Feel-Good Case of Politics
The depressing thing about the presidential election being a personality contest is the personalities available. I’m not a deep-in-the-policy-weeds kind of guy, although I read and retain more than people who pretend to be. I believe in the powerful stability of federalism and checks and balances. I don’t believe democracy will end with either party in power. I think both have their merits and head-scratching faults. I’m not a single-issue voter. I don’t live in a swing state. So overall it’d be nice to just have a president that makes me feel good superficially, be it with inspiring rhetoric, formidable intellect, moral courage.
After the assassination attempt unfathomably close to a chaotic turn in history, Trump had a fastball down the middle. Listless voters like me were listening. It’s possible if he would have shown something real and good at the convention, my well-trained rationalization muscle could take over. Well sure Trump possibly is clinically insane, but he can also get things done…
That was the worst speech I’ve ever seen given the circumstances. A 78-year-old took a bullet to the ear and stood back up pumping his fist to Americans to fight on. How do you mess that up? Obama would’ve had grown men in tears.
Any speechwriter must have been crying over the opportunity lost in the narcissistic rambling. Actually even the small portion of the 90 unmoving minutes that wasn’t off-teleprompter felt painful.
The God stuff, I get it, evangelicals love him. For a lot of folks out there though, that goes in one ear and out the other. Personally I have to actively overlook God “being on Trump’s side” but against the father of two in his crowd who died shielding his family from the gunshots. Whatever your faith, I hope you agree separation of church and state has proven to be a pretty solid model in human history.
President Biden’s age and decline might have been obscuring his opponent’s. Eight years is not trivial when you’re already in your 70s. It’s hard to guess Trump’s cognitive state because he never attempts to string together names, dates, legislation, nuanced ideas, concrete examples or even synonyms. Apparently everything related to his administration was simply incredible and the greatest in the history of the world, and everything in Biden’s was a disaster and part of the worst presidency ever.
Trump is many things. Historian with the expertise and rigor to compare economies back to the beginning of time and presidencies across four different centuries is not one of them. People like him because he shoots from the hip, but that shouldn’t be a free pass to be off the mark so often. Candor is pointless if you’re not saying anything true or substantive.
Ironically that’s why it works for him. People are tired of politician non-answers, so some settle for anti-politician non-answers. Vice President Harris is a terrible offender of the former. I couldn’t stand her, and then I forgot about her.
I know this kind of vague “likability” can be code for misogyny, so let me say I look forward to a female president. I couldn’t imagine a mother of five such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer so blatantly ignoring a question about child care to continue measuring dick size. The three female managers I’ve had are among the best in my career. Three-for-three is 100 percent.
And I wanted to like Harris. I started from that place during the 2020 primaries before a quick free fall mirroring her campaign. Every politician has to play the game, but she does it in a way that doesn’t make you feel good. She dodges questions with hollow flourish like a Trump with more vocabulary and a high school drama credit. She has a maddening way of laughing when challenged or pressed for an answer to a perfectly reasonable question.
I remember thinking her attempt to score points on Biden in the debate was so corny and contrived. Then she was able to set aside her deep hurt over his segregationist sympathies to be his vice president. And then as the No. 2 in the greatest country in the world, Harris managed to… I don’t know.
This New York Times article captures what I mean about her not making you feel good. The reporter did a skillful and gutsy job asking questions. Check out her answers and the reader comments at the bottom, likely from Democrats. Compare to what we’re hearing now only nine months later. It’s almost fascinating how politics works.
I am priming to flip-flop on Harris myself. This may be unAmerican to say a few weeks after a former president was a few inches from his life taken, but Trump himself clearly doesn’t want a grace period let alone change in decorum. My wish is for Harris to back up this stranger-than-fiction, prosecutor-versus-felon narrative and absolutely flog Trump. Just pick apart the ridiculousness and annihilate him. Make him go away.
This is not a realistic mission because Trump is largely invincible. The list of things he’s gotten away with is, to use his word more precisely, incredible. Literally hard to believe. What a phenomenon. I presume he will be studied in classrooms for many decades not just for political science, but any discipline like branding and communications.
He’s long past the point where the content of what he says matters because most people don’t take it at face value. That’s just Trump being Trump. He has the free rein of a comedian on stage. I feel like comedians get canceled for less.
No debate is fair because Trump can and does shout anything without being restrained by truth or logic.
Under my plan, incomes will skyrocket, inflation will vanish completely, jobs will come roaring back, and the middle class will prosper like never, ever before and we’re going to do it very rapidly.
-President Donald J. Trump
My dude, those are some monster broad strokes. Labor is a key cost for producing goods and services. If you double the salaries of mechanics, do you think fixing your car will cost the same? Higher wages also lead to increased demand for those goods and services. If everybody wants to buy a new car, do you think the price of cars will stay the same? It’s a complicated relationship with many other factors (his super tariffs won’t help either), but I feel confident saying incomes skyrocketing AND inflation vanishing AND jobs roaring in a rapid window is not in the cards for 2025.
Trump steamrolls everyone by just repeating stuff like this. It’s not fair. It doesn’t take much effort or preparation. It doesn’t matter whether champion Princeton debater Ted Cruz or long-careered Hillary Clinton is trying to make a case.
Now a bunch of people believe — or perhaps are dressing up their hope and desperation as conviction — that Harris is the best candidate to prosecute (everyone’s new favorite word) the case against Trump. Based on the record donations, how she worked the phones tirelessly in the hours after Biden stepped aside, and the flood of endorsements from heavyweights and would-be contenders… who am I to disagree. Plus I love a feel-good comeback story.