Elon Musk's "True Test of Character"

Let's compare how two presidents responded to near-assassination

“The true test of someone’s character,” Elon Musk recently declared at a Donald Trump rally, “is how they behave under fire.”

I don’t think that’s correct. In fact, I don’t think it’s remotely true. How someone reacts to being shot at tells us how they react to being shot at. It tells us nothing about their their thoughtfulness, their values, their honesty and integrity, their concern for others, their willingness to stand for principles, their steadfastness in the face of setbacks, and so much more.

But let’s set that aside and accept, for present purposes, that Musk’s “true test” is what he thinks it is. What does this “true test” tell us about Donald Trump?

Musk explained: “We had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs and another who was fist pumping after getting shot.” He reenacted the scene: “‘Fight, fight, fight!’ Blood coming down the face!”

So Elon Musk thinks Donald Trump’s true character was revealed in the moment when an assassin’s bullet clipped his ear. Trump fell. Secret Service agents rushed to move him to safety but Trump told them to stop and got up with a fist in the air, a moment captured in the instantly famous photo. “Fight, fight, fight!” he shouted.

This was the real Donald Trump, Musk would have us believe.

Courageous. Defiant. Fighting for the people.

That’s a bold claim for a 78-year-old man who lived most of his life under a spotlight and who not only failed to ever show physical or moral courage in his almost eight decades — he dodged the draft and called the avoidance of STDs “my personal Vietnam” — he once described in detail how he turned his back on a gravely injured old man because he finds the sight of blood icky.

But, again, we have generously assumed Elon Musk’s test is correct. So let’s assume this incident revealed the true Donald Trump.

Now let’s go to the other half of Musk’s statement.

“We had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs….” Musk is referring, of course, to Joe Biden. And he is treating Biden’s physical frailty as indicative of “character.” Which is, on its face, idiotic. But let’s not go there.

Instead, let’s read Musk’s statement literally: “We had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs…”

Yes, we did. And it’s not Joe Biden.

His name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Roosevelt contracted polio as a young man in 1921 — a year after he was the vice-presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket — and while he learned to prop himself up with metal braces, and perform an awkward shuffle with assistance, he could not climb a flight of stairs for the rest of his life. I suppose that in Musk’s judgement, Roosevelt was a weakling.

But Roosevelt also faced what Musk claims is the real test of character.

How did he handle it?

Roosevelt shortly before the assassination attempt.

Read this passage from David M. Kennedy’s Pulitzer-winning Freedom From Fear.

Perhaps deep within himself Roosevelt trembled occasionally with the common human palsies of melancholy or doubt or fear, but the world saw none of it. On February 15, 1933 [after he won the election of November 1932 but before he became president in March, 1933] he gave a memorable demonstration of his powers of self control. Alighting in Miami from an eleven-day cruise aboard Vincent Astor's yacht Nourmahal, FDR motored to Bar Front Park, where he made a few remarks to a large crowd. At the end of the brief speech, Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago stepped up to the side of Roosevelt's open touring car and said a few words to the president-elect. Suddenly a pistol barked from the crowd. Cermak doubled over. Roosevelt ordered the Secret Service agents, who were reflexively accelerating his car away from the scene, to stop. He motioned to have Cermak, pale and pulseless, put into the seat beside him. "Tony, keep quiet — don't move. It won't hurt you if you keep quiet," Roosevelt repeated as he cradled Cermak's limp body while the car sped to the hospital.

Cermak had been mortally wounded. He died within weeks, the victim of a deranged assassin who had been aiming for Roosevelt. On the evening of February 15, after Cermak had been entrusted to the doctors, [Raymond] Moley accompanied Roosevelt back to the Nourmahal, poured him a stiff drink, and prepared for the letdown now that Roosevelt was alone among his intimates. He had just been spared by inches from a killer's bullet and had held a dying man in his arms. But there was nothing — “not so much as the twitching of a muscle, the mopping of a brow, or even the hint of a false gaiety — to indicate that it wasn't any other evening in any other place. Roosevelt was simply himself — easy, confident, poised, to all appearances unmoved.”

Now let’s compare and contrast the two incidents. And the two men.

Many people — even fierce critics — have marvelled at Trump’s presence of mind in his response to a bullet nicking his ear. That’s reasonable. He did show extraordinary presence of mind. But presence of mind to do what?

He ordered the Secret Service agents to wait — so he could pose for the cameras and deliver a tagline which a roomful of Madison Avenue sharpies could not have improved on. Very simply, Donald Trump’s thoughts leapt with astonishing speed to his great lifelong passion — constructing and marketing images of Donald Trump. In that sense, the only difference between that moment, Trump’s absurd mugshot, and his “you’re fired” pose from The Apprentice is how quickly he came up with and executed the idea.

I suppose that judgment may have sounded cynical immediately after the shooting. But two days later came the Republican convention, a maudlin festival of Republicans recounting the sacred moment like Christians following the stations of the cross. They even wore bandages on their ears, like their saviour. Then the man himself emerged to declare that it was “too painful” to recall his near-assassination, so he would only do so this once — in great and vivid detail — but never again.

That was followed, naturally, by Trump talking about his near-assassination every chance he got. He even held a rally at the same spot where he was shot, the very rally where Musk claimed being shot is the true test of character.

And on the Trump campaign’s official website? There’s merch, of course. For a mere $35, you, too, can own a t-shirt of Donald Trump’s character being revealed by a would-be assassin’s bullet.

From sympathy to points in the polls to cash in the bank, Trump milked his near-assassination as if it were the season finale of The Apprentice.

Incidentally, another man was shot when Trump escaped the assassin’s bullet. He died. Convention organizers ensured there was a perfunctory nod in his direction, but beyond that, the poor man has effectively been written out of the Trump Show.

Franklin Roosevelt, too, ordered the Secret Service to wait after he was nearly assassinated. But not to pose and exhort his followers. Roosevelt wanted the bloody man stricken by his would-be assassin’s bullets to be put in his car with him. He cradled the man’s dying body. He comforted him.

Nor did Roosevelt speak of his near-murder afterward, even though he had a glorious opportunity to do so.

A little more than two weeks after the shooting, Roosevelt was sworn into office and he delivered his inaugural address. With all of America listening, Roosevelt didn’t say a word about the shooting. He didn’t talk about himself at all. America was in the darkest depths of the Great Depression and Roosevelt spoke only of America, and the suffering of Americans, and how he was certain that “this great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” Do not despair, he told Americans. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Well, would you look at that?

I think I’ve changed my mind about Elon Musk’s test. At least a little.

Being under fire really isn’t a good test of character. But what someone does after can be quite revealing.