Trump's refusal to take part in Wednesday's impeachment hearing reveals something telling about his personality

All of the president's most remarked-upon behaviors — disloyalty, dishonesty, unhinged braggadocio, a juvenile obsession with 'winning' — come back to one original trait

Winston Churchill once wrote (paraphrasing Samuel Johnson) that "courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities … because it is the quality which guarantees all others." One hardly has to agree with Churchill on much of anything to embrace that sentiment, as there isn't a single widely admired trait — honesty, loyalty, a willingness to sacrifice for others — that doesn't have its roots, to some degree, in courage.

If nothing else, though, the ascendance of Trumpism has forced us to reexamine long-held, self-evident truths. In this new, lurid light, Donald Trump's most ardent backers have found that up is down; black is white; NATO is obsolete; Russia is our ally; the president is mentally stable. It's topsy-turvy, all right.

But even as its bleak contours come into unsettling focus, this alternate reality offers occasional consolations, too: For instance, one might point to an oddly revealing corollary to Churchill's observation about courage. Namely, if courage in the olden days — say, before 2016 — was "the first of human qualities," then surely cowardice must be judged the first of Donald Trump's qualities today. After all, Trump's most remarked-upon traits and behaviors — unhinged braggadocio, disloyalty to everyone in his orbit, general dishonesty, a juvenile obsession with "winning," even it requires cheating — all of these and more clearly spring, or ooze, from that original weakness.

And for better or for worse, one doesn't have to look far to discover an embarrassment of evidence for this commander-in-chief's, and his minions', gutlessness.

As recently as Sunday, the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, informed House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler that neither Trump nor his attorneys would participate in Wednesday's scheduled impeachment hearing. Defending the refusal to appear with remarkably lame excuses — "an invitation to an academic discussion with law professors does not begin to provide the President with a semblance of a fair process," Cipollone wrote in his letter to Nadler — the White House offered a telling glimpse into Trump's essential timidity.

How do we square the White House's refusal to even pretend to defend Trump with his own silly boasts, like the much-mocked tweet of November 26 in which he claimed he "would love to have Mike Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mick Mulvaney and many others testify" before Congress?

Put simply, we can't square it, because, like similar poltroons down through the ages, the president asserts one thing when there is no danger of repercussions, and something else entirely when actual acknowledgment of this impeachment hearing threatens to unwind his presidency.

Consider a recent interview that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave to TIME magazine and European news outlets in which he said that, while he "never talked to [Trump] from the position of a quid pro quo," he also did not want Ukraine "to look like beggars … You have to understand. We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us … It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.”

Trump, being Trump, immediately twisted Zelensky’s comments into a turd pretzel, tweeting (in ungainly third-person) that Zelensky "just again announced that President Trump has done nothing wrong with respect to Ukraine and our interactions or calls."

That, I'd argue, is a lie born of a profound cynicism. Hey, at least Fox News is sure to parrot this nonsense! And if the great Anglo-Irish explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, was right when he claimed that "optimism is true moral courage," then what is Trump's own tired brand of cynicism but true moral cowardice?

The most striking aspect of Trump's timorousness, though, is that it's couched in a kind of desperate, showy toughness that crumbles under even cursory examination. Examples of the man's wimpdom are too numerous to count — but some classic lowlights include his reportedly bought-by-daddy draft deferments during the Vietnam War; his repeated self-abasement before a goon and foe like Putin; his downright creepy behavior toward women; his bullying of anyone who dares to criticize his administration (see: Marie Yovanovitch); his transparent, bellowing envy of — and awareness of his own shortcomings when compared with — Barack Obama, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi, and so many others. Must we go on?

In the end, like it or not — and countless people around the globe like it not one bit — Donald Trump is the most powerful person on the planet. Is it too much to ask that he sometimes temper that awesome power with some good old-fashioned courage?

Allow me to recommend a first step: Testify before Congress, sir, or at the very least allow your underlings to appear under oath. What's so scary about that?