Confidence in a leader who reads

Lincoln was my crush in junior high (still is, after Ryan Reynolds). But I don't take personal offense that Trump dissed him by saying the Civil War could have been avoided if Jackson (that swell ol' racist) had been president. Only liberal snobs, professors, and people with crushes on Lincoln care about this stuff, right?

Except that, shouldn't we hold our president to the same standard we hold our kids' social studies teacher to? For that matter, the same standard we hold our kids to?

Of all the quotes about Trump, the one that resonates the most with me, and that scares me the most, goes something like, "The problem isn't that he doesn't know, it's that he doesn't care to know."

If Trump read books, which, according to him, he doesn't, he'd know more. And reading doesn't just get you facts. Reading shows a curiosity about the world and its people. It shows an interest in different points of view, in walking in another's shoes.

A reader would be less likely to paint whole swaths of Democrats as the "enemy." A reader might be less inclined to call refugees and immigrants "poisonous snakes." A reader might understand that a person can be pro-life and pro-choice - that life is made up of a whole lot of gray, hardly any of it black and white, and real life is full of gut-wrenching decisions. A reader of, say, Civil War history might aspire to be like Lincoln and unite people rather than divide them. He might truly understand the American Constitution and grow humbled at the enormous honor he's been handed.

Even well-read presidents can't always keep us out of a war, as we know with Lincoln, but at least they're less likely to trip our way into one. So give me a reader over a non-reader any day of the week.

Jessica Vealitzek

Hawthorn Woods