If You Can't Say No to Donald Trump, How Can You Be President?

About Fergus Cullen:

Fergus Cullen is principal of Fergus Cullen Communications, a research, advocacy, and public affairs consulting company started in 1998. Fergus was chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party in 2007-08, the youngest state chairman in the country when elected at age 34.

This is really a leadership issue: If you aren't tough enough to say "no" to Donald Trump, how will you ever stand up to the special interests in Washington? If Trump has a genuine interest in presidential leadership, and not just attention, he should have manned up and run for the office himself. Candidates who have the courage to put their names on the ballot should not supplicate themselves before a publicity-seeker like Trump who did not.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the 2012 GOP hopefuls.]

Politics has always been partly about entertainment, and effective politicians understand that politics is partly a performing art. Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton knew this, and so did candidate Barack Obama. They could all put on quite a show.

But there's a difference between art and entertainment. A great political speech—like a great painting, sculpture, poem, or piece of music—connects with us at an emotional level, moves us, and inspires us to rise above the ordinary.

[See photos of the 2012 GOP candidates.]

Other art is merely entertaining: action flicks we enjoy for 90 minutes but wouldn't watch again, or catchy tunes that spend a few weeks at #1 but become cloying. Donald Trump is a performer all right, but he's no artist.

Running for office requires candidates to engage in all sorts of degrading activities, begging for money among them. Candidates who let Trump lead them around by the nose embarrass themselves and call their own good judgment into question. Congratulations to former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Texas Rep. Ron Paul for flatly refusing to have any part in feeding Trump's ego and his pathological need for attention.

• Vote for your pick for the 2012 GOP nomination.
• Read about how Donald Trump and the GOP are at odds over debate.
• Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.

Tags:

Donald Trump,

2012 presidential election