When Trump versus Clinton pits friend against friend

I looked at my friend and wondered if I should say something, and if so, what.

She had just told me she planned to vote for Donald Trump.

I hadn't seen this out-of-town friend in a long time and when we sat down the other day to catch up, we dove straight into what was on her mind, notably the recent struggles and troubles in her life. I was sad to see her so sad.

After a while, we turned to talking about work and family, hers and mine, and then there it was, bam, like an unexpected pothole, the unpleasant place where all conversational roads seem to lead these days:

Trump.

My first impulse when she said she liked him was to tell her why I don't. Instead, I asked her, an immigrant, a smart woman I admire, what she sees in him. I was genuinely curious.

He's a successful businessman, she said, so she thinks he'd be good for small businesses such as hers. She thought he would keep the country safe. And, she said, with a slightly sheepish shrug, she thought the country needed a tough man at the top.

In every election season, moments such as this arise. You discover that someone you like or love plans to vote for a candidate you disagree with or loathe. You weigh the worth of your relationship against the value of arguing and sometimes decide that the best thing to do is to change the subject.

But to those of us who feel that Donald Trump is dangerous in ways that go beyond ordinary partisan differences, changing the subject feels like a dereliction of duty.

To stay silent about a man who denigrates so many kinds of people, who seeds fear and division, feels downright cowardly.

Yes, I know. There are Trump supporters who feel the same way about Hillary Clinton.

And that's the quandary, whichever candidate you prefer: How much do you argue person to person over this election? When do you speak up? With whom? Do you have a moral obligation to speak out, even if it puts valuable relationships at risk?

As my friend talked about Trump, I wondered:

Should I refer her to the fact-checking site PolitiFact, which has shown that Trump has made far more false public statements than Hillary Clinton?

Or mention that Meg Whitman, the billionaire Republican CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprises, is reported to have likened him to the dictators Hitler and Mussolini?

At the time of our conversation, The New Yorker hadn't yet published an interview with the ghostwriter of Trump's best-selling autobiography, "The Art of the Deal," in which the writer, remorseful for making Trump look more appealing than he is, suggests the book should have been called "The Sociopath." If I'd known about that article at the time, I would have been tempted to bring it up.

But I hadn't come here to talk politics. I'd come to see my friend, who was in distress. So, I said mildly, "You know I feel differently."

I mentioned that a number of well-researched articles show that Trump's business success isn't as rosy as he makes it out to be. I said his ugly attitudes toward so many people feels, to me, un-American. Hillary Clinton, I said, is pretty tough.

I would have felt wrong saying nothing. In the circumstances, I would have felt wrong saying much more.

Many people have faced a similar quandary lately with someone — a friend, a relative — whose presidential preference seems abhorrent.

They've had to ask themselves: To speak or not to speak?

I heard one woman who despises Trump's beliefs say that in this election, for the first time, she's willing to break off friendships for political reasons because to do otherwise would feel like collaborating with evil.

I get that, and yet it's worth remembering something Barack Obama said at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, as he praised his Republican opponent, John McCain:

"One of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and each other's patriotism."

This country has a great ability to self-correct. It veers off course then lumbers forward toward something better. As hard as it is to believe on days when the news is dark with the terrible things people do and say, we live in a world that is safer and fairer than the one I was born into.

We owe it to ourselves to keep looking for ways to move in the right direction without demonizing the people we care for.

"We'll have a new president the next time I see you," my friend said as I was leaving.

"And our votes will cancel each other out," I replied.

We hugged.

Mary Schmich is a  columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Email, mschmich@tribune.com. You can follow her on twitter.com/maryschmich or contact her on facebook.com/maryschmich.