HENRY RACETTE: Trump’s Sins:

I don’t think President Obama really liked America very much, at least not the America I grew up in and love.

In contrast, I have little interest in knowing about President Trump’s past, because I think I understand the man well enough without it. I think he’s a narcissist, a self-promoter, a rambling promise-anything hustler, a man with essentially no ideology, and also a man who wants to be loved and admired. I think he has, for whatever reason, identified success as a patriotic, pro-business, get-the-job-done conservative as his path to the love and admiration, the greatness, he wants, and playing that role is more important to him than anything else.

That works for me because of the role he’s chosen, and again, for whatever reason, has him pursuing goals congruent to my own interests.

My interest in Obama’s past was that it might help me to expose him as the anti-American progressive I thought (and still think) he was. And, now that he’s out of office, I don’t even care about that.

I have little interest in Trump’s past, since his behavior now is self-evidently, and usually, the kind of behavior I want in a President, and I don’t expect it to change. I don’t think he’s a particularly complicated man.

Obama was a private, secretive man. Trump, the good and the bad, is transparent.

I think that’s why Trump’s sins don’t bother me. We want good character in a President in large part because character is a predictor of behavior. We don’t need a predictor with Trump: he’s driven by an unflattering aspect of his character, his pride, in such a way that he feels compelled to do things of which I happen to approve.

That works for me, though I think Trump is more sinned against than sinning.