He starts his column, titled That Seventh-Grade Bully Is Running for President, with this paragraph
Donald Trump displayed an excellent version of the stern squint in the presidential debate. Many of us men are familiar with this expression, because we practice it at age 13 in the hope that it will impress girls. It doesn’t, and we grow out of it — most of us, anyway.
follows that with a comparison with the gaze Clinton offered, one of which he writes that his wife informs him women always have to have that ready for the boorish behavior they encounter from so many men, before making clear his relief
What is thrilling is that Trump’s boorishness may be catching up to him.
Noting all the “confused or senseless” policies Trump has expounded that do not seem to undermine his campaign, he writes
Instead, his vulnerability seems to be something more elemental: He’s a jerk.
And of course, as is absolutely clear this week, beginning with but not limited to his performance during tthe debate, he is especially a jerk towards women.
That is shown by the plethora of times he interrupted and/or talked over Mrs. Clinton.
It includes his crass remark near the end of the debate about Rosie O’Donnell.
It certainly includes his performance on Fox and Friends the following morning.
And it is nothing new. Kristof reminds us then when in2005 Howard Stern posed a question of how Trump would react were his wife badly mangled and disfigured, whether he would stay with her, Trump’s response was to inquire if her breast were okay. Really.
Before I go any further, that remark, even if Trump had intended it as a (very bad joke), is emblematic of why women might recoil from Trump. First, too many women experience the fear of loss of a breast due to cancer, and far too many women know peers who have suffered it. Then there is the basic fact of what happens when one ages. It is a remark that reduces a woman to visible features, and given Trump has twice traded in wives for younger women, serves as a reminder of something not necessarily attractive about his approach to the opposite gender.
Returning to Kristof, his next two paragraphs putsthings very much in context:
Something about Trump is paradigmatic of the most atrocious kind of seventh-grade boy: The boasts about not doing homework, the habit of blaming others when things go wrong, the penchant for exaggerating everything into the best ever, the braggadocio to mask insecurity about size of hands or genitals, the biting put-downs of others, the laziness, the self-absorption, the narcissism, the lack of empathy — and the immaturity that reduces a woman to her breasts.
O.K., now I’ve just insulted 13-year-old boys by comparing them to the man who may become our next president. Sorry, kids, most of you are far better than that!
He connects this with other aspects of Trump’s performance — in the debate on taxes — and then mentions two ads by Clinton he thinks effective, one where he mimics the disability of a fellow New York Times writer, and the other that juxtaposes remarks by Trump reducing women to their looks with images of adolescent girls looking at themselves in the mirror. Interesting of when the latter ad was released, just a few days before the debate. That means many of us have seen it in rotation immediately after discussions on cable news about Trump and Alicia Machado.
Kristof notes that even were Trumps behavior more mature, his policies would still be dangerous, and offers some explanation as to why.
We encounter expressions like
his troglodyte views on gender
and
his oafish policies
and
his churlish manner
before Kristof reminds us
We already run into enough jerks in daily life, so why would we want one as our head of state?
His conclusion is biting:
Middle school is the wrenching, jungle stage of life that we all must struggle through. Why would we subject ourselves to a “leader” who is permanently in the seventh grade?
Indeed.