Are voters reliable judges of character?
This is the dirtiest and meanest Presidential campaign in my lifetime. Worse than the Willie Horton ad leveled by George W. H. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988 where antiblack feeling was drummed up because Dukakis as governor of Massachusetts had left on parole a convict who reoffended. Just one and tube first Bush must have held his nose about what he was convinced to do. Not Lyndon Johnson unleashing the daisy petals ad and invoking nuclear war if Goldwater was elected in 1964, and a declaration by psychiatrists that Goldwatger was mentally unstable. Just a few attacks, the petals had withdrawn after it was aired after only one time. Nor even Richard Nixon, who had associated his California campaigns with slanders on opponents being Communist tainted, presenting the checkers speech in 1952 to counter his having a slush fund, by clothing his wife in a Republican cloth coat and a refusal to give back the dog checkers that his daughters loved, himself clothed in Republican conventional respectability. This time is much worse. J. D. Vance says that it is alright to make up and repeat stories about migrants who happen to be legal but black as eating pets so as to show just how awful illegal immigration is. And a trump close supporter saying the white house would smell like curry if Kamala was elected and that Jews would be responsible if Israel was destroyed if Harris was elected, greatly exaggerating the two to three percent of Jewish American voters and American Jews in high places scrupulously and easily holding their allegiance to the United States even if having sentimental associations with Israel. When John McCain jousted with Barack Obama neither suggested the other was a threat to democracy and both current candidates charge that, one of them unfortunately true, the election an existential threat to America for the first time since 1860.
Even less combustible issues are discouraging. The Democratic Primary candidates in 2020, Harris, Sanders and Warren, were to the left of Joe Biden. Now, Harris is to the right of Biden, though not by very much, the best example of that in Harrfis wanting to raise capital income taxes by a little, less than what Biden has proposed. Trump was in favor of reversing Roe v. Wade and said so proudly but is now backpedaling because the issue is inflaming women. Not even the appearance of principle, just as his preferring a border issue rather than a border solution, as he said so overtly to Republican Senators who scuttled a border bill at his behest.This year found, this year as a whole, anti-Israel cohorts tinged with antisemitism has become prevalent and not only on campuses. The White House press corps displays some of that. A correspondent at a meeting asks whether their own beepers (which they probably don’t have as they are antiquated) asks if their cell phones will blow up. Jean Pierre, perhaps because of her discretion as press secretary does not quip as I would, “Not unless you got your instrument from Hezbellah which was a weapon of war sent to underlings so as to communicate about planned battle action, and therefore liable to enemy intervention so as to disrupt military communications. Why were parents giving weapons of war to their children?
There is an asymmetry between the parties. Democrats don't castigate one another while Republicans say just awful things about one another. The worst Democratic candidates say is minor. Harris criticized Biden on bussing however much she misrepresented his position which was that local districts were free to allow bussing, and that is what happened when Harris was bussed as a child in Berkeley. Obama used his irony and wit to say of Hillary that she was “appealing enough”. So Biden made up with Harris and made her Vice President and Hillary supported Obama with good conscience. Republican candidates go for the jugular, as when George H. W. Bush as a candidate called Reagan’s economic policy “voodoo economics” and Vance said Trump was like Hitler. Those shouldn’t be passed off as words that become meaningless when the campaign is over for they lead to a cynical view that nothing politicians say can be taken seriously. Bush just allowed himself to be angry and say his words were only then once he became the Vice Presidential nominee and Vance says he learned to favor trump because of his administration as president though, obviously, being hitler is a character trait that doesn’t go away even if good administration follows unless he is a very bad judge of character, which is also a weighty matter for someone running for very high office.
The columnists are all wondering under the guise of what they think the candidates should do is what they think the voters will do. What will motivate Harris or Trump to clinch the deal? What will Harris say to show is her purpose as president rather than just an alternative to Trump? Voters want more than that. But I disagree.The real question I ask is why that choice is not obvious. Whatever Harfris’s shortcomings, whether she flip flops or is not specific on policy, she is not a mean spirited insurrectionist who would sell America to the highest bidder and is afraid to confront any of America’s adversaries, he someone less likely to drop the bomb than to cave in at any treaty.
Consider the current events which make Harris a clear choice. The Biden Administration has been dealing with two major developments in the past few days and has been handling them professionally: they are providing hurricane assistance to the southeast United States and using the American military to assist Iranian missiles against Israel. American leaders are well informed and coordinating with one another and with their allies, saying very little about planks forward, which should be their posture, but as accurate as possible as the facts as they know them. That is how a responsible government operates and by and large has operated in most Democratic and Republican administrations, sober rather than bellicose, measured rather than precipitous. And what does Trump do? He lied that Biden had not spoken to the Republican Governor of Georgia who himself said that Biden had given Georgia whatever he wanted. Trump lied about covid and recently about pets eaten in Springfield, Ohio, though that a President telling the truth to the American people is a sacred trust even if some information can be withheld. Will you trust Trump should he be elected to tell the people the truth about anything, significant, like a war, or trivial, like his crowd sizes? How can anyone take the position otherwise than that of the NY Times editorial board which is that in this case a patriot can only vote for Harris? And yet the polls remain surprisingly close, as if people disregard Trump as an insurrectionist or all the indictments against him . Why? Do people have no respect for the constitution or simple individual morality whereby we deplore liars and those who disdain the military?
And then, that night, there was the Vice Presidential debate. Vance “won” because he presented himself as more articulate than Walz, who opened with hems and haws rather than getting to the point directly, and also as a reasonable and compassionate person rather than the ogre and extremist preoccupied with punishing cat ladies by reducing the power of their votes. He did so by being mild mannered, family oriented, and engaging in the technicalities of legislation, as if people cared about such things, knowing that arguments could be made on all sides for an audience unfamiliar with the issues. So much for everybody wanting a policy debate when clearly people prefer the personality debate that was present in the Harris Trump debate where everyone could assess the characters of the people running for President. Also, to achieve his ends, Vance just lied or obscured a number of issues as that was quickly ;pointed out by the commentators on CNN who clearly prefer Harris. Vance said that he wanted to provide child benefits rather than defend his opposition to abortion. He also said that Trump saved Obamacare when he had in fact tried to overturn it. Vance also said that Trump had turned over power on Jan. 20th neglecting that he tried to overthrow the government on Jan 6th while also himself asking Georgia votes to give him the statue and in cahoots with those engaged in drafting fake electors to gum up the electoral process. Some of those actions are under indictment but trials are delayed at the behest of the president who, if he thought himself innocent, would move them quickly to clear his name. But the greatest failure of the debate was that the CBS moderator put in the question of Jan. 6th late in the debate rather than making it front and center because that is the central issue about whether Trump is suitable for high office rather than just one of a long set of issues worth debating. Insurrection is not just another item.
And this is happening while the United States is heavily engaged, though without ground troops, in two wars and abortion and the peaceful succession of power are mighty issues for the American people to deal with and debates just skirt around them. In the old days, when people were ideological or interest based, that is what candidates talked about: getting out of Korea or civil rights or welfare for the poor. Sometimes I prefer the old days so the media discussed the issues rather than personalities. But personality is what it is and the media do dig deeply into that rather than just the puff their supporters present. But I am unsure whether the American people are even up to judging character rather than policy. If they were, Harris would win in a landslide.