Trump’s presidency will stain America for years to come

It is amazing what a crowd – or a basket – of deplorables can do. Sometimes they can even strip away cant and reveal the truth. Such has been the case since a few hundred neo-Nazis and assorted other white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the weekend. They were protesting the planned removal of a statue honouring General Robert E. Lee, a statue typical of the American south’s longstanding emotional sympathy for the Confederacy. The Confederates might have been wrong, but they were romantic and, besides, they were our kind of wrong. Of course they should still be honoured by statues that serve as consolation prizes or participation trophies. America’s original sin endures, you know. 

And it lives in the White House too. Previous presidents have been, if we are coy about these matters, complicated creatures. But Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, to name but two of these complicated creatures, were politicians of substance; men who viewed the presidency as a means to an end, as a way of getting things done.