A MOST-IMPORTANT ELECTION? YOU BET

As his four-night unreality show was about to end last week, President Donald Trump said finally something to which everyone might agree, at least in part.

“This is the most important election in the history of our country,” he said in his convention acceptance speech.

In our entire history?

More important than the first one in 1788-89? When George Washington found a blank slate on which to create the office, he could have made himself something of a king. Instead, he set examples of restraint, rectitude, dignity and respect for the Constitution that inspired most of his successors, that is, until three-and-a-half years ago.

More than 1864, amidst the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln’s defeat — which he expected for much of the year — would have meant the end of the Union?

More important than 1940, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was fighting the forces of “America First” to prepare the nation for the Second World War that had already devoured much of Europe?

If Trump says it’s the most important, it must mean that he’s greater than Washington, Lincoln or FDR. He has even fantasized about having his face carved on Mount Rushmore.

And yet Joe Biden, his opponent, agrees that although “all elections are important … this one is more consequential.”

Trump’s performance last Thursday showed why. The nation has never had such an unprincipled and unchecked president, let alone one seeking a second term.

The danger was evident not just in what Trump said, with its flurry of generalities, its torrent of falsehoods and halftruths — 25, by The Washington Post’s count — and its hysterical hyperbole as in “No one will be safe in Biden’s America.” The proof was also in how and where he said it.

His extravagant ego was front and center throughout. Everything — everything — has to be about him.

Until now, no other president used the White House for an out-and-out campaign rally, which is against the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. None had ever drafted government workers — Border Patrol agents in this case — to be part of a partisan audience, in violation of the Hatch Act. Every president before him — perhaps excepting his hero Andrew Jackson — respected the dignity of the “People’s House.”

In 1940, FDR addressed his convention from the White House, but by radio. There was no spectacle. It was the president alone in front of a microphone. The cheering crowd was where it belonged — in a convention hall.

As presidential historian Michael Beschloss put it bluntly last Thursday, “The South Lawn of the White House is now turned into the floor of a Republican convention.” Something like that, he said, “is what dictators do.”

Trump finally got the cheering, mostly unmasked, closely packed coronation rally that first North Carolina and then Jacksonville, Florida, would not permit.

He had to have it. As it turns out, it’s not just minorities and people in Democratic cities to whose lives he is indifferent. The adoring throng sitting shoulder to shoulder in front of him were his Republicans.

And did you take note of what might have been a touching tribute to his recently deceased brother Robert?

“He was a great brother and was very proud of the job we are doing.”

Not, I was proud of him, but he was proud of me.

The speech was memorable for the sheer ugliness of most of it, the repeated appeals to racism, the dripping contempt for his opponent — all fair warning that it’s going to be the nastiest election, at least on his part, as well as the most consequential.

In Biden’s acceptance speech, he never mentioned Trump by name and referred to “this president” or “the president” only four times.

Depending on which transcript you read, Trump savaged Biden by name from 39 to 43 times in his acceptance speech last week.

He must be terrified at the prospect of losing this election. That’s why he sounded all the trumpets of fear, of racism, of xenophobia.

Trump claimed that “No one will be safe in Biden’s America.” The flip to that is that America is not safe in Trump’s America.

His massive ego and narcissism dictate everything he does. The Constitution be damned. Decency, civility, bipartisanship be damned.

What he has done is to expose the fragility of our Constitution, of our democracy, when a ruthless president has learned that Congress will not check him. A majority of the senators are either cowards who fear his ‘base,” or cynical opportunists who are using him to get what they want out of politics. A most important election?

You bet.