, can point to recent evidence.

Several days ago I was addressing a group and somehow found myself talking about Trump's raising old sex issues about Bill.

"I'm sick of it," I heard from a female voice in the audience.

I decided to wrap it up.

Trump's other usual refrain, unrefined from the grade-school playground, is that he didn't start anything; that the other side started it, but that, by golly, if you get mean toward him, then he's going to get mean right back at you.

The issue, beyond the faux symmetry of childish attitude, is proportionality.

It is true that Trump also stands accused publicly of misbehavior toward women. But that came in an article in the New York Times based on interviews with women, not from the Clintons by public innuendo or online video attack.

And it is true that, just the other day, Hillary was making a broadside attack on Trump. It was for being a bully and having engaged in business deals that went bankrupt.

I remain unaware that anyone, a Clinton or otherwise, has alleged murder or even lesser criminality in connection with Trump.

America must strive to be better than the utter tabloid behavior it got from its president in the 1990s. And it must strive to be better than the utter tabloid gossip it gets from a man who offers himself for president in 2016.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 05/26/2016

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