Campaign 2016: Where's the love?

Esquire Magazine calls Donald Trump a "narcissist who needs our pity." The July 13, 2015, article by Stephen Marche refers to the Republican front-runner as having all nine traits of a narcissist, as identified in the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness (DSM-IV). They include having a "grandiose sense of self-importance," being "preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success," and feeling "a sense of entitlement."

The narcissist characteristic that disqualifies Trump from any public-service job is his lack of empathy. Trump is far from the only heartless Presidential contender, however. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has an "honesty problem," according to the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza in an August 20, 2015, article. Cillizza cites a recent poll by Quinnipiac University indicating that only one in three people in the swing states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania consider Clinton "honest and trustworthy."

By the way, the only other Presidential candidate with ratings for honesty and trustworthiness as low as Clinton's is Trump.

The Huffington Post's Candy Leonard writes in a September 10, 2015, article that the media is threatened by Bernie Sanders' authenticity. Leonard distinguishes Sanders as the only candidate for either party who demonstrates compassion and integrity. When you add up authenticity, compassion, and integrity, you get morality, according to Leonard. The media is just as threatened by challenges to the status quo as the rest of the big-business interests that currently call all the shots in Washington and on Wall Street.

Win or lose, Sanders has done us all a favor by injecting a sense of morality in the Presidential race. For that alone, Bernie deserves to be shown some love. Criticize his social-reform ideas all you want (as Fortune's Ben Geier does in a September 15, 2015, article), but you can't deny the man's got a heart as big as his native Brooklyn.

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