Manliness

Harvey Mansfield, Harvard professor and author of a book called Manliness, is interviewed about the Trump presidency for The Wall Street Journal. Some of his insights are worth your consideration.

“Trump’s manliness is of a raw character, the kind you find, also, in Erdogan and Putin, who are rough and gross and discourteous.”

[Mansfield] returns to the subject of Mr. Trump’s supporters. “They rather like and appreciate his vulgarity and his baseness, his impulsiveness,” he says. “It doesn’t bother them that he’s rich and wears flashy, bright ties.” They think “that this is how they would be if they were rich. Trump is an image of their notion of what money can buy.”

In Mr. Mansfield’s view, Mr. Trump’s success wasn’t a racial reaction to President Obama as much as a backlash in favor of masculinity. Mr. Obama “had the scolding demeanor of a schoolmarm—very much, I think, following the temper of today’s feminists.

[Trump] “doesn’t seem to have the fans abroad that he does here,” Mr. Mansfield says. “But in order for him to be successful outside America, he doesn’t have to have fans. He just has to have people impressed and a little perturbed.”

If Mansfield's assessment is correct, it would seem Stormy Daniels did President Trump a favor by going public. Hat tip to RealClearPolitics for the link.