A Lesson for Korean Politicians To Learn from Trump’s Inelegant Comments

The second presidential debate was televised on Oct. 9, 2016, during which Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump faced off in the most vulgar battle ever. Donald Trump’s taped sex-talk of kissing and groping women without consent was on the chopping block, and Hillary Clinton’s husband Bill Clinton’s sex scandal was brought up for discussion. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump exchanged no formal greetings, only rough attacks. In response to Clinton’s attack that he is not fit to be president, “because he has also targeted immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, POWs, Muslims, and so many others,” Trump came back at her with a threat that “you’d be in jail [for the email scandal]” if he was president.

Although CNN released the poll results, which show that 57 percent of debate watchers believe Clinton won, as opposed to 34 percent for Trump, the second presidential debate, in the absence of visions or philosophies, was grim enough for one to say that neither of them actually came out the winner.

It was Donald Trump who turned the U.S. presidential election, scheduled for Nov. 8, 2016, into a mud fight. He has degraded the dignity of politics by constantly dropping crude comments about women, the market economy and races. As Donald Trump’s lewd taped remarks about women were released on Oct. 7, 2016, after allegations had been raised that he might have avoided paying federal income taxes, even Republican leaders have withdrawn endorsements of him and have called for him to step down as the nominee. Donald Trump’s nomination, despite his numerous vulgar comments and eccentric behaviors, reflects American voters’ dissatisfaction with the old politics: the middle and lower class, who are discontented with and outraged at the economic polarization rippling through the U.S., have turned to a new form of politician.

Their vague hopes run in the complete opposite direction. Trump has become a risk to the global economy as he lacks a filter for his extreme ideas, such as a renegotiation of the terms of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA, pulling the U.S. out of the WTO, and branding China a currency manipulator. Some even predict that if he is elected, the world’s financial markets will be upended, using the term “Trump risk.”

We should not consider the reality, where an abstract hope for clear and inexorable politics becomes a drama filled with vulgar remarks, as simply other people’s business. We, too, have many politicians who try to show off how clear they are and try to appeal to voters by making crude comments, shouting and swearing. If they are not promptly controlled, our own presidential election next year may become an arena of blunt remarks and indecency instead of visions. A lesson must be learned from Donald Trump’s case.