Opinion: The truth of the matter

This is an undated photo illustration of President George Washington from the Library of Congress. (AP Photo, file)

This is an undated photo illustration of President George Washington from the Library of Congress. (AP Photo, file) Courtesy—ASSOCIATED PRESS

By JOHN BUTTRICK

Published: 10-26-2024 8:00 AM

John Buttrick writes from his Vermont Folk Rocker in his Concord home, Minds Crossing. He can be reached at johndbuttrick@gmail.com

As children, we learned the legend of George Washington and the cherry tree. The story goes that George told his father, “I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry tree.” The lesson, as we all know, was that truth-telling was George Washington’s preparation for becoming president of the United States. His character became a stone in the foundation of the new nation.

The trend continued with the legend of “Honest Abe.” When clerking in a general store, young Abraham Lincoln found out he had charged a woman a few cents too much. The story goes, that at the end of the day, after closing the store, Abe walked between two and three miles to the woman’s house to return the pennies he had overcharged. This story affirms the honest character of another president of the United States.

These legends have been told down through the generations to become our stories, stories of the value of honesty and the honest character expected of our presidents. They have not always been perfect, but when they have fallen short, they’ve accepted the consequences of their actions.

Tom Nichols wrote in the Atlantic, “Even Nixon chose to resign rather than mobilize his base against impeachment.”

The exemplary character of honesty and willingness to accept the consequences when failing to meet the standard has been a part of the life of the past forty-four U.S. presidents, with one exception: Donald Trump, who ironically wants to “make America Great Again” (MAGA). His penchant for telling lies, I would argue, is definitely not “great” or for the better. Lying is the first step toward arrogance, corruption, and the shirking of personal consequences. Following that path would Make America Greatly Egregious (MAGE).

With his lack of a commitment to truth, presidential candidate Trump is threatening to take the country into the dark land of conspiracies and mistrust. If Donald Trump is elected president again, we shall no longer be able to point our children to the sitting president of the United States as an inspiration for telling the truth. Trump will have trumped the honesty of Washington and Lincoln with his penchant for telling lies over and over until they are perceived as truth. It will become very difficult to convince the next generations that honesty is the best policy and the path to success.

To the contrary, our children will learn from the president that dedication to truth-telling is a fool’s errand. If Trump becomes president again, it will demonstrate that one can be successful and become president by practicing the telling of lies; giving pejorative, vulgar, and insulting names to rivals; and filing bankruptcies and neglecting to pay debts.

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Peter Baker has written in the New York Times about Trump’s first term as president: “His is the profanity presidency, full of four-letter denunciations of his enemies and earthy dismissals of allegations lodged against him.”

To make America great again, one might look back to the ethical heritage of Washington and Lincoln. We need a president that does not rely on deception and mean spiritedness to maintain their leadership. We need a president who will “preserve, protect, and defend the constitution” rather than one whose defense is to inflate himself with incendiary hyperbole that makes him vulnerable to the childhood chant, “Liar, liar your pants are on fire.”

We need to demonstrate to our children and grandchildren that our vote can douse the burning perpetrator of lies. The health of our children and our democracy depend upon electing a president who will continue to be in line with the ethics of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. And that’s the truth.