Don’t relax – the real Trump will be back

The presidential campaign is no longer about politics and policies, or “liberal” versus “conservative,” or Donald against Hillary, or Republicans against Democrats, or the alleged dilemma of many voters who believe the myth that their task is to choose the least awful of two woeful candidates.

It’s about something much more fundamental. It’s about whether one of America’s two great political parties will have the courage and respect for democracy to undo what now lies revealed as a colossal and potentially devastating miscalculation: the nomination of a presidential candidate psychologically and intellectually unfit for any public office.

That could not have been fairly said of any previous major-party candidate in the history of the nation. We have had candidates with shady backgrounds, presidents with limited vision and little intellectual breadth, candidates and presidents who routinely lied and casually surrendered to improper influences.

But we have never had a candidate with Donald Trump’s combination of severe personality disorders and arrested emotional development, who publicly and regularly demonstrates and even boasts about his disregard for the most basic and necessary conventions of a public life.

If you don’t see the very real threat he poses to the nation and the world, you have not been paying enough attention and may as well turn the page now.

For those who understand why Trump must be denied, including many suddenly very silent people in the GOP, the question is how to make the best of a terrible situation.

Late last week, after a truly disastrous 12 days of undisciplined Trumpism, party and campaign leaders declared that things were going to get on track. So they expect – or at least gamely hope – that there will be an interlude in which Trump exercises uncommon control, stays “on message” and forgoes impromptu, compulsive interviews and tweets.

If we see that, we shouldn’t believe it. Trump cannot change. In his entire life, he has not changed – nor even admitted the need to change – his style and his juvenile temperament, or to expand his knowledge. The real Trump will re-emerge because he cannot discipline himself or accept advice.

The great but superficial concern of most Republican politicians is to not lose another presidential race. The more likely that seems, the deeper into the shadows they will retreat, leaving a terribly flawed man and the aggrieved followers he has bamboozled to take all of the blame.

Given Clinton’s unprecedented unpopularity, the Republicans seemed assured a year ago of collecting the prizes they coveted: dominance in two branches and the ability to set the course of the judiciary for decades. All they had to do was nominate a sane, likable person.

They blew that chance for all the wrong reasons, and failing to correct that error by abandoning Trump for someone else permanently endangers our system of politics and governance. Thus we all will pay the price of their cowardice.

This story was originally published August 9, 2016 at 12:01 AM with the headline "Don’t relax – the real Trump will be back."