The Republican's guide to Presidential etiquette

Republicans used to care a lot about how a president comports himself, and whether he acts at all times with the dignity his station demands.

“Is President Obama Disrespecting the Oval Office?” Fox News asked in 2010, with a link to images of Mr. Obama and his aides tossing a football, or eating apples just inches from the Resolute desk.

“Wear a suit coat and tie,” said Andrew Card Jr., President George W. Bush’s former chief of staff, in reaction to pictures of Mr. Obama in shirtsleeves in 2009.

“I do expect him to send the message that people who are going to be in the Oval Office should treat the office with the respect that it has earned over history,” Mr. Card said.

But hey, that was then! In 2017, there’s a whole new bar for tolerable conduct by the commander in chief. Our original guide cataloged several dozen examples. Almost five months later, it’s clear that an update is necessary. This expanded list is meant to ensure that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and other congressional Republicans never forget what they now condone in a president.

So, if you are the president, you may:

• Mock a foreign leader with a demeaning nickname and threaten his country with nuclear annihilation over Twitter
   
• Call for the firing of “son of a bitch” athletes who choose to exercise their right to free speech

Refer to the White House as “a real dump”

• Spend the weekend golfing at your private club while the mayor of an American city wades through sewage-filled water to help citizens after a catastrophic hurricane, then accuse that mayor of “poor leadership” when she criticizes your administration’s slow response to the storm
   
• Criticize victims of that hurricane still living without drinking water or electricity by saying they “want everything to be done for them”
   
• During a visit to some of those victims, throw rolls of paper towels at them and tell them they should be “very proud” that only 16 people have died so far, unlike in a “real catastrophe”
   
• Attack a senator battling terminal cancer
   
• Pick nominees to the federal bench who call a sitting Supreme Court justice a “judicial prostitute” and refer to transgender children as part of “Satan’s plan”
   
• Campaign hard for a Senate candidate; then when he appears likely to lose, say “I might have made a mistake” and later delete your tweets supporting him
   
• Behave so erratically and irresponsibly that senators of your own party resort to saying you’re treated like an adult day-care student to keep you from starting World War III
   
• Spend one of every three days as president visiting at least one of your own properties

Publicly and privately humiliate your own attorney general for recusing himself from an investigation into your campaign

• Say nothing when a foreign leader’s bodyguards brutally attack peaceful protesters in the streets of Washington, D.C.
   
• Tweet GIFs of yourself violently attacking the media and your former political opponent
   
• Encourage police officers not to be “too nice” when apprehending criminal suspects
   
• Help draft a misleading statement about the purpose of a meeting between your son, other top campaign aides and representatives of a rival foreign power intent on interfering in the election
   
• Deliver a speech to the Boy Scouts of America that includes mockery of a former president and winking references to sexual orgies, and then lie by claiming that the head of that organization called and told you it was the best speech ever delivered in Boy Scout history

Hang a framed copy of a fake Time magazine cover celebrating your business acumen in your golf clubs around the world

• Mock a female television anchor’s appearance, saying the anchor was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” at a holiday gathering at your private resort
   
• Force your cabinet members to take turns extolling your virtues in front of television cameras
   
• Welcome into the Oval Office a man who threatened to assassinate your predecessor, whom he called a “subhuman mongrel,” and who referred to your political opponent as a “worthless bitch”
   
• Continue to deny that Russia attempted to influence the presidential election, despite the consensus of the American intelligence community — and yet also blame your predecessor for not doing anything to stop that interference

• Grant temporary White House press credentials to a website that, among other things, claims that Sept. 11 was an “inside job” and that the massacre of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax
   

Block people who criticize you on Twitter

• Claim that an investigation into your campaign’s possible collusion with a foreign power is “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”
   
• Pressure multiple intelligence chiefs to state publicly that there was no collusion between your presidential campaign and the Russian government
   
• Without consulting anyone at the Pentagon, announce a new policy barring transgender soldiers from serving in the military
   
• Pardon a former sheriff who was convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to obey the law
   
• Continue to repeat, with admiration, a false story about an American military general committing war crimes
   
• Mock the mayor of a world city for his careful, sober response to a terrorist attack
   
• Tell Americans that a march of torch-carrying white supremacists and neo-Nazis includes “some very fine people” — and when one of those marchers murders a peaceful counterprotester, condemn violence on “both sides”
   
• Run an administration whose ethical standards have, in the words of the federal government’s top ethics enforcer, made the United States “close to a laughingstock”

Hide data that don’t support your pre-existing policy preferences

• Admit to trying to intimidate a key witness in a federal investigation
   
• Continue to leave hundreds of executive branch positions unfilled
   
• Profit off the presidency, accepting millions of dollars from foreign government officials, businesses, politicians and other supporters who pay a premium to patronize your properties and get access to you — while also attempting to hide the visitor lists at some of those properties from the public
   
• Promise to drain the swamp, then quietly grant ethics waivers to multiple former industry lobbyists who want to work in your administration
   
• Tell a lie, on average, more than five times a day
•  
• Call for criminal investigations of your former political opponent, seven months after winning the election
   
• Appoint your family wedding planner to head a federal housing office
   
• Shove aside a fellow head of state at a photo-op
   
• Attack private citizens on Twitter
   
• Delegitimize federal judges who rule against you
   
• Refuse to take responsibility for military actions gone awry
   
• Fire the F.B.I. chief in the middle of his expanding investigation into your campaign and your associates
   
• Accuse a former president, without evidence, of an impeachable offense
   
• Employ top aides with financial and other connections to a hostile foreign power
   
• Blame the judiciary, in advance, for any terror attacks
   
• Call the media “the enemy of the American people”
   
• Demand personal loyalty from the F.B.I. director
   
• Threaten the former F.B.I. director
   
• Accept foreign payments to your businesses, in possible violation of the Constitution

Occupy the White House with the help of a hostile foreign power

• Intimidate congressional witnesses
   
• Allow White House staff members to use their personal email for government business
   
• Claim, without evidence, that millions of people voted illegally
   
• Fail to fire high-ranking members of your national security team for weeks, even after knowing they lied to your vice president and exposed themselves to blackmail
   
• Refuse to release tax returns
   
• Hide the White House visitors’ list from the public
   
• Vacation at one of your private residences nearly every weekend

Use an unsecured personal cellphone

• Criticize specific businesses for dropping your family members’ products
   
• Review and discuss highly sensitive intelligence in a restaurant, and allow the Army officer carrying the “nuclear football” to be photographed and identified by name
   
• Obstruct justice
   
• Hire relatives for key White House posts, and let them meet with foreign officials and engage in business at the same time
   
• Promote family businesses on federal government websites
   
• Tweet, tweet, tweet
   
• Collude with members of Congress to try to shut down investigations of you and your associates
   
• Threaten military conflict with other nations in the middle of news interviews
   
• Compare the US intelligence community to Nazis
   
• Display complete ignorance about international relations, your own administration’s policies, American history and the basic structure of our system of government
   
• Skip daily intelligence briefings
   
• Repeat untruths
   
• Share highly classified information with a hostile foreign power without the source’s permission
   
• Lie

 

© 2017 The New York Times News Service