Dennis Prager: Is the President a Bad Role Model for Children?

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By Dennis Prager, The Stream, September 11, 2018

Dennis Prager“Most voters say President Donald Trump is not a good role model for children, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

“While 90 percent of voters say the president should be a good role model for kids, only 29 percent say he is while 67 percent say he is not.” — U.S. News, Jan. 26, 2018.

As someone who has devoted his life to writing and speaking about moral issues and the importance of character, I am regularly criticized for supporting President Trump. Democrats and Republican opponents of the president consider conservatives who support the president to be, at best, inconsistent with conservative values such as tempered speech, commitment to truth, support for European allies and free trade. And those of us who are religious conservatives and support the president are deemed hypocrites for supporting a man who has presumably committed adultery on more than a few occasions and said gross things about women in a private conversation.

Perhaps the most common objection to supporting the president is this: “He is a terrible role model for children.”

So, let me address this objection.

A Moral Obligation for All Men

As a father and grandfather, I would like every adult man (and woman — but I’ll confine my comments to men) to be a model for younger men. I consider it to be a moral obligation of every man to aspire to be a model for younger men. Perhaps the most meaningful compliment I receive is when a man calls my radio show or writes an email and tells me that he sees me as a “father figure.” I always respond how meaningful that statement is to me and always add that this is precisely what every man should aspire to be.

My suspicion is that this was much more common an aspiration among men generations ago. It is one of the reasons adult men and women seek to be called by their first names rather than “Mr.” (or, in the case of women, “Miss” or “Mrs.”) Many members of the baby-boom generation have not wanted to grow up: They dress, talk and act like teenagers, and many delay engaging in one of the most important statements of maturity — getting married — as long as possible. More men than ever never get married. In short, they want to see themselves as peers of young people, not father figures.

So then, if I emphatically support the idea that adult men should seek to be models for younger men, how could I support a president who apparently isn’t?

The Role of President Trump

The answer should be so obvious I am disappointed that all conservatives do not readily understand it. The role of the president of the United States is first and foremost to be a good president. If he (or she) is a personal role model, that is a lovely bonus — but it is only a bonus. When I was young, I never regarded the president of the United States as a personal role model. That task fell on my father, my grandfather, my older brother, my uncles, my parents’ friends, my teachers, my rabbis and other older males.

President Jimmy Carter was known to be a faithful and devoted husband, and was not known for making false statements (only libelous ones after leaving office — like calling Israel an “apartheid” state). So what? Do conservative never-Trumpers think Jimmy Carter’s personal integrity mattered more, or his presidential decisions?

And, by the way, I’ll take Donald Trump’s character over that of Hillary Clinton. I believe she sold her country’s interests for personal gain. That she never committed adultery probably mattered to her husband and daughter, but not to me in determining who should be president of the United States.

What a president does as president is immeasurably more important than his personal sins. What he does personally affects his family. What he does as president affects the lives of 328 million Americans and, for that matter, the whole world.

Trump’s Achievements

Donald Trump is responsible for the lowest unemployment in generations, for appointing two conservative Supreme Court justices, for boosting defense spending, for confronting the illegal-immigrant crisis, for cutting government regulations, for strongly supporting Israel, for lowering taxes, for confronting Western European countries over their morally indefensible low defense spending and so much more that anyone who calls himself conservative should celebrate. Those achievements — not to mention preventing a left-wing, i.e. Democratic Party, victory in 2016 — are what should matter to every conservative and every American frightened by what the left is doing to the country, to its universities, high schools, families, gender relations and race relations, and everything else it touches.

If your house were on fire, would you be more concerned with the character of the firefighters sent to extinguish the fire or their firefighting ability?

The generation that grew up under one of the most decent presidential moral models — Dwight Eisenhower — turned out to be the most narcissistic, morally confused and unpatriotic generation in modern American history. So much for presidents as models for children.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, isThe Rational Bible, a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

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Stream contributor Dennis Prager, one of America’s most respected radio talk show hosts, has been broadcasting in Los Angeles since 1982. His popular show became nationally syndicated in 1999 and airs live, Monday through Friday, 9am to 12pm (Pacific Time), 12pm to 3pm (Eastern) from his home station, KRLA.

In 1994-95, Dennis Prager also had his own daily national television show. He has frequently appeared on C-SPAN as well as on shows such as Larry King LiveThe Early Show on CBS, The Today ShowThe O’Reilly FactorHardballHannity & Colmes and The Dennis Miller Show.

Dennis Prager has written four books, the best-selling Happiness Is A Serious Problem, Think a Second Time, described by Bill Bennett as “one of those rare books that can change an intelligent mind;” Why the Jews? The Reason for Anti-Semitism, and The Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism, still the most used introduction to Judaism in the world. The latter two books were co-authored with Joseph Telushkin.

New York’s Jewish Week described Dennis Prager as “one of the three most interesting minds in American Jewish Life.” Since 1992, he has been teaching the Bible verse-by-verse at the University of Judaism.

Dennis Prager has engaged in interfaith dialogue with Catholics at the Vatican, Muslims in the Persian Gulf, Hindus in India, and Protestants at Christian seminaries throughout America. For ten years, he conducted a weekly interfaith dialogue on radio, with representatives of virtually every religion in the world.

From 1985 to 1995, Dennis Prager wrote and published the quarterly journal, Ultimate Issue. From 1995 to 2000, he wrote The Prager Perspective. His writings have also appeared in major national and international publications such as CommentaryThe Weekly StandardThe Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times. 

Dennis Prager has made and starred in For Goodness Sake (1991), a video directed by David Zucker (Airplane), shown on public television and purchased by hundreds of major companies, and For Goodness Sake II (1999) directed by Trey Parker (South Park). In 2002, Dennis Prager produced a documentary, Israel in a Time of Terror (2002), a compelling look at how the average Israeli deals with the daily threat of terror. It has been shown at colleges, universities, churches and synagogues across the country.

Dennis Prager periodically conducts orchestras, and has introduced hundreds of thousands of people to classical music.