Hi readers:

One of the things our ASTU class sometimes focused on is the genres. Professor Luger explained, that a genre can be any types of established way of speaking, writing, or just communicating. With that in mind, I started to observe and intentionally look for examples of genres. Eventually, one genre emerged from my news feed: being presidential. A phrase constantly used by the media, and a standard for impeachment.

The phrase “presidential” was thrown around for quite a bit during the 2016 election cycle, mostly when criticizing Donald Trump. Being presidential was never as important an issue as it is now, mainly because all the real contenders for the office of the president stayed within the previous boundaries of this genre by acting the same way their predecessors did. They avoided vulgarities, they remained calm even during the worst of times, providing the nation with a voice of sense and sanity, they did not go after any individual entities for the most part and had always kept a healthy distance from the media (news or entertainment). Even in the most casual settings, their humor was exclusively limited to “dad jokes”. This image was well maintained in public for most of, if not all, the times. This particular way of conducting themselves was a major part of a president’s identity, the presidential conduct was one of the few things that were agreed upon across party lines. Presidents before the emergence of Trump all choose to conduct themselves this way no matter democrat or republican.

This has all changed since the last election. Trump has defied, in almost an intentional way, all the expectations for a presidential candidate. During his rallies or in his tweets, he called out numerous individual private citizens by name, attacking their character, he provoked, even encouraged violence, he called his opponent degrading names, he let his sexual innuendoes fly, and etc, all in public. Every day, he occupies the news headlines by various kinds of outrageous remarks, for several months, and counterintuitively, by saying or tweeting these things, he is only gathering more and more support, rather than disqualifying himself. When he was inaugurated as president, he kept acting the same way he did during the campaign. By doing that, he changed how the presidential genre was understood and perceived, and consequently changed the meaning of being a president.

Donald Trump’s example showed us how one person can influence an entire genre. Since he was elected, more and more of this type of unconventional candidate started gaining traction, within his administration, outrages comments has somehow become a norm. A genre that helped establish the respect for the office of president has changed drastically to become a tool for attention and perhaps distractions. I believe this has created a toxic environment for constructive policy discussion and civil discourse, and that a clear boundary for the presidential genre needs to be drawn clearly to create a better political environment.