Rick Rosner On, 2: Trump, Wholesome Presidents, and American Political Decorum

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Personal SubStack

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/06/10

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner examine whether American presidents can be called wholesome, contrasting personal decorum with political judgment. Rosner discusses Trump, Biden, Obama, Carter, Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Truman, and FDR, arguing that presidents traditionally built public images around patriotism, competence, empathy, or fortitude. The conversation critiques Trump’s zero-sum politics and considers how scandal, symbolism, and institutional responsibility shape presidential legitimacy in American civic life.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: President Donald Trump turns 80 on June 14, 2026.

Rick Rosner: Yes. He became the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game. Other presidents have attended NBA games, but this appearance disrupted a Finals game because of added security requirements.

Outdoor watch parties around Madison Square Garden were also affected by the security measures. After he arrived at the game, images circulated online that appeared to show him with his eyes closed, though the White House disputed claims that he had fallen asleep.

Trump is an old man, and he often seems less interested in the ordinary work of helping Americans than in spectacle, grievance, and political combat. He repeatedly claims California elections are fraudulent because the state takes time to count ballots, but the length of California’s vote count is not evidence of fraud. It reflects the state’s election rules, mail-in voting, and verification procedures.

Trump is the president least concerned with doing anything for Americans in our lifetimes, and possibly since before the Civil War. Every president I can think of, even some of the worst ones, such as Andrew Johnson, tried to advance some agenda they thought mattered for America. Trump’s agenda is essentially self-interest. It becomes difficult to talk about him because every new thing he does feels like a variation on things he has already done.

Jacobsen: Has there ever been an entirely wholesome president, or have most had some form of scandal?

Rosner: Let’s run through some presidents. Biden was an institutionalist with more national-level political experience than any president before him. He served in the Senate from 1973 to 2009 and as vice president from 2009 to 2017, so he entered the presidency with more than four decades of high-level federal experience. He got the United States through a difficult period, including supply-chain disruption, inflation, and the aftermath of COVID.

When Biden left office, the U.S. economy was comparatively strong among advanced economies, especially by growth and employment measures. But Biden made serious errors. The Afghanistan withdrawal was one. Trump’s administration signed the Doha Agreement with the Taliban, under which the United States agreed to withdraw all forces by May 2021. Biden extended that timeline, then completed the withdrawal in August 2021. Still, he owned the final execution, and it was chaotic.

He also erred by not speaking to the American people enough. He and his staff kept him too hidden. If he had acknowledged that he was aging and would sometimes sound old, and if he had spoken to the public even a fraction as often as Trump does, he could have shown that he was still largely competent. The disastrous 2024 debate changed public perception. Biden and his team cited a cold, fatigue, and recent international travel. The cough-syrup theory is speculation, so it should not be presented as fact.

He had limited contact with the public, so the debate became the image many people remembered. In that sense, he damaged his own presidency, hurt the Democrats’ chances, and helped pave the way for Trump.

Biden was accused of corruption because Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. That was politically damaging and ethically problematic. However, no conclusive public evidence proved that Joe Biden took bribes or kickbacks from Burisma. Biden was relatively wholesome personally, but he made serious political and administrative errors.

Obama was about as personally wholesome as modern presidents get, but he was conflict-averse. I think he felt that, as the first Black president, he could not be seen as the angry Black man. As a result, he avoided certain confrontations and got played by Republicans. Key & Peele satirized that dynamic. But in personal scandal terms, Obama had no major sexual scandal.

Biden also had no proven sexual scandal. Tara Reade accused him, and he denied the allegation. Her credibility became heavily contested, and she later moved to Russia and sought Russian citizenship. That does not prove the allegation false by itself, but it is part of the public record around the case.

Reagan, in personal terms, was not known as a womanizer. Biden and Obama were not known for extramarital affairs. Clinton was. As far as I know, George W. Bush was personally wholesome after his earlier drinking years. He became born-again and projected personal decency, though I think he was taken advantage of by Dick Cheney and others. So I do not think “wholesome” is the right criterion for evaluating a president. We have had plenty of personally wholesome presidents. Jimmy Carter was about as wholesome as they come.

Jacobsen: What factors matter more than wholesomeness? People usually think of apple pie, the anthem, and patriotism.

Rosner: We have seen what Trump has done to the presidency. Trump has no standards of decorum. He is not a symbol of America’s better angels; he embodies many of the worst ones. Almost every other president had an evident love for America, even deeply flawed or corrupt presidents. Nixon was caught in serious misconduct and may have been the shiftiest president before Trump, but Nixon still seemed to love America in his own distorted way.

Nixon taped his Oval Office conversations and had terrible things to say about many groups, including antisemitic remarks. Lyndon Johnson also recorded many conversations, and earlier presidents recorded in different ways. Nixon, however, installed his own sound-activated White House taping system in 1971.

Johnson said terrible things privately, but he also pushed through landmark civil rights legislation. Every president before Trump tried, to some extent, to act as a living symbol of American values, even when they failed badly.

Nixon’s famous Checkers speech came in 1952, not 1960. He was Eisenhower’s running mate and faced allegations involving an $18,000 political expense fund. He went on television, denied corruption, talked about his family’s modest means, mentioned that his wife Pat wore cloth coats rather than fur coats, and said the family would keep a cocker spaniel named Checkers. The speech saved his place on the ticket.

In his damaged way, Nixon wanted to do right by America. He hated many of his opponents, but he also listened to voters at times. He created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, and launched what became known as the war on drugs, though that last policy was far less successful and deeply damaging.

Reagan, whom many people see as a precursor to Trump in some ways, signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, the most comprehensive immigration reform since 1952. He did not build his politics around abusing immigrants in the way Trump does. He tried to create a workable system.

As an actor and former cowboy-movie figure, Reagan knew how to symbolize America. He could get on a horse with the sunset behind him and make people feel good about the country. At the same time, his administration was involved in Iran-Contra. Some of that reflected his own choices; some reflected officials under him running amok. Reagan publicly announced his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1994, years after leaving office, so any claim about symptoms while he was president should be treated cautiously.

Harding is another example. He may have been weak or inattentive, and his cabinet was involved in major corruption. Wholesomeness can be one aspect of being an upstanding president, but it can also work against you.

People mocked Jimmy Carter for being pious. Playboy used to run serious, long-form interviews with public figures, and Carter gave one in 1976 while running for president. He said he had committed adultery in his heart, meaning he had experienced lust while remaining physically faithful to his wife.

Jacobsen: He said that to Playboy?

Rosner: Yes. The Playboy interview was a serious journalistic interview, not a sexual one. But people mocked him for being so morally earnest that he considered lustful thoughts about women other than his wife to be a sin.

His wholesomeness hurt him politically. He told Americans they had to conserve energy. In his February 2, 1977 energy address, he wore a cardigan and urged Americans to save energy, including by lowering thermostats. The commonly cited figure from that message is 65 degrees during the day and 55 at night, not 68. People mocked him for it. He came across as weak to many voters.

Then Reagan came in with “It’s morning again in America,” the 1984 campaign message. He offered a more optimistic and assertively masculine image of the presidency. Reagan was personally wholesome in many ways, though he was the first divorced and remarried president. He did not have the same public image of sexual appetite that Clinton later did.

There were salacious claims about Nancy Reagan in Kitty Kelley’s biography, but those should be treated as unverified allegations from a scandal-oriented book, not as established fact. More broadly, Hollywood’s casting-couch culture was real, and sexual exploitation in entertainment existed long before the MeToo era. But specific anecdotes should not be presented as fact without sourcing.

Every president until Trump had at least some sense of presidential presence, decorum, and symbolic responsibility. Trump represents, to those who dislike him, some of the worst American instincts: scam before being scammed, dominate before being dominated, and treat politics as a zero-sum fight. Previous presidents often promoted the idea that Americans become greater by working together. Trump promotes the idea that his side should get behind him so they can crush the people against them. It is a much more zero-sum politics.

Jacobsen: Is it zero-sum politics plus ruthless aggressiveness toward that aim, rather than simply zero-sum thinking?

Rosner: Yes. For some presidents, wholesomeness worked. Reagan’s public wholesomeness helped him, even though it hid shady conduct within his administration. Carter’s wholesomeness hurt him. Clinton and George W. Bush came across as friendly, jolly, approachable men. Bush was the guy many voters wanted to have a beer with. Clinton said, “I feel your pain,” and came across as empathetic. That quality also fit his sexual scandals, because the same charm that made him seem empathetic could also be seen as part of how he pursued women. Many voters forgave him.

The mix is different for every president. Until Trump, a president generally built his image from a set of positive attributes. Nixon had many negatives, certainly more than any president in my lifetime before Trump. He was “Tricky Dick,” and many people found him untrustworthy. But he still had broad support: in 1972, he won reelection by carrying 49 states. I would have to look more closely at what voters thought they were getting with Nixon.

Working backward: Eisenhower was a war hero, a quietly competent man, and physically vulnerable at times, including a major heart attack in 1955. He presided over an outwardly calm era, though the Cold War could have annihilated everyone and many serious problems were buried beneath the surface.

Kennedy was a war hero with great hair who cultivated youth, athleticism, and family-man imagery, even though he had serious health problems and was involved in extramarital relationships. Truman was deeply unpopular late in his presidency; Gallup recorded him at 22 percent approval in February 1952, the lowest in its presidential approval polling. He was blamed for inflation, labor conflict, corruption concerns, and the Korean War, though his historical reputation later improved. He tried to project the image of a straight shooter.

FDR represented fortitude. He governed while using leg braces and a wheelchair because of paralysis, and he used radio to speak directly to Americans through his fireside chats. He did not do those every week; he delivered 30 of them between 1933 and 1944. They helped him build trust with the public.

Every president had a different mix of positive attributes that America embraced, or that the president hoped America would embrace. Trump, in his second term, is the king of not caring about institutional expectations. I would not say he has a fragmented consciousness in a clinical sense, and I would avoid medical diagnosis from a distance. But he has no consistent worldview. He says whatever comes into his mind in the moment. There is little overarching governing philosophy giving structure to what he says from one moment to the next.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Rick.

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