For president: Joe Biden
It was a poignant and telling moment in Thursday’s town hall when Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was asked what it would say about America if he lost the election.
“Well, it could say that I'm a lousy candidate, and I didn't do a good job,” said the former vice president.
The remark, so utterly humble, drew applause.
Imagine that, a presidential candidate willing to take responsibility for his performance, not blame others, not attack Americans who may disagree with him as being out to destroy the country, not invent an unsupported ballot fraud conspiracy theory to explain away even a hypothetical defeat.
Imagine a country led by someone that responsible. That introspective. That ... decent.
It will come as no surprise to readers of this page that we endorse Mr. Biden for president. Four years of Donald Trump have left this nation bitterly divided at home, increasingly isolated in the world, struggling through a mismanaged pandemic that has left more than 217,000 Americans dead, and searching for its moral compass.
Mr. Biden’s 47 years in public service, 36 of them as a U.S. senator and eight as vice president, speak to a breadth of experience not just in politics but in the art of governance, negotiation and compromise. These are things Mr. Trump seems not only unwilling to embrace, but temperamentally unable to even grasp.
We need a president who can be believed when he says, as Mr. Biden often does, that he will be president for all Americans. We need an executive who learned in his legislative years to reach across the aisle and put political rivalries and animosities aside. We need an administration that doesn’t treat the presidency like a talk radio or TV show that is merely about the ratings, about keeping the audience tuned in.
Americans are watching and listening to what’s going on in Washington so intently today not because of some sudden civic revival. They’re watching because they can see their democracy is going off the rails in some soap opera reality show that’s sometimes as farcically bizarre as the dystopian society portrayed in the movie whose title says it all: “Idiocracy.”
We need a government that is recommitted to science and reason, with leadership that appreciates, as Mr. Biden does, that climate change is not a matter of opinion or some plot invented by China, but an existential threat to civilization and, right now, humanity’s common challenge. We need a president willing to rejoin the Paris climate accord and who is committed to fostering clean, renewable energy, who recognizes both the ecological and economic imperative for America to do so in a world that is moving past fossil fuels. We need that attitude at home, too, to protect our air, water and land after four years of mindless deregulation.
We need a president willing, as Mr. Biden has shown himself to be, to provide unifying leadership on the issue of systemic racism in our criminal justice system, not stoke fears and animosities to keep a political base riled up. We need the kind of moral clarity in the White House that condemns violence by police and protesters alike. Not a president who suggests, as Mr. Trump has, that there are “fine people” among white supremacists who staged a deadly demonstration in Virginia, or who legitimizes whacko conspiracy theorists by saying he agrees with some of what a fringe group like Qanon espouses.
We need a president who understands that reducing poverty and sustaining and growing America’s middle class is what will make this country prosper, not the mythical trickle-down effect of huge tax breaks for rich people and big corporations that only exacerbate our already vast income inequality, like the ones Mr. Trump and a Republican House and Senate passed in 2017. And we certainly don’t need yet another cut for the rich, as Mr. Trump has suggested.
We need a president who sees the economic devastation of this pandemic as a challenge to be risen to, not a crisis to be denied, with the concrete plans Mr. Biden has proposed to help state and local governments, unemployed people, and small businesses and entrepreneurs now and after the pandemic is past.
We desperately need a president who will engage the world thoughtfully, not one who thinks the world stage is just another venue for him perform the role of blustering bully. We need a leader who doesn’t attack and demean our allies while praising adversaries like the murderous leaders of Russia, North Korea and the Philippines, a leader who is willing to re-engage Iran and stop giving it every reason to develop nuclear weapons. And who would end a fruitless trade war with China — the one Mr. Trump started three years ago and said would be “good and easy to win,” but which has hurt American companies, farmers and consumers and required billions in tax dollars to relieve only some of the damage.
And we need a president with real plans to improve health care by building on the Affordable Care Act, not just a promise to exchange it for something better and cheaper — which Mr. Trump has been promising for four years without coming up with even a vague draft. And still he’s trying to dismantle Obamacare, and going to court to destroy it, threatening tens of millions of people’s health and livelihoods.
As much as this election is about having a president like Mr. Biden, it is also about ridding this country of a disaster like Mr. Trump. It is no hairon-fire exaggeration to say that this nation — and quite possibly the great experiment in democracy and liberty that is America — cannot withstand another four years of Mr. Trump’s incompetence, divisiveness, corruption and cruelty.
His incompetence has been evident in his useless trade war, the mocking he has elicited from other world leaders, his attempts to deny reality and science when it comes to things like pollution and climate change, and most of all in his handling of the greatest crisis of his presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic. Where the nation needed leadership, he attacked the government’s own experts and contradicted them on vital protective measures like wearing masks. He made baseless rosy predictions, claimed success even as the virus was spreading, promoted ridiculous treatments and nonexistent cures, and treated it as a public relations problem, not a public health crisis. And now America has the most deaths — 217,987 as of Friday — and the most infected people — almost 8 million, growing by more than 50,000 a day.
His divisiveness is evident even in a re-election campaign that seeks to divide America into two camps — patriots who follow him, traitors who do not. He used the Black Lives Matter movement and not-so-silent dog whistles to stoke racial animosity, and went beyond destructive rhetoric in using federal forces to attack demonstrators in Washington, D.C., and Portland, Ore. He fashioned himself as a defender of the Confederate flag and monuments. He has defined his presidency as Donald Trump against liberals, Donald Trump against immigrants, Donald Trump against Muslims, Donald Trump against football players, and on and on. He encourages supporters to beat up protesters at rallies and intimidate voters at polls.
It’s quite likely that we don’t know the full extent of Mr. Trump’s corruption, but Americans have seen enough. This is, after all, only the third president to be impeached, and it was clear that the only thing that saved him from conviction was a Republican majority in the Senate too afraid of him, and their own base, to hold him accountable for trying to extort political favors from another nation’s leader. We saw him obstruct the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, intimidate and fire honest people who have called attention to his wrongdoing, use the Justice Department to protect criminal friends and persecute perceived enemies. He has abused the Postal Service and census for political ends. He has used his office to enrich himself and his family through money funneled by lobbyists, businesses and foreign governments through his hotels and resorts. He has pocketed millions from the Secret Service having to pay to stay at his properties while protecting him. He has used his power to try to force the G7 to meet at one of his resorts and to get Britain to move the British Open to his Scotland golf course.
And while his most ardent fans and his most partisan enablers may ignore it or shrug it off, there is something deeply corrosive to a society that once cherished honesty in its presidents to have one who has racked up well over 20,000 false and misleading statements and outright lies since taking office.
It may be Mr. Trump’s cruelty, though, that’s the hardest to reconcile against the values that Americans long held so dear.
This is a president who has attacked Gold Star parents for criticizing him and blamed them — not his refusal to wear a mask or practice social distancing — for his coronavirus infection. Who denigrated the late Sen. John Mccain for being a prisoner of war. Who has been closing America’s door to refugees. Who mocked a handicapped journalist, ruined the careers of whistleblowers and other honest government workers who stood up to the corruption they witnessed. Who has tried repeatedly to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and used Dreamers as bargaining chips. Who separated immigrant children from parents just to send a message on how unwelcome they are in Donald Trump’s America. Who put human beings in cages and subjected them to filthy, inhumane conditions. Who lost kids in a system to possibly never be united with their families again.
What does it say about America if it re-elects such a president, knowing all it does about him after nearly four years?
It’s a question we hope America does not have to answer, but that it votes instead for Mr. Biden, to make America, above all, decent again.