Editor’s Note: Every day, President Trump or his administration says, does, or tweets something that is declared or implied to be “unprecedented.” Often these claims are false. When these claims arise, we turn to our in-house encyclopedia, Michael Barone. Below is his first installment in a regular series titled, “Precedented.”
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Donald Trump’s tweet criticizing Nordstrom is being attacked in some quarters as an improper use of presidential power, an infringement of the rights of a corporation, an attempt to increase the wealth of the Trump family. To which one sensible response is: lighten up.
Donald Trump didn’t go to the trouble of running for president in order to bolster the profits of his daughter’s clothing line, and his tweet just gives some free publicity to a retailer whose upscale clientele is more likely to be pleased than to be repelled by removal of the Ivanka clothes from the premises. After all, Nordstrom made its decision, willing to assume any downside risk and perhaps eager to reap any upside advantage.
As in so many other cases — see the list in Jonathan Rauch’s Atlantic article — there is more than ample presidential precedent for Trump’s defense of his daughter. The classic example is Harry Truman’s letter to the editor of the Washington Post responding to a less than lukewarm review of his daughter Margaret Truman’s concert performance by the Post music critic Paul Hume.
I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.’
It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man [Hume was 34 at the time] who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.
Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!
Some of the language, in a letter written 66 years ago by a man born in 1884, may be unfamiliar to readers today, but the gist is clear. This is a man (who was a serious musician) defending his daughter (ditto). It’s the pre-smartphone era of a tweet that should never have been tweeted: an angry letter that should have been filed in a little used desk drawer and left there until the writer calmed down.
People tut-tutted at Truman then as they are tut-tutting at Trump now. But Truman’s record as president — generally positive, with significant flaws — stands on its merits, without regard to the Hume letter. By the way, for those who fear that a president’s disapproval can destroy a critic, Paul Hume remained the Post’s music critic until 1982, with considerable distinction as recorded in the Post’s obituary when he died in 2001.
