Political events are moving fast.
My literary sense rather than my sociological one told me that something important would break that was important in the news over the summer because things always do happen. And so there were two events so far: the Biden debacle on the debate stage and the attempted assassination of Trump just a few days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Joe Biden, as usual terse and incisive, said no one could tell what the effects of the assassination attempt would be on the November election. Doubtless, I add, new events are bound to intervene, such as a victory over Hamas by Israel, or the long awaited ceasefire, or a bad turn in the domestic economy, which is unlikely in that the economy has been perking along quite well and only diehard Trumpists think otherwise. But the latest news is that Biden has covid and is reconsidering abandoning the nomination for a second term and so the assassination attempt may be overshadowed by subsequent events and not have much impact on the election in November, so far away as it is.
What can be said about the assassination attempt is that both sides are acting true to form. Biden asks for lowering the temperature without giving up his accusation that Trump is an enemy of liberty, already having referred to Jan. 6th as one of the violent events that have no place in America. While Trumpists, such as the new Vice Presidential nominee, says that Biden was “directly” responsible for the assassination attempt, which is, in true Trumpist style, deliberately ambiguous, in that it can mean either a conspiracy plot by Biden against Trump ort that Biden’s rhetoric was overcharged by his claim that democracy is at stake in this election. Just ask the Project 2025 plan not to endanger democracy even if, for the moment, Trumpists are backpedaling it.
What has happened to the traditional Republican Party? It used to believe in internationalism, law and order, traditional values, states rights and lower taxes. Now it is isolationist, giving tax breaks to the rich even if it increases the national debt, and a national ban on abortion, though Trump wavers on that so as not to offend voters. The party is the party of Trump, an insurrectionist, rather than Republican principles. Biden says the two parties should contest their ideas and the characters of their leaders but that is an idealization because the Republicans assert their beliefs but do not provide evidence or explanations and so rational debate is short. Conspiracy theorists abound. Leftists think there was a conspiracy theory to gain sympathy with Trump by deliberately wounding him. Rather implausible but people are reaching to fathom the chance Trump will be elected. Rightists think tube Secret Service was out to kill Trump. The straightforward facts are that the Secret Service botched the rally in Pennsylvania and that Biden is frail even if terse and cogent and the populace has to look past his age to his positions. Democracy may hinge on Republican women voting for abortion and the economy continuing to improve rather than what seems to me the real issue, which is whether democracy will survive another Trump term.
An assassination attempt, much less an actual assassination, is a very bad thing even if the person at issue is the greatest threat to democracy since the Civil SWar and so raises issues of whether to kill Hitler before he attained power. The answer with Hitler was that he could have been avoided through the usual constitutional means and the German politicians botched the job just as the Republican Party has botched its job. An assassination attempt makes the nation sense that it is outside its control, not subject to its procedures, and that is just what the Democrats are out to avoid. An assassination would also inflame the supporters of the now proclaimed martyr and might lead to rioting in the streets, but that has happened after the assassination of M.L.K., Jr., and the nation weathered that storm. The Trumpists would might have become more entrenched in the Republican Party, but that is hard to believe given that they control the Supreme Court, the Speaker of the House, and one vote short of controlling the Senate. Joe Biden stands in their way.
The great convention speakers have been less eloquent or incisive than they have conveyed their winning personalities, even including Mario Cuomo speaking about “the city on the hill” about our responsibilities to one another, a theme of Democrats from FDR to today. Kennedy exuded aristocratic class; Cuomo earnestness; Reagan warmth and Obama professorial wit. Only FDR stands out as having mastered the plain style of the American talk and writing of his time to convince people of the substance of what he said just as Lincoln developed his biblically inflected prose to make incisive remarks about a house divided cannot stand. Joe Biden gave a speech at the NAACP conference to show himself to be forceful despite his frailty and he offered his list of his own accomplishments, a lot of facts and figures, as well as a warning of Trump's agenda for the future. He ended the speech with his signature remark that this is the United States of America, each word stretched out, and adding that we can do anything we want to do if we cooperate with one another. That peroration can be treated as a platitude of patriotism that means nothing in that we have always been divided since the Era of Good Feeling or else a plea that the Republicans are obstructionist for its own sake, offering nothing constructive to their agenda, and that is the heart of the matter rather than two opposing views of how to go forwards.
Nikki Haley was speaking on the evening of the convention after Biden’s afternoon counterspeech. David Brooks said in the NYTimes the next morning that she was so gracious and poised that she had a place in future Republican politics. I, on the contrary, thought her appalling and a measure of just how much Republicans had descended into rank opportunism. She, like J. D. Vance, she had to overcome having said awful things about Trump. Vance said Trump showed himself in office to be a great President. But Vance had criticized Trump for his character rather than his programs, calling him akin to Hitler. Has Trump changed his character since 2016? I doubt it. Democrats, in general, don’t have to eat crow. Obama preferred Hillary to Joe but never castigated Joe, just didn’t think he would be as strong a candidate or leader. There was a lot of infighting and distrust about LBJ agreeing to be JFK’s running mate, but the two hadn’t smeared one another. For her part, Nikki said she didn’t always agree with Trump as if, again, her remarks had been about his character rather than his policies. Haley thought he was on safe ground by talking about foreign policy, having been UN Ambassador and so vilifying Biden’s foreign policy. She said a strong leader is one who avoids wars rather than wages them, a compliment to Trump in that Biden is fighting two wars though, miraculously, without any American soldiers. I think that is a major accomplishment. Moreover, consider Haley’s basic premise of who is strong. It falls apart as soon as the platitude is questioned, and so is a statement that feels right but has no examples. Was FDR weak because he went to war after Pearl Harbor? Was Lincoln weak for sending goods to Fort Sumter? Biden’s peroration may be aspirational but not contrary to fact. Haley knows better but was just pandering to the Dear Leader. She should have no role in a Republican future, but I am establishing a high standard.