Hillary Clinton’s recent “basket of deplorables” remark was accurate in at least one respect: If we were honest about it, the label she pasted on half of Donald Trump’s supporters could cover just about all of us at one time or another.

By now everyone has read about the audio recording that surfaced Friday in which Trump boasted 11 years ago — “locker-room talk,” he later called it — about molesting women.

Anticipating a Clinton recoil at Sunday’s Town Hall debate, Trump staged a pre-emptive news conference with women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual improprieties. They said Hillary Clinton was fully complicit in discrediting their claims and damaging their reputations in the defense of her husband.

Trump’s intent was clear: to blunt any display of moral outrage as hypocrisy.

The thing is, when it comes to hypocrisy, we’re all in that basket.

The recording of Trump complicates any attack on Hillary Clinton for her complicity in the affairs of Bill Clinton; likewise, Clinton backers need to tread lightly on Trump, given the menagerie of accusations in their candidates’ past.

Pennsylvanians have additional reasons to navigate cautiously through these troubled waters, still rippling from our own “porngate” scandal that unseated Kathleen Kane as attorney general along with judges and other ranking state officials. Hundreds more remain apprehensive as Kane’s successor, Bruce Beemer, considers how to release information gathered by Kane in her investigation of a pornographic e-mail exchange she discovered circulating on government computers.

Locker-room talk, it seems, permeates keystone courtrooms as well as locker rooms.

But what about locker-room talk? Inquiring minds demand to know exactly what the sports guys are discussing in there. TV news reporters, microphone in hand, march straight in and demand an answer.

Of course the answer is simply: “We don’t talk dirty like Trump.” What did you think they’d say?

What nonsense. Don’t waste the viewer’s time. The things that are said in a locker room — that is, spoken in private — are meant to remain there.

A conservative radio talk show host mocked the indignation, daring to mention 80 million U.S. sales of the bondage novel “Fifty Shades of Grey.” That prompted “Fifty Shades” author E.L. James to reply that her book is fiction. But Trump’s claim of molestation turns out to be fiction, too — it never happened, he said during Sunday’s debate.

There’s that memorable line by Col. Jessup in the 1992 movie A few good men: “You can’t handle the truth.”

In the movie, Jessup says this next: “Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? ... I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. ... You have the luxury of not knowing what I know ... and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.”

The bigger picture seems to be this: the sum of all details is not the truth: Trump withholds his tax returns; Clinton hides her medical records and 33,000 e-mails; Wiki-leaks is intent on releasing the Democratic National Committees e-mail archives and the DNC has suggested the Russian government is sabotaging the election in Trump’s favor.

The truth is, Thomas Jefferson had Sally Hemings; FDR had Lucy Mercer; Grover Cleveland had Maria Halpin; JFK had Marilyn. And that’s all beside the point, having nothing to do with the presidency.

Lost in all the distracting details are the key qualifications required of a presidential candidate. It would seem an overriding challenge — and opportunity — for both candidates to re-establish a foundational definition of who they are and what they plan to accomplish if elected.

It’s a thought to keep in mind as we consider our choices for president.