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Trump: Stonewaller, Shape-Shifter, Liar

Ruth Marcus on

WASHINGTON -- The last few weeks have offered Americans a chilling glimpse of three faces of Donald Trump: the stonewaller, the shape-shifter and the liar.

Trump the stonewaller has been on display in his refusal to release his tax returns. "It's none of your business," Trump flatly told ABC's George Stephanopoulos when asked about his effective tax rate.

Stephanopoulos: "Yes or no, do you believe voters have a right to see your tax returns before they make a final decision?"

Trump: "I don't think they do. But I do say this, I will really gladly give them."

Sure, he'd be happy to -- except that he isn't. And it is our business. Voters are entitled to know this information about a candidate for president, a person who would help steer the nation's finances. For decades, presidential candidates have routinely made this material available.

It is astonishing that Trump believes he is exempt from this norm -- that a pending audit makes his returns less important to see, not more, or that he is not obliged to find some other way of providing the information, such as returns from earlier years or summary data for the years still under review.

 

Even more worrisome is what this high-handed approach augurs for a Trump presidency; to airily promise transparency while repeatedly failing to deliver. It is an iron law of politics that candidates do not become magically more forthcoming once in office. Their behavior on the campaign trail, when under pressure to satisfy voters, represents a better version of what they would do on the job.

Then there is Trump the shape-shifter, a man without fixed views, and whose policy proposals are mere opening gambits. What does he believe? What is a core principle, and what is up for negotiation?

"I'm allowed to change," Trump told Stephanopoulos on the minimum wage (he didn't want it raised, then he did, now maybe not). Certainly, flip-flopping is a chronic and common political condition; it can be evidence of open-mindedness, rather than craven politicking or ideological spinelessness.

Yet Trump's proclaimed "flexibility" is unsettling because it does not rest on an existing edifice of long-expressed conviction and recorded votes. When everything is a starting bid, how are voters supposed to judge -- or guess -- where Trump might end up?

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Copyright 2016 Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

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