Washington: “I cannot tell a lie.”
Nixon: “I cannot tell the truth.”
Trump: “I cannot tell the difference.” —- from a popular internet meme

I’ve been a fan of Garry Trudeau’s comic strip, Doonesbury, since my junior college days back in the early Seventies, always amazed through the years at how well he’s continued to capture the “character” and “temper” of our times, and one Sunday strip was yet another example of how well he can “nail it.”
This one, from August 7, 2022, focused on a conversation between two women, apparently active in D.C. political circles, as they stand amid the columns of our capital musing about the deterioration of discourse in the era of MAGA hats; hateful chants; opportunistic politicians; and those willing to swear allegiance to lies.
“I wonder,” one says, “what archaeologists will make of this place when they shift through the rubble 1,000 years from now.” (Yes, I guess we should give Trudeau credit for some optimism to counter his well-known cynicism since he appears to assume that there will be people 1,000 years from now.)
In the concluding panel, an archeologist, wearing a miner’s spotlight helmet, is seen quoting from an ancient text he’s uncovered in some diggings with the words: “Character counts,” to which the one behind him, with a pensive scratch of his chin, responds: “Hmm… What do you suppose it meant?”
Trudeau does it again! After finishing that strip, I was instantly transported back to the many years I’ve spent both contemplating and passionately discussing just how much people’s character, in the final analysis, does or does not “count,” and whether or not it even matters if people have what’s come to be called “character” at all.
First, perhaps I should define for me what is meant by the word “character” since it has several meanings. In the context of the term “character counts,” it’s understood that having character is a positive trait. In other words, having “character” is “good” in the generic sense of the word. But, of course, we all know that there can be people with a predominantly “bad” character, while there are other people who can be a “character,” with all that implies, so it’s best to define the term.
For many people, including me, having “character” encompasses positive qualities, such as integrity; honesty; candor; being truthful; being a man (or a woman) of “your word” in the sense that you do what you say you’re going to do while avoiding the temptation to lie about your actions or lack of them; you stand up for what you know to be right even when those around you are sitting down; and you’re not always “going along” just to “get along.” I could go on, but that, to me, in its essence, is “character.”
Of course, this question about “character,” and whether it “counts” has repeatedly come up when the discussion turns to our elected representatives and those frequent times when they’ve been “caught in a lie,” such as the first president of my lifetime—inaugurated just three months before I was born.
Although we can look back on Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower as perhaps one of our “best” presidents during the 20th Century when it comes to character, he did lie (or presidentially prevaricate—as some would say) about the 1960 Gary Powers U-2 spy plane incident over the USSR. Eisenhower was finally forced to tell the truth after they had shot Powers down and proven totally that he was flying over their country to spy.
Other than that, Eisenhower’s administration and his personal life (despite rumors to the contrary) were marked by deep levels of honesty, integrity, and the avoidance of scandals. Ike even left us with one of our most honest statements about a danger facing the country he loved when he warned us about the rising dangers of “the military/industrial complex,” a piece of advice heeded about as much as our first president’s warming about avoiding “foreign entanglements.”
But, as we now know, Eisenhower dropped a huge secret plan into his successor’s lap—a U.S. backed invasion of Cuba—which John F. Kenney apparently felt he was obliged to carry out. But, for the most part, JFK was viewed by many as a “straight shooter,” unaware at the time of his many “affairs” about which a charmed media in those days was willing to look the other way, as well as the true nature of his serious health problems.
Then came Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was keeping secrets in his own “private life,” with a “casting couch” in his office (a bed would have taken too much time) for all the women he, like Kennedy, was spending lunch hours with, while in his “public life” was mouthing the lies that led to the morass in Vietnam, which began with the fabrication of a North Vietnamese “attack” in the Gulf of Tonkin, and ended with the shrieking of napalmed children. So much for Johnson’s “character.”
Although he could have run again in 1968, LBJ wisely decided to step aside (and, yes, he didn’t have much choice) while Richard Milhous Nixon, who was a character, succeeded in his second shot at the White House. Today some environmentalists do give him credit for signing the Clean Air and Endangered Species Acts (myself included), and for his obvious brilliance (with the books written to prove it), but it was a sad time for me as my father, who’d run for the California State Assembly in 1960 when Nixon first ran for president (they both lost), and was a long-time “Nixon man,” watched in “quiet desperation” as Nixon went down in flames with Watergate.
Not so brilliant was his successor, Gerald Ford (who did not write books), and was once described by LBJ (in a slightly more “saltier” way) as a man who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. But, for the most part though, at a time when the country needed “healing,” he was affable and seemed to be a man where “what you see is what you get,” and started his term off on a good foot with a well-received quip about himself when he said he was a “Ford, not a Lincoln.” (I do still wonder if he came up with that line himself.)
However, that good will quickly dissipated for many (myself included) when he “pardoned” Nixon and set in motion the continued de facto perception that presidents are “above the law,” and, indeed, as political writer Noam Chomsky has pointed out, while we continue giving lip service to the principle that they should not be, basically all of them have been by repeatedly violating both national and international laws with no consequences whatsoever.
Finally, it was that pardon which may have and probably did result in the election of Ford’s successor; a president who has perhaps displayed the highest degree of character in his public and private life than any other—certainly those following Eisenhower: one James Earl Carter—an apparently sincere, life-long Christian, who ran on the promise that he would not lie to us—and, for the most part, didn’t—with a few exceptions, the most memorable of which was the “cover-up” of the Iranian hostage rescue attempt, where secrecy was, obviously, needed.
But I will give “Jimmy” credit for four years that comprised the closest we’ve come to an honest president, plus the fact that those eight men who died in the rescue attempt were the only military personnel to die under Carter’s watch. It’s also worth noting (and I have many times) that James Earl Carter remains the only president during this era of bombing other countries, not to have done so.
However, as it’s also been noted, telling the truth, while talking about peace, international human rights, and refusing to bomb other countries does not help someone who wants to be or remain president, so Carter was crushed in the 1980 election by a man who took his foreign policy positions straight from the tough talk of such movie icons (and colleagues on the silver screen) as John Wayne. Yes, Wayne’s friend and ofttimes fellow cowboy actor: Ronald Reagan.
Ironically, however, despite the swagger and strong words about an “evil empire,” Reagan may have come the closest to an actual disarmament agreement when he met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland—Reagan’s “Nixon in China” moment. But sadly, it was not to be.
As for Reagan’s private life, apparently he did display some character, but much of it seems to have stemmed from his being a character, or rather playing characters for much of his adult life—first the character of a movie star; then the character of a loving husband; then governor; and finally a president, which proved to be an act that “worked” for millions of Americans who now look back on the Reagan presidency as one of the most successful.
Reagan, of course, was followed by his vice president, George H. W. Bush, who did his best to conceal his patrician background as the son of a senator and the scion of east coast wealth by occasionally donning a cowboy hat; eating pork rinds; and adopting other trappings of down-home, good ol’ boy populism, but, unlike Reagan, millions saw through it.
Flash forward to 1992 and a man from Texas with a high-pitched voice who may have had a somewhat short stature, but a tall ego that made up for it, who swept in with his charts about that huge “sucking sound” coming out of Mexico as jobs went south and the frequent lament that it was all “just sad.” Although it was immediately obvious that he was a character, H. Ross Perot’s evident character resonated with millions of Americans who saw in him just what they were looking for: someone who wasn’t a politician.
Unfortunately, his “character” also caught up with him as he displayed a somewhat thin-skinned penchant for prickliness, and, after leading briefly in the polls, fell to the wayside when he seemed to somewhat capriciously leave the race claiming the need to protect his family from vague threats, and then, seemingly just as capriciously, jumped right back in again.
Remarkably, and despite all that, he still captured some 19 percent of the vote in one of the best third-party showings of the Twentieth Century, which helped propel William Jefferson Clinton into the White House because it’s clear that many of Perot’s voters would have gone to Bush and given him a second term if not for Perot.
So now enters Bill Clinton, whose nickname, “Slick Willie” was not exactly up there with “Honest Abe.” Many Americans knew exactly what they were getting with Mr. Clinton and despite that, held their noses and cast their lot with Bill, including me, in the last time I would vote for a presidential “winner.”
The question of “character” and whether or not it “counts” was again on the front burner simmering away, and I remember that I had one of my most “heated” discussions along those lines sometime in 1998, which involved a few teaching colleagues during the height of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. I remember arguing passionately that it did matter whether or not Clinton had lied to the nation and whether or not such a lie about his private life could be—as we say: “compartmentalized”—and separated from his public life.
What my colleagues argued—and who were, yes, “dyed in the wool” Democrats—(which may have had some bearing on their defense of Clinton) was this: that what went on between a man and a woman inside of their marriage was their own business—and it didn’t (and shouldn’t) involve anyone else, while my counter-argument was this: yes, that’s true, provided that their marriage and its “ground rules” so to speak were just between the two of them and not declared publicly.
If a couple wants to live in an “open” marriage with lovers “on the side,” then they shouldn’t make a public declaration of fidelity. But, of course, politicians know that this will never “fly” with most Americans (maybe in France, but not here) and so they live a double life like many others do. My parents made such a vow of loyalty in front of family and friends; kept it for over fifty years; and I respected them for that.
But this double-standard is what we saw, and what ignited such a national debate about “character” when the Clintons displayed a complete lack of it as defined above when they walked into yet another scandal, this one involving a 23-year-old intern and Hillary’s lack of character was obvious when she maintained that she didn’t know about her husband’s infidelities.
It was a patently false lie because, if she didn’t, it portrayed such a level of cluelessness as to call into question her having even a rudimentary level of discernment and the ability to make clear-headed decisions—and who would want that in a president? Of course, many saw that she was lying about that lie as well.
But, as we left the Clinton scandals behind (at least until Hillary decided to serve further in the capitol, first as Secretary of State under Obama, bookended by two runs for the presidency), I continued to point out the dangers of rejecting “character” as a qualification for president, and warned that this mindset would come back to haunt us as a nation—which it certainly has.
Even before the first year of his presidency was even over, George W Bush’s character was sorely tested by the events of 9/11, and he failed that test as he soon followed up his period of buoyancy as a “war time” president with a veritable tapestry of lies as he and his co-conspirators manipulated the American people into a war resting on a firm foundation of falsehoods.