Kenneth A. Carlson: Does Character Still Matter in the Age of Trump?

At a wedding reception a few weeks before the 2024 presidential election, amid champagne toasts and laughter, a close friend leaned toward me and oddly declared: “Character doesn’t matter anymore. All politicians are corrupt. Every last one of them. You just have to vote on policy now.”

He rattled off political scandals: Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton and Benghazi, Chris Christie and Bridgegate, Gavin Newsom’s French Laundry dinner during COVID, but conveniently failed to mention Donald Trump’s cavalcade of misbehavior. His conclusion: morality is irrelevant; only policies matter.

That casual remark unsettled me because if he’s right — if decency and virtue are in fact relics, and Americans now shrug at misconduct — then we face a crisis deeper than any election.

Let’s be clear, Donald Trump did not invent political scandal, but he mainstreamed it in ways we once thought unimaginable. Here was a president who mocked a New York Times reporter with cerebral palsy, sneered about women “bleeding from every orifice,” boasted of grabbing women by the genitals, and labeled opponents with taunts: “Crooked Hillary,” “Low IQ Liz Cheney,” “Newscum” Newsom and Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren. All this from someone who was found liable in a New York jury trial in May 2023 for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll and was ordered to pay her $5 million in damages.  In a separate January2024 defamation case — stemming from his continued attacks on Carroll after the first verdict — another jury awarded her $83.3 million.

What is remarkable is not just that such behavior occurred, but that it has become expected. A 2023 Pew survey found that 84% of Americans believe political debate has become less respectful in recent years, and two-thirds worry that the next generation is learning the wrong lessons from leaders’ conduct. Studies from the University of Michigan show that children exposed to toxic political rhetoric report higher levels of anxiety and lower trust in institutions.

In short, cruelty has been normalized; it has become ambient noise in our civic life.

The architects of our republic believed character was inseparable from governance. Alexander Hamilton envisioned the electoral system as a safeguard: it would elevate those “most capable” and filter out demagogues who relied only on “the little arts of popularity.” James Madison insisted that political systems must be designed to empower “men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good.” And Thomas Jefferson warned starkly: “Virtue is the fount of republican government… if virtue is lost, liberty is lost.”

These were not just philosophical musings. Research today underscores their relevance: Democracies with high levels of corruption and low trust in leaders’ integrity are significantly more prone to backsliding toward authoritarianism.

Would Hamilton, Madison or Jefferson look at today’s climate of insults, disinformation and self-dealing and feel that the system had upheld their hopes? Hardly. They expected failures of character, but they also expected that voters would reject those who embodied them.

Skeptics argue that policy is what counts: tax rates, immigration laws, foreign policy and such. Yet character is the soil from which those policies grow. A leader lacking honesty or empathy cannot be trusted to pursue the common good.

History offers caution. The Roman Republic’s decline, historians note, began less with foreign invasions than with leaders who debased norms and hollowed out virtue. Today, Gallup polling shows trust in the presidency has fallen to 27%, (the historic low at 25% in 1980 when  Jimmy Carter was president), and trust in Congress hovers at 8%. Without trust, governance itself falters. 

So, when we shrug at indecency because we prefer certain policies, we risk normalizing corruption as the American way of life, and normalizing corruption is exactly what Donald J. Trump has done. According to Forbes magazine, 45 percent of Trump’s wealth now derives from the sale of $TRUMP crypto coins, minted and marketed while he sat behind the Resolute Desk. Foreign governments have joined the chorus of benefactors: Trump has accepted a private jet from Qatar worth $400 million as an “unconditional gift.” In addition, the White House lawn itself was repurposed into a Tesla showroom, with Trump helping Elon Musk peddle cars from America’s front porch.

Taxpayers, too, have footed the bill for Trump’s indulgence. Reports suggest in the first seven months of his second term he has spent over $30 million in public funds on golf outings at his own properties — effectively billing citizens to enrich his resorts. And the Trump enrichment doesn’t end with Donald. Amazon recently announced a $40 million licensing deal for an upcoming Melania Trump documentary, billed as an “unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look” at the First Lady.

Meanwhile, the Trump family is doubling down on profiteering. They are launching a new Washington, D.C., private club called The Executive Branch — a wink at power turned into membership dues. Abroad, the Trumps are expanding their empire: Trump Tower Jeddah, luxury projects in Riyadh, and lucrative ventures in Doha, all following the Saudis’ $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner’s private equity fund.

This is not public service; it is public exploitation. The founders of this country envisioned leaders who would embody virtue, not treat democracy as a family brand. In the 1990s, Republicans denounced Bill Clinton’s affair as a collapse of trust, not just a lapse of judgment. “Character counts,” they declared, as they pushed impeachment to prove he was unfit for office.

So yes, Republicans, you were right back then — character does matter — perhaps more than ever. Our children are watching. Already, classroom surveys by the Josephson Institute of Ethics show that more than half of high school students believe “successful people do what they have to, even if it’s dishonest.” What lesson are we teaching when leaders sneer at decency and succeed anyway?

My friend at that wedding is not alone in believing character no longer counts. But if he listened to Hamilton, Madison or Jefferson, he might reconsider. They feared exactly this: Once virtue is dismissed as irrelevant, republican government itself will collapse.

The ballot box is not just about policy: It is a moral compass for the next generation. In the age of Trump, we must decide: Will we pass on cynicism, or remind our children — as the founders urged — that democracy rests not on power alone, but on character?

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First published in ScheerPost. Included in Vox Populi with permission.

Kenneth A. Carlson is a distinguished filmmaker known for his compelling documentaries and feature films that tackle profound human stories. He directed and produced The Heart of Nuba, a feature-length documentary about Dr. Tom Catena, the sole doctor serving a million patients in Sudan’s war-torn Nuba Mountains. The film received critical acclaim, opening in over 30 U.S. cities and has been screened globally, including at the U.S. Congress, British Parliament, and the International Criminal Court. The Heart of Nuba was produced by Maria Shriver and is currently available on Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon.