Photo by Cynthia Larsen

Jan 5, 2026

In Defense of the Incredibly Offensive

Did we elect a lousy leader or a lousy decorator?

By Ed Goldman

While saying I’m not a fan of our current president takes the concept of understatement to such subterranean depths it may catch fire, I do have to say that he gets vilified for things he wasn’t elected to do. These would include the following: 

  1. Interior decoration and landscape architecture. Sure, the limitations of his color palette (gold, orange and red) as well as his aesthetic when it comes to a carefully tended rose garden’s serenity make the words “gaudy” and “barbaric” sound aspirational. But when the American people elected him I rather doubt they were thinking, “At last! A leader who understands casual elegance, pastels and horticulture!”  
Edgy Cartoon

Fast feud

  1. Corralling his fluctuating weight. Well, who doesn’t have that problem by the time you get to a certain age? Sure, Joe Biden looked a hell of a lot svelter in crisp golf shirts and creased slacks, but the effect was unfortunately mitigated by his brain turning to vanilla pudding. At least Trump has tremendous stamina. So, I’m sure, do pronghorn antelopes, horses and ostriches. And we don’t expect any of them to know how to remodel, diet or accessorize their ensembles, do we? 
  2. Staying awake when Dr. Mehmet Oz is talking. Listen, I interviewed that jasper a few years ago for my daily column in the Sacramento Business Journal. And if I hadn’t siphoned a pot of coffee into my veins before and while doing so, I’m sure I’d have begun to slump noticeably, too. And besides, Trump had just country-hopped for more than a week, ending a dozen wars and setting a land speed record for converting onetime global allies into trade-war enemies. Think you can accomplish all of that with so little sleep? Let me put it this way: If you snooze, you lose. But to snooze isn’t news.
  1. Having cool hair. The U.S. Presidents who did have really cool hair were John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. That’s two out of 45, or roughly 4.444 percent of them. Biden sported a transplant that never quite worked unless you were looking straight at him. Eisenhower was a cueball, Ford was close and Truman had the sort of regular-boy’s-cut he probably got from his hometown barber shop/candy store/drug dispensary. We rarely gave any thought to Nixon’s coiffure, did we—not when his eyebrows, nose and two o’clock shadow were so much fun to concentrate on? So, okay. I’ll allow that Trump looks like he’s wearing an orange washcloth. And sometimes, when he’s not caught in the breeze generated by the helicopter blades he has to shout over so he doesn’t have to answer any questions (one of Reagan’s best tricks), his hair can be almost puffy: less orange washcloth, more dreamsickle loofah. But let’s be fair. JFK frequently brushed a nagging forelock away from his forehead—which was his version of stalling with an “uh” when he got a difficult question—and Reagan’s pomade quantity could probably have quenched an oil shortage. 
  2. Exercising civility. While I sometimes reach for my smelling salts when Trump starts name-calling, his followers didn’t elect and then re-elect him to be Emily Post, Amy Vanderbilt or Dana Carvey’s Church Lady. They wanted him to fix the economy, slow down illegal immigration, strengthen our alliances, and reduce crime. Now, one out of four isn’t that bad a record. If he were a baseball player, Trump would have a .250 batting average, which is and was good enough to keep the L.A. Dodgers’ Enrique Hernandez and the late Jimmy Wynn on the job.  

So let’s be fair. And what’s so tacky about wearing a loofah while lounging at home, anyway?

Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).