A man in a New Hampshire crowd last week asked Donald Trump what we were going to do about all these Muslim training camps in the country.
The man perhaps was conflating Muslim religion and terrorism, as well as religious assemblies and criminal cells.
But those weren’t his only mistakes.
The man asserted in the course of his query that President Barack Obama is a Muslim and not a real American.
Trump was plainly discomforted by the man’s assertion. But he did not do as John McCain had done in 2008, which was tell a man saying something similar that Obama was an American, albeit one with whom he disagreed.
Trump addressed the question only by saying people are appropriately worried about domestic terrorist training camps. He didn’t correct or challenge the man on Obama’s religion or birthplace, a failure that has set off a bit of a fury.
Should Trump have corrected the man or shouldn’t he?
Trump has since said he bears no moral obligation to correct questioners or defend Obama. He has since said the press would have assailed him for opposing free speech if he had presumed to correct or challenge the man, which, I must say, I doubt.
He has since said that he has many Muslim friends and might put one or some on his Cabinet.
Other Republican presidential candidates have taken sides on the question. The more conservative ones, no doubt sensitive to surveys showing that 40 percent of Republicans believe Obama to be a Muslim, join Trump. The more mainstream ones, sensing a need to avoid the appearance of extremism, cite a responsibility to correct the record in such cases.
Rick Santorum, a scowling right-winger, said he wouldn’t have corrected the man because it’s not his role to argue with questioners or defend the president and that the biased media handle Obama’s defense quite diligently.
Ted Cruz, positioning himself to be the new Trump if Trump fades, said he was not going to be lured by the media into a food fight.
Lindsey Graham said a man talking to him at a rally used the “N” word in regard to Obama, and that he told the man he didn’t want his vote. That’s leadership, he said.
It could be argued that it conceivably is easier to say you don’t want a vote when you don’t have any in the first place.
Chris Christie said it is a responsibility of leadership to set the record straight and tell the questioner that the president is an American citizen and Christian.
Jeb Bush remarked in a speech that Obama is a citizen and Christian, albeit one with whom he disagrees and who tries to destroy those who disagree with him.
It seems to me that more people try to destroy Obama than the other way around. But at least Jeb had a generous and non-extreme instinct.
It surely won’t surprise anyone that I side with Graham, Christie and Bush and fault Trump, Santorum and Cruz.
It shouldn’t be a hard call. A leader must lead, not shrink from a question that defies basic principle and thus cries out for corrective context.
But it might surprise some that I would have introduced skepticism and nuance into my answer to the man, largely owing to a nuanced and skeptical view of religion.
On the theory that it would be a good exercise for all of us to ponder what we would have said and done in Trump’s position, I will now relate the carefully formulated response that I can only hope I would have offered instinctively and extemporaneously:
“Sir, before I answer that question, I need to correct one thing you said and add context to it and to another assertion you made.
“First, President Obama has produced a long-form birth certificate proving that he is an American citizen.
“It is one thing — indeed a fair and healthy thing — to assert in our public dialogue and debate that the president does not reflect your view of the American ideal. We can and should discuss and argue about what the American ideal properly is and who best exemplifies it. That’s an election.
“But we must not make wholly inaccurate statements defying the plain public record. Nor should we say that a man is any less an American citizen because he fails to share our American ideal.
“As for your statement that President Obama is a Muslim, I must tell you that he insists he is not and that he has been a member of a church that is Protestant Christian.
“It is true that President Obama’s father was a Muslim. But we are not bound by the religious affiliations of our fathers. My own father was a fundamentalist Protestant Christian. I am, quite to the opposite, a newspaper columnist.
“Whether the president is an actual Christian, or whether any of the hundreds of millions of professed Christians worldwide are actual Christians, is a matter not of what one professes, but of what one holds in his heart and what one lives and what one demonstrates. And the only appropriate judge of that is a higher one.
“Not all professed Muslims are terrorists. Most aren’t. Not all professed Christians are, in fact, Christians, it seems to me, though I speak of no one specifically, for that would be to judge. I offer only what I’ll call a general and unprovable personal opinion.
“Well, let me correct and contradict myself to this extent, sir: What you said there in your question … it was not very Christian, in my opinion.
“Perhaps the president, if he is a real Christian, can forgive you.”
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.