Donald Trump, TV reality star

I can find plenty to criticize about Donald Trump, and I find the prospect of his becoming president, as well as the thought of so many people rallying behind him, frightening. Yet I also find the dismissal of Donald Trump as a "reality TV star," a label often thrown about by his closest rivals like Jeb Bush, to be disingenuous.  All modern politicians are products of the media in one way or another, and it could be argued that politicians use TV when it's to their advantage and dismiss it when it is not. Bush's particular contempt for Trump as a "TV star" seems to stem from his own frustrations with his lack of telegenic presence and the fact that Trump's controlled media exposure has pushed him to the front of the race. (Meanwhile, Ted Cruz accepts endorsements from reality TV stars, a truly strange sign of the times.)

Such dismissals based on former roles, while they might be construed as fair criticisms of a politician's record or experience, are really constructed on the decidedly non-American idea that we cannot remake ourselves. What of the past lives of other presidents? The conservatives' favorite icon, Ronald Reagan, after all, was a former movie star. Actually, he wasn't really much of a movie star, but was rather a second-rate movie actor who starred mostly in throwaway movies like Bedtime for Bonzo  (not a bad movie for 60-year-old comic fluff). He reinvented himself as a politician and president, in his second life and career. America is the place of such reinventions and second acts.

What about other presidents? Sure, most of them were businessmen, lawyers, generals, or career politicians, but Gerald Ford worked as a fashion model in his 20s. Here he is on the cover of Cosmo.

Carter famously worked as a peanut farmer (which his critics used as a punchline and his supporters argued made him well connected to the common man; perhaps a similar connection to commonness could be said for Trump). Lyndon Johnson was a Houston high-school teacher. Truman was a haberdasher, and Teddy Roosevelt, generally a bad-ass, was an all-around adventurer and author. I'm sure there are others.

The point is that the U.S. presidency should not exist as a rarefied position of power that is achieved only through ascending through elitist hoops of predetermined experiences. The presidency as a unique American office is not an identity but is something that a person must define on his own terms, within the parameters of the Constitution of course. Trump would mostly likely be a terrible president not because he starred on TV, but because he is devoid of substantive ideas and relies too heavily on politically incorrect language and dangerous scapegoating. Though it makes for a good soundbite, it isn't enough to simply dismiss him as superficial based on a previous job. It's just trading one superficial jab for another.