The leading Republican presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, spent most of last week hurling schoolyard insults at each other, all in a vainglorious attempt to defend the honor of their wives, respectively.
This latest farce, in a series that has characterized the race for the Republican nomination, stemmed from an anti-Trump ad featuring a nude picture of his wife. It questioned, cheekily enough, if she’s suited to be first lady.
Trump replied by juxtaposing a picture of his wife smoldering like a royal courtesan with one of Cruz’s sneering like a bedraggled housewife. He tweeted, chauvinistically enough, that the picture was worth a thousand words.
Then, for good measure, the National Enquirer published an anti-Cruz report insinuating that this poster boy for Evangelical Christians has had more extramarital affairs than Bill Clinton.
Cruz replied by accusing Trump of waging a smear campaign. And so it went … and goes.
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media showed just how “pathetic” they’ve become by covering this tabloid spat as if it were a terrorist attack. The unwitting result is that their coverage completely overwhelmed and undermined Republican attempts to belittle Obama’s historic trip to Cuba and diplomatic mission to Argentina.
After all, Republican pundits were making all kinds of snarky remarks about Obama cavorting with Raul Castro at a Baseball game and doing the tango at a state dinner, respectively … all “while Brussels burned.” They clearly wanted these remarks to be the trending topics of the week.
Of course, the members of Obama’s advance team could have served him better. For they could have arranged to have him just throw out the first pitch at the Baseball game in Cuba, and ensured that he was not subjected to any goading to tango at the state dinner in Argentina — citing in each case respect for the dead in Brussels, which included Americans.
In any event, snark about Obama proved no match for the spat between Trump and Cruz over whose wife is hotter or more respectable.
What’s more, the irony seemed completely lost on Republican pundits that Obama was turning their trademark criticism about him being too politically correct on its head. After all, nothing could be more politically incorrect than defying their politically correct calls to abandon his trips and return to Washington – even if only to make a show of pretending to put out terrorist fires in Brussels from the White House.
More to the point, though, it is clearly more presidential to rise above the fear and hysteria terrorism incites by engaging in transformative diplomacy – as Obama did, than by engaging in gutter politics – as Trump and Cruz did.
That said, this spat should give us all pause. Because, if Trump becomes president, it is all too foreseeable that he would get into similar spats with world leaders. And nothing is more foreboding in this respect than a spat between a President Trump and President Putin over whose “hand” is bigger.
After all, as narcissistic, thin-skinned, and vindictive as Trump is, Putin is doubly so. For example, Trump has banned journalists from news conferences for daring to criticize him; but Putin has jailed and even killed them for doing so (mind you, Trump would too if he knew he could get away with it). They react this way because, as absurd as it may seem to any reasonable leader, unavenged slight to them is like kryptonite to Superman.
Therefore, one could easily see an escalation from hurling insults to launching bombs in a vainglorious attempt to vindicate their fabricated, cultivated and propagated manhood.
Related commentary:
Cuba…
Media pathetic…