Their Characters have Formed

By age 68 and 70 the characters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have formed.  What we see is what we will get.

There is an odd bit of wishful thinking that I have overheard among supporters of both HRC and Trump.   The supporters are anticipating that their candidate has learned a life lesson and will change.   I doubt it.   

Long campaigns are exhausting but the voters learn something they would not learn in a quick 45 day sprint campaign.   We get to see the candidate's actual character revealed.  What they have revealed over a lifetime is being revealed in this 18 month long campaign.  They are who they are.

Fox News wants "Crooked" to be part of Hillary's name

Hillary Clinton is: professional, knowledgable, experienced, policy oriented, practical, and careful.   She also is guarded, defensive, lawyerly, secretive.  She is comfortable among very wealthy people and has compromised her reputation and electability in seeking personal wealth.  She works within the "grey area" of conflicts of interest, real and apparent.   She has arranged to have done very well while doing good progressive politics.  Her policy prescriptions come out of a well established tradition of liberal/progressive/feminist politics. of those traits are good in a candidate, some not good, but Hillary Clinton packages them all and she has revealed them consistently over a lifetime, and under close scrutiny in this campaign.    

Washington Post Story 

Donald Trump is: a showman, extemporaneous, confident, self-aggrandizing, intuitive, empathetic with audiences, amusing, entertaining.   He also bulles others, is insulting, careless, thoughtless, unplanned, and outrageous in his exaggerations, accusations, and fabrications.  He trusts his first gut instincts.  He doesn't take advice well, he pays little attention to policy or practical methods of implementing what he promises.  He says things that are insulting and demeaning about minority races, religions, and ethnicities. His policy prescriptions ignore or contradict the traditions of his political party.  Donald Trump packages all those traits and he has displayed them over a lifetime.   

If elected president there is no evidence that Hillary Clinton will change.  She will not be transparent, she will be guarded.  Information will be extracted from her through court orders and Freedom of Information Act requests rather than being offered openly.   She will answer questions defensively.  She will try to hide things.   Her answers to questions will be incomplete and evasive.  She will likely avoid legal perjury but will answer questions in a way that deflect and mislead.  She will operate within the gray area of legal but not necessarily admirable.  Democrats dread  that her presidency will be filled with lawsuits, investigations, allegations--Benghazi 24/7.  

If elected president there is no evidence that Donald Trump will change.   Against all advice and in the face being urged to be "more presidential" Donald Trump remains intuitive and spontaneous and careless and outrageous.  He is disrespectful of others and says things which alienate significant numbers of people.  He will consider his gut reaction to situations more trustworthy a guide than the careful analysis of experienced experts, which will mean he will say and do things whose implications he does not understand.   The dread among Republicans is that maybe it would be true that Trump's spontaneous and thoughtless words would create chaos in a dangerous world--a bull in a china shop. 

Hillary Clinton hopes that "Crazy Trump" is just too risky for people to accept as president.  Donald Trump hopes that Crooked Hillary is just too untrustworthy for people to accept as president.  

The Washington Post helps tell Hillary's story.  Fox News tells Trump's.  Both news outlets have lost all pretense of objectivity.